For a refreshing reminder of the mendacity of the cultural left, look no further than PZ Myers' recent post on the consequences of the sexual revolution.
Myers takes umbrage at a "militant Catholic" (Patrick Fagan of the Family Research Council), who observes:
Myers demurs. He insists:
Hmmm. Why did Myers pick teenage births, rather than, say, teenage pregnancies?
Something's odd. So how to explain Myers' graph?
First of all, marriage rates were higher pre-1960, and people married considerably younger than they do today. The spike from 1945 to 1960 is the Baby Boom. A 19 year old married woman having a child by her husband (not an uncommon event in 1955) would show up on the graph. That is not the same kind of "teenage birth" one commonly encounters in 2013, which is nearly always an unmarried teen girl who commonly doesn't even know which of her 'hook-ups' is the father.
Second, no one in their right mind thinks that teenage pregnancies declined in frequency with the sexual revolution.
Here's the graph that Myers didn't show:
The dark blue line corresponds roughly to Myers' graph. The yellow and magenta lines correspond to the pregnancy rate and the abortion rate, respectively. The reason that the teen birth rate dropped wasn't that the teen pregnancy rate dropped; in fact, the teen pregnancy rate skyrocketed. The teen birth rate dropped because following the sexual revolution the teen abortion rate skyrocketed even more than the teen pregnancy rate.
:0
So how could we summarize the data presented in the graph of teen birth, abortion, and pregnancy rates?
nails it.
Myers takes umbrage at a "militant Catholic" (Patrick Fagan of the Family Research Council), who observes:
Having set chaos in motion... , the Supreme Court quickly built the garbage bin for dumping sexual debris in Roe v. Wade, which gave a green light to the killing of 55 million unborn children, the overwhelming majority of whom were conceived by those unmarried singles with new access to contraceptives.
Myers demurs. He insists:
It didn’t happen.
Also, I’ve got to wonder if the author thought his thesis through. New access to contraception led to a surge in unwanted pregnancies? Only if they weren’t doing it right.
Maybe we should have coupled contraception access to better sex education.
Or just maybe the chaos was all in the author’s head.
Something's odd. So how to explain Myers' graph?
First of all, marriage rates were higher pre-1960, and people married considerably younger than they do today. The spike from 1945 to 1960 is the Baby Boom. A 19 year old married woman having a child by her husband (not an uncommon event in 1955) would show up on the graph. That is not the same kind of "teenage birth" one commonly encounters in 2013, which is nearly always an unmarried teen girl who commonly doesn't even know which of her 'hook-ups' is the father.
Second, no one in their right mind thinks that teenage pregnancies declined in frequency with the sexual revolution.
Here's the graph that Myers didn't show:
 |
| Rates per 1000 women aged 15-19. |
The dark blue line corresponds roughly to Myers' graph. The yellow and magenta lines correspond to the pregnancy rate and the abortion rate, respectively. The reason that the teen birth rate dropped wasn't that the teen pregnancy rate dropped; in fact, the teen pregnancy rate skyrocketed. The teen birth rate dropped because following the sexual revolution the teen abortion rate skyrocketed even more than the teen pregnancy rate.
:0
So how could we summarize the data presented in the graph of teen birth, abortion, and pregnancy rates?
"[A] garbage bin for dumping sexual debris in Roe v. Wade, which gave a green light to the killing of 55 million unborn children"
nails it.
These militant Catholics always get it right.
PZ Myers selected the one graph out of three that didn't directly contradict his point. He chose not to post the other two graphs explaining the drop in teen births-- the graphs that showed the explosion in teen pregnancy rates and the even larger explosion in teen abortion rates that accounted for the drop in birth rates.
Myers lies like he breathes.
PZ Myers selected the one graph out of three that didn't directly contradict his point. He chose not to post the other two graphs explaining the drop in teen births-- the graphs that showed the explosion in teen pregnancy rates and the even larger explosion in teen abortion rates that accounted for the drop in birth rates.
Myers lies like he breathes.
"Here's the graph that Myers didn't show:"
ReplyDeletehttp://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/06/dont-tell-my-wife/
Interesting that your graph starts at 1970. Could it be because teen pregnancy rates were much higher in the 1950s and 1960s?
ReplyDeleteWhy, yes indeed:
Ages 15-17 Ages 18-19
1950 40.7 132.7
1960 43.9 166.7
1970 38.8 114.7
1980 32.5 82.1
1985 31.0 79.6
1990 37.5 88.6
1995 35.5 87.7
1996 33.3 84.7
1997 31.4 85.1
1998 29.9 80.9
1999 28.2 79.1
2000 26.9 78.1
2001 24.7 76.1
Read the post, Troy.
Delete"The teen birth rate dropped because following the sexual revolution the teen abortion rate skyrocketed..."
ReplyDeleteBull! Look at the 16 year period from 1975 to 1991. There have been fluctuations but the abortion rate was unchanged! For 16 years! Anti-abortionists have been arguing that abortion rates have skyrocketed, that there is a 'hockey stick' shape to the graph if you will, but the numbers just don't support their assertions!
Anons and troy:
DeleteThe trends in the last 15 years are not the issue. Myers' point (ie lie) was about the impact the sexual revolution had on pregnancies, and the sexual revolution began circa 1960, not 1995.
Other trends have emerged decades later, but are not the issue at hand.
Do try to stay on topic.
So, you graph starts in 1970, how does that show the "impact of the sexual revolution that started in 1960"? All I can see here is that the liar is you egnor-slime, not Myers.
DeleteBut contrary to your claim, teen pregnancy rates were much higher before the sexual revolution. The graph you show conveniently leaves out those pregnancy rates. So your "explosion in teen pregnancy rates" did not occur. On the contrary.
Deletetroy:
DeleteReferences, references. If you have links for your claims, provide them.
And as I noted in the post, teen pregnancy circa 1955 is not the same as teen pregnancy 1975. Many pregnant teens in 1955 were married 19 year old women. Not so much today.
Out of wedlock pregnancies in teens (and older) are the real issue, and of course those have skyrocketed to numbers almost inconceivable pre-1960.
80% of black kids are born out of wedlock now, and 33% of white kids. The numbers pre-1960 were in the 5% range.
The sexual revolution had consequences. But you have no interest in the truth about what happened, so it's not clear to me why I waste my time with you.
At least some honest people reading this may understand things better.
Meyers, like most materialists, is a cherry picker.
ReplyDeleteIf the data does not suit his predetermined conclusions he simply omits it, or even (as in this case) distorts the truth in order to back his evil.
On par with that is his sophomoric, amateur style. The guy is supposed to be some sort of expert or professional, but writes with all the style and grace of a horny, angry teenager. Maybe that's just his pals rubbing off on him?
In related news:
Deletehttp://www.sba-list.org/suzy-b-blog/kermit-gosnell-trial-abortion-house-horrors
I'd be thrilled if Kermit Gosnell got a quarter of the news coverage that Abu Graib got, or half of the coverage that Trayvon Martin got. But that will never happen in a country with a media as corrupt as ours.
DeleteTRISH
"Out of wedlock pregnancies in teens (and older) are the real issue, and of course those have skyrocketed to numbers almost inconceivable pre-1960."
ReplyDeleteOK, let's look at the skyrocketing of out of wedlock birth rates that occurred in the 1960's.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db18.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf
Number of births to unmarried women
1940 - 7.1/1000
1950 - 14.1/1000
1960 - 21.6/1000
1970 - 26.4/1000
1980 - 29.4/1000
What?! The increase in birth rates for unmarried women was larger in the 1940's and the 1950's than it was in the 1960's! The increase in birth rate of unwed mothers started to slow down after the sexual revolution!
You mean Egnor was wrong?! Well you could have knocked me over with a feather.
anon:
DeleteI cited out of wedlock pregnancies, not births.
You quietly switched the data. You did the same thing Myers did.
Lying scumbag.
So the out-of-wedlock births (not pregnancies) rose from 7.1 per 1,000 in 1940 to 29 per 1,000 in 1980...and this guy thinks that it supports his point?
DeleteWhy stop at 1980? Let's look at it today. Four in ten children are now born out-of-wedlock.
http://topnews.us/content/25203-number-unwed-mothers-increases-4-out-10-us-babies-born-out-wedlock
And those are the ones not dumped in a medical waste container outside of Planned Parenthood. So yes, I would say that unbridled sexual chaos is a pretty good description.
TRISH
The abortion rates (per 1000 pregnancies) for the period in question:
Delete1940-1944 - 0.166
1946-1949 - 0.174
1950-1954 - 0.110
1955-1959 - 0.080
1960-1964 - 0.102
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-unitedstates.html
Abortion rates were decreasing during the lead up to and the beginning of the sexual revolution. More women were getting abortions in the 1940’s than in the early 1960'S. If anything, this makes the numbers look worse for Egnor's claim.
So, again, the increase in the rate of out of wedlock births (and pregnancies) decreased during the sexual revolution, when Egnor claims out of wedlock births (and pregnancies) actually skyrocketed.
Again I say, Egnor was wrong and you could have knocked me over with a feather.
He really doesn't understand that difference between a pregnancy and a birth. Hint, a birth is what happens after a pregnancy unless Kermit Gosnell arrives.
DeleteI think anyone who thinks that everything is fine must live in a upper-class or upper-middle class bubble. For the rest of us, baby mama/baby daddy culture is here.
When I was a kid, lots of kids I knew had parents who were divorced. My generation learned something from that, so now they just don't get married. Divorce is just a big hassle so it's best not to form any kind of cohesive family unit that must later by dissected.
That doesn't mean that people stop having kids. To the contrary, they have lots of kids! Then the kids are treated to a soap opera of custody battles and fighting about child support payments. Usually, the child support isn't enough to make ends meet so the irresponsible parents just send the bill to the taxpayer. If you don't like paying it that means that you're mean, a bad Christian, and probably racist. Yes, racist.
Come to where I work. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who doesn't have any kids. Onesies and twosies are as common as dandelions. I know two guys with four kids and one guy with five. The guy with five has five different baby mamas. His oldest kid is twenty-seven years old and serving jail time in Buffalo. Big surprise!
Oh, those are just anecdotes, right? I find it hard to believe that the detractors on this site can't see their own anecdotes just by looking out their windoes.
Keep whistling past the graveyard.
Ben
The abortion rates (per 1000 pregnancies) for the period in question:
Delete1940-1944 - 0.166
1946-1949 - 0.174
1950-1954 - 0.110
1955-1959 - 0.080
1960-1964 - 0.102
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-unitedstates.html
Abortion rates were decreasing during the lead up to and the beginning of the sexual revolution. More women were getting abortions in the 1940’s than they were in the early 1960’s.
So, again, the increase in the rate of out of wedlock births (and pregnancies) decreased during the sexual revolution, when Egnor claims out of wedlock births (and pregnancies) actually skyrocketed.
Again I say, Egnor was wrong and you could have knocked me over with a feather.
“So the out-of-wedlock births (not pregnancies) rose from 7.1 per 1,000 in 1940 to 29 per 1,000 in 1980...and this guy thinks that it supports his point?”
DeleteEgnor claimed that the sexual revolution (beginning in 1960) was responsible for the rise in unwed pregnancies. However, contra Egnor, the rate of increase in unwed births was in decline in the 1960’s compared to the 1940’s and 1950’s and the abortion rate was overall going down during the same period. So, yes, the data do support my point that Egnor was wrong.
“Why stop at 1980? Let's look at it today. Four in ten children are now born out-of-wedlock.”
Egnor only made a claim about the 1960’s. But since you brought up the topic, why don’t you tell everyone that teenagers account for 23% of unwed pregnancies currently, whereas in 1970 they accounted for 50%? Or, like Egnor, are you just not that good with numbers?
1964 was the beginning of the sexual revolution, not the end of "the period in question". Abortion rates skyrocketed from the mid 60's to the mid 70's -- from 0.18 in 1965 to 24.8 in 1975.
DeleteA 13,700% increase in abortion rate, with the "sexual revolution".
You're lying on my blog, and you're really pissing me off.
I read the link. It doesn't say what you say it says.
DeleteThe "abortions reported" and "abortions estimated" columns are empty until 1973. There is a section for abortion rate, which I don't know how they could have possibly calculated without data.
In any case, anyone looking at it can see that the proportion of abortions skyrocketed in the 1960s. Your stats indicate that abortion was becoming rarer, up until the sexual revolution. It's hard to put a date on the sexual revolution, but in any case, that only undermines your point. Prior to the pill and the cultural liberation of sexual mores, abortion was becoming a rarer occurrence. Afterwards, it became as casual as having your suits drycleaned.
Your stats do not support your conclusion.
JQ
Egnor,
DeleteFirst you claim Myers didn’t talk about the teenage pregnancies graph, so I gave you the link where he did.
Then you claim that many “teenage births” were to married women during the baby boom, so I gave you a link showing that unwed births were increasing more rapidly before 1960 than after it.
Then you claim it is not births but pregnancies that are important, so I gave you data showing that abortion rates were higher before the 1960.
Now you change your mind from “the sexual revolution began circa 1960” to “1964 was the beginning of the sexual revolution,”.
I think you’ve moved the goalposts about as far as you can, and I have no interest in playing that sort of game.
And as Dr. Egnor points out, teen births in the 1940s were something very different from teen births today. They were soldiers' brides.
ReplyDeleteJQ
There are lies, damned lies and statistics. If Mark Twain didn't say this first, then he should have.
ReplyDeleteEven worse than statistics is telling stories to explain the statistics, as Egnor does. Correlation doesn't equal causation.
I'm a little skeptical about the statistics. Teen births would be pretty accurate. Births have to be registered after all. Teen abortions are less accurate; there's no requirement to register them with a central body, and the actual numbers depends on getting the information from many different sources and surveys. Not accurate enough to give it to the same decimal place.
Teen pregnancies is even worse. Teen pregnancies in the statistics quoted is significantly greater than the sum of teen births and teen abortions, so something has been omitted. Probably teen spontaneous abortions, the number of which is completely uncertain.
The endpoints for teen births, abortions and pregnancies also differs. A woman 19 years and 3 months pregnant falling pregnant will be included in the teen statistics for teen pregnancies if she has an abortion but not if she doesn't - unless the statistics include mothers giving birth to babies at age 20 years and 9 months or younger as teen pregnancies.
Common sense explanations can't be the answer to complex problems because it's possible to come up with equally common sense explanations, which are diametrically opposite.
A recent book 'Everything is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer' by Duncan Watts expresses at length the point that common sense explanations are almost useless in explaining complex systems, such as human societies and even individual humans.
Egnor has the idea that any social problem is due to a combination of any number of his bugbears; increasing secularisation of society and reducing influence of Christianity, oral contraceptives, elective abortions, liberalism... He's just story telling. There's no way of determining for certainty that he's right, either by collecting more statistics from past events or changing society along the lines he favors.
Meanwhile in related news:
Deletehttp://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/abortionist-joked-baby-big-enough-walk-around-me-or-walk-me-bus-stop
"I'm a little skeptical about the statistics."
DeleteI'm sure you posted your opinion about the misuse of statistics on PZ's blog when he attempted to use an irrelevant statistic on teen births to "prove" that there was no big increase in abortion and unmarried teen pregnancy.
The Deuce,
DeleteNo, I didn't comment on PZ Myers' blog, because by the time I look at it generally there are dozens of comments, if not over a hundred. I don't comment until I've read the comments. With so many comments, I generally don't read them all, just a random selection, so I don't comment in case someone else is making a similar point.
Anyway, statistics is often garbage in/garbage out. The statistics on teen pregnancies is still suspect. Devising explanations to 'explain' what is happening to the statistics over time is just story telling. Correlation doesn't equal causation. If you have a hypothesis as to why the trends seem to be there, then you need a method of testing it. Which means refuting the hypothesis, otherwise you're just running the risk of falling into confirmation bias.
The book I recommended is a good and amusing discussion of the problem.