Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Bookworm on Sep 02 2008 at 7:20 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
With regard to the Bristol pregnancy, does it seem as if this is a case of “no good deed goes unpunished?” The thinking among libs is that Bristol’s pregnancy is proof positive that the Palin family is white trash and that the emphasis on abstinence is a failure and that Palin is a bad mother.
However, when you think about it, we have no idea whether the daughters of liberal politicians are getting pregnant and this is because they don’t feel that they are morally prevented from destroying evidence of the pregnancy. That is, they’ll abort before anyone learns about the pregnancy. Obama, for example, has said that he wants to make sure his daughters won’t be “punished” for getting pregnant.
For all we know, Chelsea Clinton (who seems like a lovely, smart, and together young lady) could have had an abortion every other year since she hit puberty.* I sincerely doubt that’s the case, but the fact that we don’t know she’s been pregnant doesn’t mean she hasn’t been pregnant. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So here we have a family that has a teenager who came home pregnant and, instead of destroying the evidence, so as to keep face in the community and advance Mom’s career, the family says, “Okay, let’s embrace and deal with the issue.” To appreciate what the Palins did is not to condone teen pregnancy. It is to recognize that they bravely took a moral — and very public — step, while those around them have created a moral environment in which they can keep mum about whatever pregnancy skeletons might lurk in their closets.
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* I am not starting an ugly rumor about Chelsea and pregnancy and abortions here. I’m making a hypothetical point, and that is all.
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31 Responses to “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
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book, here we go again
no one ever asserted that bristol palin was “white trash”. my only contention is that an abstinence-only focus is more than naive. it’s reckless.
and to point out the fact that the younger palin only underscores what countless girls are facing in the u.s., most without the support network, finances and opportunities that have been afforded bristol palin. our public policy should be informed by that and the fact that the gop vp nom is dealing with this is a good time to talk about these issues.
…and to point out that gov. palin might be on the wrong side of the issue. that’s fair.
peace
Hi Bookworm –
Thanks for writing this post. My thoughts on this whole issue have been centering on exactly what you expressed here.
Somehow, Sarah Palin is being painted as a hypocrit because she supports life and chose life even when she found out that her youngest child would not be considered “perfect” by some people. Her eldest daughter also chose life, even though it would have been easier and less embarassing to have had an abortion. It makes no sense.
Sarah Palin and her daughter have each chosen the tougher road. They could have done what was convenient, what was easy, and what could have benefitted them in public ways but they chose a different road – the one that matters. And for this, they are paying a very public price.
All of that being said, I do agree that it is fair to ask the candidates what they think about various issues, including public education, abortion, etc. I just hope that it is done respectfully.
Deana
no deana, she’s a hypocrit because she supports abstinence-only even though it’s obvious that another program might have benefited her daughter more.
oh, and what about her husband being a member of a secessionist party? i can do this all day.
peace
So dagon, if you were against lying and your son told a lie, would that make you a hypocrite?
And no, it is not obvious that another program would have benefitted her daughter more. If Sarah Palin had advocated sex-ed and her daughter had become pregnant, would you be calling her a hypocrit and demanding that abstinence be taught?
dagon – Show me the evidence where explicit sex ed programs have eliminated teen pregnancies. No program, no matter what the focus, is going to eliminate teen pregnancy. There are too many variables involved.
Deana
thanks deana,
you just made my point. if kids are going to screw around, which you assert, isn’t it better to arm them with the most knowledge possible?
of course explicit sex-ed programs aren’t going to eliminate teen pregnancy. there’s just way too much stimulus for kids these days. but at least the attempt is to arm them with knowledge, thus preventing a few. abstinence-only leaves them ignorant and uninformed; and often shamed into depression for letting themselves and their families down. a simple choice in education for me; of course families have the mandate to teach their children whatever they want to believe but teenage pregnancy is a public issue.
that’s the only point i was trying to make. i can’t support someone who hasn’t made that logical connection. maybe gov. palin will now.
peace
JC and Gary Owen, dagon, can you possibly be as stupid as you sound? Leave it to a person using the name of a Philistine god to post on an Israelite’s blog.
First of all, Bristol made a mistake by indulging in premarital sex. By evangelical standards, this should be a no-no. However, we understand that people make mistakes. They sin. I sin. So, okay.
But from that point on, she seems to have been making reasonable decisions. She decided to keep the baby that resulted from her mistake. Check. She decided to inform her parents and take the heat. Check. She decided to inform the father of the baby. Check. They decided to get married. Check check.
Let’s see the numbers right now. In 2005, ~53% of HS students report never having had sex.
63% of the other 47% who are screwing around report using condoms. Only 10% of female teens use the Pill (I’m controlling for those who use both). Hence, 73% of the 47% use one form of contraceptive. That’s about 34.31%.
But wait! Contraceptives aren’t 100% effective! There’s a 5% pregnancy rate for the Pill, and a 14% pregnancy rate for condoms.
So what have the numbers told us?
1. More HS students are abstinent than are (a) having sex or (b) using contraceptives.
Oops, sounds like pretty effective education to me.
2. Abstinence by definition has a 100% success rate, vs a 95% rate for the Pill.
Ooh, sounds like abstinence is more foolproof.
(Sources available via Google)
Conclusion: Abstinence is still the best program around. It’s used by more students, and it’s more foolproof than even the best contraceptives available.
Now, I am an evangelical Christian. I don’t approve of pre- or extra- marital sex. But I understand the urges, oh, very very well indeed. And if you sin, I expect you to deal with the consequences, and not run from them. It seems to me that Bristol has done both (sin and deal with the consequences). Hence, not a major problem in my book.
If Chelsea Clinton had done the same, I would give her the same, well, not pass exactly, but the feeling of ‘Well, at least she’s keeping the baby, and she’s marrying the father, so it’s not bad’. Others may think otherwise, but I think I’m in the clear majority.
/I’d tell you to go troll somewhere else, but it ain’t my blog
hey konger
what the frell are you talking about?
virtually everything you wrote is indulgent to your own sick perception of the world. i’m not speculating about the circumstances around bristol palin’s pregnancy. i’m fully aware that this stuff happens. apparently the palin’s are now too.
i’m questioning her mother, the gop candidate for the v.p. of the united states.
btw, frequent posters here know that i’m not a troll. YOU sound like a troll. dagon will enlighten you if you give him a chance.
peace
dagon – your logic does not follow.
Many, many students who receive very explicit sex education in which they are supposedly “armed with knowledge” still wind up pregnant. So how, exactly, is that better?
Again, I’m not arguing for keeping kids in the dark about sex – I’m all over education. But it ought to be truthful about the consequences.
Deana
Deana, dagon’s logic does follow, and Konger should produce sources and think carefully about things before reporting his stats. That some teens become pregnant even under the best possible sex-ed program does not mean it is still not the best possible program, only that it has produced fewer pregnancies than any other program, including an abstinance-only program. And last I checked, there isn’t some liberal conspiracy to hide knowledge of STDs from kids, as if that would be possible anyway, given the internet.
As for Konger, abstinence is 100% effective if you stay 100% abstinent, but teens, like Palin’s daughter don’t, so you can’t use 100%, but more like 50% (according to your own stats). Condoms are more effective than 14% when used properly, but we’ll take your figure (there are a lot of idiots out there). Now, by your own statistical data, let’s set up one population called the abstinence only crowd that is denied access to contraception (because that would offend the Lord) and another group, let’s call them the Godless liberals’ kids, which is not discouraged from sex but they must use a condom and there is very easy access to them. Which group do you think has the lower pregnancy rate? I hope you can do the math, but in case you cannot: abstinence kids: the 50% that are active run the risk of getting pregnant or STDs because they are going to do the deed but without condoms, while only 14% on the 50% that are active run that risk in the liberal population; now, you might say that the 50% goes down in the first population because there are no condoms (this is what conservatives hope), but it does not go down to zero or even 14%; meanwhile, most of the 50% of non-actives do not become active because of the availability of condoms, so you never reach 14% at risk in the latter population. This is what conservatives miss, the decision to have sex is largely an independent variable, which cannot be controlled by the banning or limiting of condom/pill access. BTW, the best method is, of course to use both, since you capture 100% of 50% and 86% of the other 50% (roughly) and minimize the pregnancies. This is what health organizations have been saying for a while (e.g., http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/case_studies_and_evidence/abstinence-only-education.html), but the Right-wingers, and their faith-based (i.e., blind) analysis, seems to drown them out all the time–as do bogus logical proofs, like Kong’s. Those that speak don’t know, while those that know don’t speak loudly enough…
>>btw, frequent posters here know that i’m not a troll. >>
No, we don’t.
>>abstinence kids: the 50% that are active run the risk of getting pregnant or STDs because they are going to do the deed but without condoms>>
Is there some part of “abstinence” that you don’t understand?
What was the unmarried pregnancy rate 50 year ago when there _was_ no sex education, and what is it today after 30+ years of sex education? is the rate of unmarried pregnancies going up or down?
Article can be found here:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Abstinence/wm738.cfm
suek, in 1972 there were 949,630 pregnancies among women aged 15-19.
Pregnancies peaked in 1990, at 1,012,260 and began declining. In 2000 there were 821,810 pregnancies and the last data in 2002 there were 746,820 pregnancies.
Abortions among this age group began rising after 1973, but began declining in the late 1980’s and have continued to decline.
Sex education has been part of the curriculum during this time and appears to have had little effect until the beginning of the 1990’s when (schock) schools began including abstinence programs in their curriculum.
This is, of course, casual correlation, but interesting.
Report here:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
The report suggests it is a combination of both contreception and abstinence.
I found a table somewhere that put illegitimate births in 1952 (I think) at something like 14%. In 1996 (last year in the table) it was 44%.
Marvelous progress.
Brian…your numbers are straight numbers…were any percentages available? I don’t have a feel for how those numbers compare to the total number of girls in the age group for the periods…
Oh, and Brian…
1972 wasn’t exactly pre-sex ed.
More like 1950 and prior was pre-sex ed and abstinence only. _Really_ only.
One thing to factor in is that teens were getting pregnant a lot in the 50s. However, they did what Bristol did — they got married. That means that you have to check, not the difference between illegitimate births and legitimate births, but the difference between pregnancy rates for teens over time. I don’t know what the figures are or what they’d show. And of course, I don’t know if it’s even possible to factor in the number of teens who get pregnant nowadays but abort.
btw, frequent posters here know that i’m not a troll.
Dagon is a misogynist character assassin who likes to attack Book because she won’t ban him, given how compassionate she is compared to someone like me.
Dagon only posts here to attack women and people he thinks has a weak spot. That includes Palin. Since he is commenting here more frequently, that means he has sniffed blood like any good old shark.
No, he’s definitely not a troll.
Suek said:
Those were raw numbers. These number are for women 15-19.
1972- 9.5% of women in age group had pregnancies
1982- 11% of women in age group had pregnancies
1989- 11.5%” ” ”
1992- 11%” ” ”
2002- 7.5% ” ” ”
Statistics come from this report:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
Table 2.1
Hey hey, at least dagon and I both have one thing in common – we like Farscape. At least I assume you like Farscape.
I’m not gonna reply to you, since you weren’t even coherent, let alone substantive enough to rebut.
dg: what rubbish are you talking about?
1. I have no idea how well abstinence-only education will work in the absence of any promotion of teenage sexual activity using contraceptive methods. It would seem to me that it would require the combination of a strong family life, chaperoning, religious education of some sort, and a social abhorrence of premarital sex, in order to be effective for the vast majority of adolescents. Like I said, I have no idea, and neither do you, since these conditions do not apply.
2. What we do know is that
Have you refuted what I’ve said? No, you haven’t. Instead you say this, and that, and ooh, right-wing blindness and stupidity and bogus logical proof.
Listen up, buddy, abstinence is defined as ‘abstaining from X’. Abstaining from something is ‘not indulging’ in it, therefore if you do not have sex with a member of the opposite sex you have a 0% of pregnancy resulting!
So, of all 100% of teens up to this point, 53% abstained from sex. This is versus 34.31% who used the two major contraceptives so far. So remind me again, which form of education is more effective?
But fine, let’s continue onwards. Let’s talk effectiveness of said techniques. Abstinence, properly used, is 100% effective. Condoms have a 3% failure rate, and the Pill has 0.1% failure rate. That is to say, assuming *everyone* did it right *all the time* over the year, your usual contraceptive methods will still result in girls getting preggers – 31 out of 1000, in fact. It’s fairly easy to remember you’re not supposed to have sex, but in the heat of the moment, can you think clearly enough to put a rubber on? Or do you remember to take the Pill with your vitamins? Way to go there, fella!
Sure, now let’s talk real world. Adolescents don’t have to have sex, you know. And 53% of them have chosen not to. Who knows what will happen if we have the same message drilled into their brains all the time? A message that goes something like,
“Sex is powerful, but you’re still kids. You do not have to have sexual relations with anybody. It’s wrong to have premarital sex. Wait til you’re married, it’ll be so much better. Until then, go whack off somewhere; that’s a better solution.”
And then couple it with “Some married couples wish to hold off having kids until they’re better prepared for them financially. These are some contraceptive methods that are popularly used and the pros and cons.”
You figure the kids won’t get the idea? I think they’re smart enough to put 2 and 2 together.
There’s no way we can prevent kids from having sex; well, that’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to reduce that number down to a fairly small, infinitesimal fraction of them.
BrianE, pregnancies started to decline 17 years after Roe v Wade. This is significant because women start to get pregnant at 17, and Roe v Wade reduced unwanted pregnancies that would beget still more unwanted pregnancies. This is fully documented in Freakonomics, and is likely a more powerful explanation of the stats you cite. Conservatives ignore this explanation because it is inconvenient and morally offensive to suggest that widespread abortions would carry a social good, but it appears to.
dg, You aren’t actually making a claim that increased abortions are responsible for the decreasing pregnancies?
So, by that logic, if we just have enough abortions, the teen pregnancy issue will be solved.
>>One thing to factor in is that teens were getting pregnant a lot in the 50s. >>
Source? I was there. I say you’re wrong. Not that it never happened, but it was _not_ common.
Although it was _not_ uncommon for teens to marry right after they graduated from high school, so that could blur the statistics. Girls didn’t go to college as commonly as they do today. You graduated from high school, and then you got on with life – which usually meant getting married for girls. Boys went out and went to work – married or not.
I don’t know what the percentage of high school students who went to college was at that time, but I’ll guarantee you it was lower than it is today. When you applied for a job, you were expected to have a high school degree. A college degree put in in a position for management – though at entry level.
Looking at Brians percentages – it’s interesting that over the years, the numbers are around 10%. Also, his numbers are based on the number of women in the age group that “had pregnancies”. The table I found (guess I’ll have to try to find it again) was based on illegitimate births. I suspect we’re comparing apples to oranges, but I’m not sure how to reconcile the differences.
Also, especially today, how many women get pregnant in order to “force” her boyfriend to marry her? Stupid, imo, but I think it still happens. Where would you count those? If it works, it’s in one column, if it doesn’t, it goes into another column.
BrianE, I am not. Steven Levitt, a very smart economist and author of Freakonomics, is. And his argument is not that we should have abortions to solve teen pregnancy, but that 17 years after Roe v Wade we are seeing reductions in all sorts of social ills (e.g., crime, murder, teenage pregnancy, etc.) because unwanted pregnancies and unqualified mothers are not bringing at-risk children into the world who then go on to cause these social ills. It is an empirical explanation not a normative argument. And it has withstood very rigorous testing from other economists, sociologists and statisticians. I think it has more explanatory power than any other hypothesis I have read about.
Your reduction to absurdity argument, by the way, carries little explanatory power other than as a reflection of your own cognitive powers.
Kong, you must have the will power of Hercules… 100% effectiveness of abstinence does not get you 100% reductions in teenage pregnancies. Join the real world.
Kong, also, your math is wrong. You don’t get 31 pregnancies out of 1000 because you use a condom (3% failure rate) and the pill (0.1%). You get .03 pregnancies per thousand (3 per 100,000), because 3% * 0.1% is .00003. Thanks for proving my point.
Ouch, you’re so smart!
How about a couple of sources. And I only want the very rigorous ones.
So studies that show it is due to better contreceptives and abstinence are all just hot air?
I’ll bet you’re a geenius!
How does dg know people use condoms and the pill at the same time, always for each 1k sample?
Is he omniscient and thus an Obama godling or something?
>>Kong, also, your math is wrong. >>
3% = 3 per hundred. 1000= 100×10 3 x 10 = 30.
.1% = 1 per 1000 ( 10 x .1 = 1% )
______________________
31
dg…run through that math again, please?
BrianE, I didn’t say the other factors didn’t come into play, but have less explanatory power for the decline you reference at the time your reference. If you know stats, think about the r-squared. As for sources, the highest profile challenge of Levitt came from Christopher Foote, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Christopher Goetz, a research assistant there–they pointed out some problems with the data, but were not able to debunk his theory (http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/28/130806.shtml). I know the study has been repeated in other countries (e.g., Canada) but I don’t have the links readily available. I’m sure a Google search would get you there eventually…
The math again:
Assume you have a population of 100,000 celebates with no access to birth control and 100,000 sexually actives with access to birth control, so we can test Kong’s theory that the abstention-only policy is better than the contraception policy. Taking his figures above, 53% of the celebate group abstain, while 47% have sex and a high percentage (80%?) have an unwanted pregnancy; this means that 53,000 will not have an unwanted pregnancy, while 37,600 will. Taking the sexually active group, 0.003% (0.1% times 3%) will have an unwanted pregnancy (or, to be consistent, 80% of this subset), while 99.997% will not; this means that 2.4 will have an unwanted pregnancy, while 99,997.6 will not. Note that I ignore those in the sexually active group that happen to remain celebate, so the number could be closer to 2.
The difference between my math and suek’s is that I assume that the sexually actives use both types of contraception since they are available. The problem with adding 30 and 1 is that you are talking about the same underlying population of 1,000–the question, I thought, was not a comparison of abstention vs. condoms vs. the pill–and should use the product of their failure rates if you are using both. You probably could also use the average of the two (geometric or arithmetic??) if you assume that only one method is available. I advocate access to all contraception forms and thus assumed that both could and would be used, but even if you take assume only condom access, you get 2,400 with unwanted pregnancies (100,000 * 3% * 80%) or only about 6% of the celebates group.
Of course, the best would be abstinence for the 53% and condom-plus-pill for the rest, which would give you 1.1 with an unwanted pregnancy per 100,000. That contraception takes you from 37,600 to 2 with unwanted pregnancies while abstinence added to contraception only takes you from 2 to 1 with unwanted pregnancies highlights which policy is more effective.
dg: There’s a reason I wrote
you know. So that these two DO NOT OVERLAP => the set containing both A (condom usage) and B (Pill usage) is a null set. So, who’s the math idiot now?
Nor am I talking about what should be happening, in reference to those stats, but what was happening. So your argument leaks worse than a sieve.
Thanks for proving your point? I wish you read my posts more clearly, chum.
Okay, so we’re both agreed that abstinence is the only 100% foolproof method of birth control. Cool.
As for willpower, I dunno. I’m a 28 y/o virgin. I didn’t even seriously try to have sex, though, that much is true. It’s not that hard.
But here’s the fundamental disconnect between our two approaches, I believe. I (and the other abstinence proponents) think we should be pushing abstinence as the PRIMARY, IDEAL and DEFAULT position for unmarried (pre-)adolescents. This is because it’s the ONLY 100% effective foolproof birth control method.
IIRC, your (and similar contraceptive proponents’) position is that since teens are ging to be engaging in sexual relations anyway, might as well give them all the options.
Where I break with the abstinence-only crowd is that I agree we should enlighten the adolescent group about the existence of contraceptives and their role in preventing pregnancies. However, I believe in providing them ALL the information, including, as I’ve mention, the pushing of abstinence as primary, ideal and default.
If you believe this position makes the most sense, then we are in agreement. Otherwise, we can continue this for quite some time.