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June 25, 2024

An AP article about infant mortality in Texas sparks a flood of science denial

By Andrea Widburg

Once the Supreme Court’s Dobbs opinion held that abortion is a matter for states, not the federal government, Texas passed a law saying that, after an in utero baby’s heartbeat is detected (around six weeks into the pregnancy), the mother can have an abortion only if a medical emergency or the mother’s life necessitate that procedure. In the nine months after the ban went into effect, around 10,000 more babies were born in Texas. The AP, rather than celebrating new lives, just focused on the 8% who didn’t make it—and when I pointed out that abortion means 100% of those babies don’t make it, the “science” crowd went into a frenzy.

In a pre-modern age, infant mortality was around 50%. Since then, better maternal health, prenatal care, and medical procedures have improved that statistic, but the reality is that some infants will always die shortly after birth.

Modern infant mortality rates, however, are a fraught subject. Leftists like to say that America has a much higher infant mortality rate than “civilized” socialized medicine countries such as Cuba. However, this is a statistical lie, as this essay explains:

The U.S. ranks poorly on the infant mortality list largely because this country actually counts neonatal deaths, notably premature infant fatalities, unlike other countries who don’t count these infant deaths.

[snip]

Other statistical quirks give the U.S. an unjustifiably poor showing in this ranking compared to other countries.

Start with the definition of the infant mortality rate.

The World Health Organization [WHO] defines a country’s infant mortality rate as the number of infants who die between birth and age one, per 1,000 live births.

WHO says a live birth is when a baby shows any sign of life, even if, say, a low birth weight baby takes one single breath, or has one heartbeat.

The U.S. uses this definition. But other countries do not -- so they don’t count premature or severely ill babies as live births-or deaths.

In sum, America has a high infant mortality rate because we do an honest count. Other countries game their statistics by counting only infants certain to survive!

Aside from gamed statistics, there is another way to circumvent infant mortality, and that’s to abort babies that doctors believe will die soon after birth. That belief doesn’t always comport with reality. Tim Tebow’s mother was told to abort him because it was a certainty he wouldn’t survive infancy. Because doctors can be wrong, pro-life legislatures believe all babies, even those allegedly doomed in utero, should be given a chance to beat the odds.

So, while stringent anti-abortion laws give more certifiably healthy babies a chance at life, they also raise the possibility that some babies will still die. And it’s that small number of unlucky babies, rather than those who live, that caught AP’s attention.

AP reported on a Johns Hopkins study showing that, after the Texas abortion law went into effect, more babies in Texas were born with birth defects, some of whom died from them. Indeed, as the AP headlined the story, “Infant mortality rate rose 8% in wake of Texas abortion ban, study shows.” That headline framing will ensure that casual readers believe that 8% of all babies born in Texas died. In fact, there were only an extra 216 deaths in a 10-month period compared to a comparable period before the ban.

The one thing that has 100% odds of infant mortality, of course, is abortion, as I pointed out in a tweet responding to the AP article:

The responses were staggering. Aside from the ones that just called me stupid, the majority insisted that a “fetus” is neither a “baby” nor an “infant.”

There are more in the same vein. For these people, semantics are enough to allow them to say that there is no connection between the baby within and the baby without, even though, from the moment of conception, they are merely steps in a continuum—with the people making the comments being later steps in that same continuum. Or, as Abraham Lincoln quipped, “How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.” Whether in utero or out, it’s a baby.

There’s an old quip (often credited to Daniel Patrick Moynihan) saying that people are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. Of course, facts can legitimately be contested. For example, in the days before traffic cameras and speed guns, police and drivers often debated whether a driver had, in fact, exceeded the speed limit.

Still, Americans once were able to agree on certain core facts, one of which was that, whether it’s inside or outside of a woman’s body, a baby is a baby. In the world of leftism, though, it’s only a baby if the mother wants to keep the pregnancy. If not, it’s a fetus and, therefore, disposable. And for leftists, that’s a fact, biological reality be damned.

Image from LiveAction.

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