Michael New sent me a helpful note about the latest, much-discussed study on free contraception:
Last week a study which appeared in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology had the mainstream media swooning. It purportedly found that providing no-cost contraception to women resulted in a dramatic decline in both teen birthrates and abortion rates. This study was covered by USA Today, CBS News, the Associated Press, and countless other media outlets
However, a closer look at the study reveals that there is a lot less than meets the eye. Specifically this study lacks an adequate control
group. It also uses an unorthodox data weighting mechanism. As such, it vastly overstates the effectiveness of this no-cost contraception program. Not surprisingly, the researchers also ignored the STD rate and other public health outcomes of women taking part in the study.I should also note that there is a substantial body of peer reviewed research which documents the ineffectiveness of various contraception programs. However, these studies typically receive scant attention from the mainstream media.
Michael dives into the statistical details over at National Review.
October 10th, 2012 | 3:06 pm
Free contraception may not be the answer, but what was the question?
There has been a great deal of sloppy reporting of Preventing Unintended Pregnancies by Providing No-Cost Contraception (available free online) including misguided analysis by its critics. The objective was not to answer the question, “Does providing free contraceptives result in a lower abortion rate?” Here is the objective as stated in the article:
This was not a “study” looking for pure knowledge of what happens with an experimental group and a control group. It was the write-up of a project by The Contraceptive Choice Project actively promoting the use of contraceptives.
To criticize it as a poorly designed study is to completely ignore what The Contraceptive Choice Project is all about and the authors’ intentions. No one should be at all surprised or offended that if you take a group of women who do not want to get pregnant and provide them with education and free contraceptives, they will choose the more effective (and more expensive) contraception methods and have fewer unplanned pregnancies.
October 10th, 2012 | 3:46 pm
Clearly what is needed is a safe, effective
and inexpensive pill to suppress sexual desire.
Would NIH support the research? Would Planned
Parenthood distribute it? Would moralists
approve it?
October 10th, 2012 | 4:07 pm
“More” and “fewer” compared to whom, David?
That’s was controls are for. So, if you are right, the project assumed what is at question and, not surprisingly, discovered they were right.
October 10th, 2012 | 6:56 pm
That’s was controls are for. So, if you are right, the project assumed what is at question and, not surprisingly, discovered they were right.
Mike Melendez,
And did the Regnerus study have a control group?
I doubt that the authors of this paper were so dim as to ask themselves, “Let’s see, if we sign up nine thousand women who don’t want to get pregnant, educate them about contraception, and offer to pay the cost of the contraceptives, will they choose the more effective, more expensive ones? And have fewer unintended pregnancies than women using less effective methods or none at all?”
You (I presume) and a great many others who are trying to discredit this paper are morally opposed to contraception. Fine. That doesn’t mean you have to claim the paper tries to prove something that it doesn’t, and then demonstrate that it doesn’t prove it. Why not just condemn the authors for immorality in providing women with contraception? Why bother to discredit the paper?
October 11th, 2012 | 2:44 pm
If free contraception *is* the way to reduce abortion rates (and, by the way, anytime a liberal says he wants to reduce abortion rates, we should be skeptical, because most of the regard abortion as a positive good) then why do states that most heavily subsidize contraception and promote “comprehensive” sex education in schools also have the highest abortion rates? CT, CA, NY and NJ have only 21% of the U.S. population (a rate number that is shrinking and that will continue to shrink, by the way) but half of all U.S. abortion providers are located in those states and 36% of all U.S. abortions take place in those states. Anybody who grew up and attended public school in those states in at least the last 20 years (I did, in CT) was invariably taught about contraception many, many times. This may be good or bad (I think it is generally bad) but it does *not* reduce abortion rates.
October 12th, 2012 | 9:08 am
Mike P. –
The situation’s slightly more complicated than that. Those states also have teen pregnancy rates below the national average – most well below. And you’d expect more abortions where more abortion clinics were allowed, so that correlation doesn’t mean what I think you think it means.
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