Abortion As Violence Against Women

News Staff

Scientists met this week in New York to discuss recent scientific evidence regarding abortion as a form of growing violence against women and girls. Indiscriminate practice of abortion is correlated with coercion, a history of sexual abuse, violence during pregnancy, intimate partner violence and with psychological consequences that may lead to suicide.

The scientific evidence was discussed in the meeting "Public Policies to reduce maternal mortality, a holistic focus on maternal health" by Doctors Monique Chireau, Donna Harrison, Eoghan de Faoite and Elard Koch in parallel to the 57th Session of the Commission of Women Status of the United Nations, whose priority theme is the "elimination and prevention of all types of violence against women and girls", which continues until March 15th.

The scientists discussed different epidemiological studies, showing that:

A significant and growing proportion of induced abortions occur due to coercion by the intimate partner of the pregnant woman.
A history of sexual abuse and violence is a risk factor for abortion and subsequent mental health problems.
There is a significant correlation between the increase in the number of abortions and an increase in the rate of homicides against women versus those against men.
There is an important correlation between the increase of abortions and the suicide rate of women of childbearing age.
Countries with abortion laws that are less permissive, such as Ireland and Chile, display lower abortion rates than countries with more permissive abortion laws.

Dr. Koch, director of the MELISA Institute, presented international collaborative studies that have been recently published, which place Chile –a country with one of the least permissive abortion laws in the world– with the lowest maternal mortality rate in Latin America. Public policies ensuring more education for women, childbirth by skilled professionals universally available, and a timely access to emergency obstetric units would be key factors improving maternal health, and not the legal status of abortion.

This evidence was in agreement with data presented by Dr. De Faoite, who showed evidence placing Ireland among the countries with the lowest maternal mortality in Europe, without having to modify their current abortion legislation. On the other hand, Dr. Chireau presented robust evidence regarding novel treatments for pregnant women with cancer, which are successful in safeguarding the life of the mother and her gestating child.

Finally, Dr. Harrison discussed the risks related to complications following medical abortion with chemicals such as misoprostol, which are exacerbated in developing countries due the their lack of sufficient coverage of emergency facilities.

During the opening of these UN Sessions and commemorating the International Women's Day, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon remarked "There is one universal truth, applicable to all countries, cultures and communities: violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable."

In this context, the scientists assembled in New York voiced their concern in regards to the alarming expansion of abortion as a form of violence against women in the world, something that should not be dismissed by any nation that respects fundamental human rights.

Comments

They should be ashamed and embarrassed for such blatant foolishness. It's this kind of stupid bullshit that ensures that nothing of substance ever gets done.

Gerhard Adam | 03/09/13 | 01:51 AM

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In other news it is found that indiscriminate burial is correlated with a violent death, so funerals should be considered an act of violence.

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Thor Russell

Thor Russell | 03/09/13 | 03:09 AM

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Melisa is supposedly a Chilean-based institute of molecular epidemiology, while the acronym Melisa stands for M olecular Epidemiology for Life Sciences Accountability. Their primary goal is "to see the human embryo as a patient." Hmm...I think this should have been included in the press release.

Enrico Uva | 03/09/13 | 11:36 AM

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Among the antelopes (I think, but certainly one group of ungulates), dominant females are understood to cause subordinate ones to re-absorb their foetuses.

Now certain men think abortion is a good thing, because it enables them to play around more easily, but certain women who are strong and strident abortion advocates remind me of those ungulates.

Erinaceus Europaeus | 03/09/13 | 14:30 PM

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Regardless of one's view regarding abortion, this has nothing to do with it. It is merely a distraction since these individuals can't [or won't] focus on the real issues of violence.

The real shallowness of their perspective can be readily established when one considers that if abortion is perpetuating violence against women [i.e. forcing a woman to have an abortion] then how does this get resolved if the abuser forces a woman to have the child? Has this somehow magically transformed the ethics of the situation?

As with so many engaged in this debate, there is an inordinate amount of concern for the unborn child, while ignoring those that are alive.

Gerhard Adam | 03/09/13 | 14:53 PM

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Scientists? I wonder.

Ralph Dratman | 03/09/13 | 22:39 PM

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This is definitely not a black and white subject. I personally believe that abortions should be made available to all women on demand. However, when I was 19 years old I was abducted, raped and bashed and my life and sanity were very severely threatened by this ordeal. I survived but then discovered a few weeks later that I was pregnant from the rape.

My doctor had given me pretty strong sedative, tranquillisers immediately after this psychologically and physically traumatic ordeal and he now insisted that I should have an abortion, as did every other medical professional that I came into contact with at that time. I personally think that the woman always has a right to choose regarding abortions but I don't think she should ever be coerced into having one. I regret having had that abortion because I believe that I could have coped with that baby and that all children are innocent of the crimes of their fathers. All women should be allowed the space and time to consider this decision seriously, as it is a matter of human life, death and possible regret.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/10/13 | 04:47 AM

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Helen, your story is heart-rending. My wife and I lost a child in 2011, and the reality of that loss has been painful to us every day since. I can only imagine the sorrow you have endured.
Suppose you had to advise a 19-year-old woman who had been raped and was pregnant. What would you say to her? I think I would urge the woman to carefully talk over, and think through, the options available to her, then to make the decision that felt right to her. Whatever she chose, I would offer to help her, rather than giving her repeated strong advice in favor of one particular decision.

Would that advice have helped you at that time?

Best wishes to you.

Ralph Dratman | 03/10/13 | 14:17 PM

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I think I would urge the woman to carefully talk over, and think through, the options available to her, then to make the decision that felt right to her.

Just an observation, but I think that we tend to over-think these kinds of issues and simply aggravate the problem. My advice would be to ignore everything and only consider her own "selfish" interests above all else. Then when she's come to understand her own desires, I would urge her to only consider the choice that would have the lowest possibility of incurring regret.

Gerhard Adam | 03/10/13 | 16:59 PM

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How is that different from what I suggested?

Ralph Dratman | 03/11/13 | 11:22 AM

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Perhaps it's not, but I was simply trying to suggest that one promote the notion of "selfish" decision-making to avoid introducing any bias, regardless of how innocently it might be presented.

Gerhard Adam | 03/11/13 | 11:44 AM

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I'm not sure what you are getting at. What would "selfish" imply in this context?

Ralph Dratman | 03/11/13 | 12:20 PM

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In other words, most people have a tough time thinking solely about a decision regarding themselves. They are invariably considering what would others think? what about the fetus? What are my responsibilities, etc. etc. etc. My point is that during such a difficult decision, it is important to remove all those bias' and encourage someone to get right down to their most "selfish" interests to assess what they really feel in their gut.

Gerhard Adam | 03/11/13 | 13:32 PM

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My point is that during such a difficult decision, it is important to remove all those bias' and encourage someone to get right down to their most "selfish" interests to assess what they really feel in their gut.

Acting in our most selfish interests can lead to feelings of guilt down the track. Its best to weigh up the pros and cons for all involved and future conscience is an important component that shouldn't be overlooked. I feel guilty and full of regret 30 years later for not thinking this out properly at the time. It may be different for many other women who simply didn't have as many options to consider as me but maybe there are many others who also feel like me. All women who are having abortions should be given non directive, professional counselling beforehand then this problem of conscience or regret would be less likely to occur down the track.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/11/13 | 14:33 PM

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I didn't say that the advice was to behave selfishly, I said to use the "selfish" perspective to establish what the unadulterated view was that someone held. Once they can come to terms with what they seem to want, then it becomes appropriate to introduce other considerations to minimize the likelihood of regret.

Unfortunately there are always going to be pros and cons, and [in my view] the most important thing is for someone to decide and then put it behind them. It is a complete waste of time to commit yourself to a decision and then regret the choices one has made. I can appreciate the difficulty, but there it is. The past cannot be undone, and dwelling on it after a decision has been made will simply increase the level of conflict one experiences.

That's why I suggested that one look at the choices, pursue those with the least probability of regret, and then commit to it. The important element is that the choice not be coerced, after that one has to "own it".

Gerhard Adam | 03/11/13 | 14:42 PM

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I think we are agreeing. A counsellor's job is not to coerce anyone into anything but to help them explore their own strengths, weaknesses, goals and obstacles in the way and strategies in place and any obstacles to achieving them. My goals at the time were probably quite simplistically just to learn, be happy and get my degree. Then the assault, rape and ensuing pregnancy meant I needed to review those goals and my current strategies that were in place to achieve them and maybe then alter them? That process didn't happen as I was coerced into having an abortion by professionals who thought they knew better than me what was best for me.

Counsellors are not supposed to act, think or feel superior to their clients as the client is the expert of their life and the counsellor is learning from them, no one knows their past and likely future emotions and experiences better than the client does. At that point in my life I used to get terribly upset about the way our university, psychology experimental, laboratory rats were treated and refused to do any animal dissections on frogs and rats, so an abortion was likely to cause me ethical problems down the track and counselling would have helped me to realize that beforehand.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/11/13 | 15:32 PM

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Ralph, I'm really sorry to hear about the loss of your child and the pain you have suffered every day since, hopefully beautiful memories of your child will gradually lessen your pain as time goes by.

You ask me to suppose I had to advise a 19-year-old woman who had been raped and was pregnant. What would I say to her? I think your advice is very good and would have helped me at the time and I probably would now have a 30 year old daughter or son. The problem with my situation was that I couldn't really think clearly, maybe because of the medication and the post traumatic stress I was experiencing and also time is always quickly running out when abortions are being considered, so there wasn't much time to come to my senses.

My boyfriend at the time did not handle the rape well at all and I doubt if he could have handled me having the baby either, so I would have had to become a single mother, which would have been hard but still an option that I should have considered. I was in my second year at university so I would have had to put my psychology degree on hold and then resumed it at a later date.

I come from a reasonably privileged family background, so I expect my parents would have helped out if I had asked them and I have always had a handful of good, supportive friends. Anyway, the important message here is that every woman having an abortion should always be offered non-directive counselling to help her explore her short, medium and long term goals, her strengths and weaknesses and how having a baby or an abortion would or could impact on these. No one should be bullied or coerced into having an abortion but IMO abortions should always be available on demand along with non-directive counselling from a professional counsellor.

Maybe because I didn't receive the counselling I needed and didn't have time to think clearly about whether I wanted the abortion that was being pushed onto me, I unfortunately decided to get up and walk out of the operation, while I was under general anaesthetic and had to be restrained by 5 people sitting on me for an hour, I learnt later, when I came round from the anaesthetic and found myself covered in yet more bruises.

It was a bad experience but it was a long time ago and I thought it was relevant to share it here on a blog called 'Abortion as Violence against Women'. All violence against women is abhorrent to me and needs to be addressed at the source. It is also however a travesty beyond imagining, if pseudo-religious people ignore blatant violence and abuse against women and then try to use it to transform something like this concept of violent abortions into a political agenda.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/10/13 | 17:22 PM

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They said you tried to get up while under general anesthetic and so they sat on you?
That does not make sense to me. Sitting on a person is not a medical approach to any problem I know of. Maybe they were hurting you, and you tried to get up, and they held you there. It doesn't sound right to me.
What kind of facility was this -- a doctor's office, hospital, recognized clinic or something informal?

Ralph Dratman | 03/11/13 | 11:29 AM

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It was a recognized abortion clinic in England but it was a long time ago. All I know is I woke up after the operation feeling very bruised and sore all over my body. Not long afterwards about 4 nurses, two men and two women came in and told me what had happened and explained why I was feeling so sore and bruised. They said that during the operation I got up off the table and started to walk out, the only way they could stop me was to sit on me and that it took five people taking turns for over an hour to keep me down. I must say they were staring at me in amazement, I was a very slim young woman at the time but I've always been strong.

I still don't react well to general anaesthetics and my mother didn't either, she also once sat up during an operation. I was also able to recount to my doctor, to his amazement, an entire, rather rude conversation between him and his nurses during a laparoscopy he once performed on me when I was again under general anaesthetic but many years later.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/11/13 | 14:20 PM

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"There is a significant correlation between the increase in the number of abortions and an increase in the rate of homicides against women versus those against men."

So if articles like this are now ok on Science2.0 I'm guessing homoeopathy, astrology, and auguring are next?

James Acton (not verified) | 03/10/13 | 17:05 PM

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I think the comments speak for themselves.

Gerhard Adam | 03/10/13 | 17:16 PM

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So if articles like this are now ok on Science2.0 I'm guessing homoeopathy, astrology, and auguring are next?

It won't come to that. The "news staff" articles are just rehashes of press releases.
It's sad that this sort of stuff becomes a press release in the first place.
The good news is that even though it's been in the top three articles here for a day, it really has not attracted too many readers on this site. But it's been all over the place in other media.

Enrico Uva | 03/10/13 | 19:10 PM

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It's sad that this sort of stuff becomes a press release in the first place.
The good news is that even though it's been in the top three articles here for a day, it really has not attracted too many readers on this site.

How do you know that Enrico? Also, are you saying that Science20 readers haven't bothered reading it and how do you identify science20 readers and know this? The title here on Science20 is 'Abortion as Violence Against Women' which is a bit more extreme than the other press releases which are all titled ;-

Scientists discuss relationship between abortion and violence against women

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/10/13 | 21:46 PM

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I think you're being somewhat nitpicky here. As soon as I saw "abortion" in the same sentence as "violence against women", I already knew there was an agenda. The particular phraseology doesn't improve it.

Gerhard Adam | 03/10/13 | 21:50 PM

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I think you're being somewhat nitpicky here.

Ha ha, that's good coming from you :)

As soon as I saw "abortion" in the same sentence as "violence against women", I already knew there was an agenda

Anyway, how can you be SURE there's was an agenda other than simply discussing the relationship between violence and abortion?

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/10/13 | 22:00 PM

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...other than simply discussing the relationship between violence and abortion?

Because there is no relationship.

Gerhard Adam | 03/11/13 | 07:22 AM

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They are counting abortions that are coerced as violence - I can't say that's wrong, since forced surgery is certainly violence if yelling is. How many are those? Hard to really know. Activists in every cause always include a lot more people in their numbers than reality suggests.

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Hank Campbell | 03/11/13 | 10:41 AM

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They are counting abortions that are coerced as violence...

I understand, it's simply that it's misguided. It is the coercion that represents the violence, not the abortion. Is it somehow better to be coerced into sex, or handing over money, or making dinner?

Gerhard Adam | 03/11/13 | 11:09 AM

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They're not even rehashes (like most modern journalism is), they are just press releases and always have been. Been that way since January of 2007. Our audience is not reading anything more into these than what they are - a talking point for people who like to know what studies and papers are going to be in mainstream media a day or two later. Well, most of our audience isn't, anyway.

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Hank Campbell | 03/10/13 | 20:51 PM

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So why is it that they don't usually even have links to the scientific papers and research that they are discussing or reporting? Is it because they sometimes partly misinterpret them and they don't want the readers and general public to be able to realize this, by allowing them to check the original research papers or articles for themselves?

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/12/13 | 04:01 AM

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Dunno, you'll have to ask the 450 universities that write press releases why they don't put convenient URLs to subscription journals we can't access anyway into their press releases. If they are open access journals, where we can actually read the paper, we usually put in a link manually. You can do it for this one, if you want.

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Hank Campbell | 03/12/13 | 10:16 AM

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References

MLA Institute, MELISA. “The Relationship Between Abortion And Violence Against Women.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 11 Mar. 2013. Web.11 Mar. 2013.

The original source is quoted as being at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/257443.php which gives Article / File Not Found - The file that you requested could not be found. This may be because it has been moved or removed.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/12/13 | 12:45 PM

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None of that makes any sense. MediLexicon is a dictionary and Medical News Today is another press release site, so it carried the same thing. They are just showing who carried their releases, it is not a journal article.

Anyway, my point was that the institutions writing these are promoting their work, not journals, thus no reason for a link. Any journalist writing about it is going to get a PDF from the corresponding writer.

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Hank Campbell | 03/12/13 | 12:51 PM

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Well I don't see why it has to be journalists and/or institutions secret business, even if it is behind a paywall. The link to the source or original research should always be there for the public to be able to pay to get if they want to or to be able to ask for a free pdf. Often the free abstract that is always visible for all research papers, has more detailed information in it than the press release.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/12/13 | 16:07 PM

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You're preaching to the choir. Write the 450 institutions and tell them you demand their press releases carry URLs and citations to journal articles.

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Hank Campbell | 03/12/13 | 17:05 PM

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OK I will, have you already done this, if so have you got a list handy for me please? :)

Didn't the brilliant, young, American Aaron Swartz recently lose his life fighting for this very right against the current laws in your country? This Rolling Stone's article describes how 'Aaron Swartz a young man driven by a restless curiosity and the belief that information was the most valuable of currencies, a form of wealth no one should be deprived of lost his life fighting for this right.'

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/12/13 | 17:35 PM

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I don't have a list. If it's important, do it for the community. If you write CSIRO and 2-3 others in Australia, the top 10 in the US, Cambridge and Oxford in the UK and a few in Europe, that would be good enough. At least here we only publish a few a day and if the big names do it, the rest will follow.

Swartz had no problem with American IP laws when he was selling his shares in reddit so arbitrarily deciding IP does not apply to journal publishers was just weird. He was obviously unstable. He didn't 'lose his life', he committed suicide. Blaming journal publishers for that would be even weirder than his stance on publishers after he stopped writing software for reddit.

What I found odd was that the people in science media who said the government was too heavy-handed prosecuting him for hacking into a corporation are the same people who demand government be more heavy-handed...except about their pet causes and against people they happen not to like.

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Hank Campbell | 03/12/13 | 17:41 PM

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He was obviously unstable. He didn't 'lose his life', he committed suicide.

If I had committed suicide after being abducted, raped, bashed and then coerced into having an abortion I didn't want to have, would you have said back then, if asked, that I was obviously unstable (and I don't mean the me nowadays, who I know you probably consider to be unstable, just because I'm not convinced that Bt GMOs are adequately tested etc)?

As far as I understand it, Aaron Swartz was facing a possible 55 years in prison and a criminal felony charge and conviction, for simply trying to publicly share university academic documents that were meant to be publicly available but for some reason weren't.

Like many young men I know, and I know a lot, he was probably addicted to the Internet and the prospect of 55 weeks, let alone 55 years, without Internet access in prison, would make many of them at least contemplate suicide. I would like to see you and many other people here, including me, happily contemplate even 55 days without Internet access. He had also lost most of his hard earned wealth fighting these scapegoating legal battles. He had good reason to feel depressed about being scapegoated and sent to an American prison, a very scary place, to be made a public example of.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/13/13 | 05:05 AM

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If I had committed suicide after being abducted, raped, bashed and then coerced into having an abortion I didn't want to have, would you have said back then...

It's hardly the same thing. In your case, this was something you were a victim of, with no choice in the matter. The other is the result of a voluntary, intentional act.

Gerhard Adam | 03/13/13 | 07:43 AM

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Right. And I don't know where this 'supposed to be freely available' stuff came from - is Harry Potter supposed to be freely available? James Bond movies? I certainly agree that the biggest blocks in open access have been the current administration, I complained about them in 2008 when they tried to kill open access again, but the law is the law. He was mentally ill, everyone who knew him knew that, so claims that somehow enforcing a law about pirating journals or hacking into corporate networks 'made' him commit suicide is as crazy as he was.

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Hank Campbell | 03/13/13 | 09:25 AM

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I agree. Especially when he seemed to go out of his way to annoy the government and specifically the FBI. Openly releasing millions of Federal court documents isn't exactly a means of endearing yourself to the FBI.

So, it isn't simply a matter of what he took from MIT. In effect, I have a problem with people wanting to be crusaders and then having an issue when there are consequences attached to those choices.

However, I don't believe any of this had anything to do with his suicide anyway. He was depressed with a long history of depression.

Gerhard Adam | 03/13/13 | 10:02 AM

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However, I don't believe any of this had anything to do with his suicide anyway. He was depressed with a long history of depression.

Oh well, thank God you are no longer the agony uncle on the 'Science of Heartbreak' blog here anymore, now that the comments have been frozen how many sensitive, vulnerable people would have killed themselves? You have no empathy at all for a beautiful , idealistic, brilliant young man who at aged 20 wrote a document titled 'Guerilla Open Access manifesto" as an expression of his belief that organized action could work to keep powers in check :-

"Information is power," it began. "But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations." Swartz ended the manifesto with a call to arms. "We need to take information, wherever it is stored," he wrote, "make our copies and share them with the world."

Did you even read the Rolling Stone article I linked to above, about the brilliant life and tragic death of Aaron Swartz? You can't have done as your comments show how little you understand about what he stood for, the 'crime' he committed, the intestinal illness he suffered from and probably why he killed himself.

Millions of American families are now homeless and millions of American homes are empty and falling down and you think that this idealistic young man should have faced the 'consequences of that choice' which is up to 35 or more years in prison for trying to make information available, while those who are responsible for the global financial collapse and so much suffering go free? Aaron Swartz could not bear the idea of being a felon.

'Among the most frustrating components of the ordeal was the fact that JSTOR, ostensibly the most overtly wronged party, had declined to press charges against Swartz after he returned the downloaded documents. This at first seemed to be a harbinger that a resolution would be quick. MIT, after all, had a fabled history of being sympathetic to hacking culture, but for reasons that remain murky, the school allowed the case to go forward. Hal Abelson, a professor who Swartz first met when he won the ArsDigita prize at 13, is currently leading an internal investigation into the school's actions throughout the process. "It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that had ended in tragedy," the university's president, L. Rafael Reif, said after Swartz's death.'

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/13/13 | 15:15 PM

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Unfortunately you're getting lost in irrelevancies. However brilliant he was doesn't matter. Whatever idealism he held doesn't matter.

He knowingly violated the law, he was a smart-ass about it, and he was aggressive in his beliefs. Those are all wonderful traits if you want to be a martyr, but they don't do a damn thing if your intent is to stay out of trouble. He knowingly chose to tangle with the federal government. Again, that's his prerogative, but it is totally out of line for people to suddenly behave as if these intentional actions are someone else's fault and that they are the cause of his suicide.

His suicide was likely due to his depression. His other actions, if they contributed to his depression, were of his own choosing, so again, there's no one else to blame for it.

There were numerous incidences where he took action and charges were not filed. So while the government can certainly be heavy-handed, the truth is that he spent quite a few years without even getting a slap on the wrist, and became bolder and bolder, as if he were beyond any reckoning.

Regardless of whether the government's case was good or bad. Regardless of whether the prosecutor was over-zealous or not. Regardless of whether the government's position was heavy-handed or not. The reality is that these matters would have been settled in court.

So, while this type of idealistic behavior may have an appeal to some people, it will remain to be seen whether this is simply idle chatter, or if all these people are serious. If there's that much interest in social justice, then hopefully these people will move forward and pursue this idealistic stance. However, I suspect that besides the rhetoric, there will be little said or done to promote the idealism that everyone attributes to Aaron.

Gerhard Adam | 03/13/13 | 20:30 PM

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"We need to take information, wherever it is stored," he wrote, "make our copies and share them with the world."

For the record ... this attitude is sheer idiocy. If it were up to me, I'd have put him in jail myself for such a stupid belief.

Such idealism is viewed as wonderful until it is YOUR information. YOUR privacy that is invaded. Then we'll see how free people are about sharing their "information, wherever it is stored".

Gerhard Adam | 03/13/13 | 20:33 PM

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Indeed. Had some young programmer stolen his code and 'shared it with the world' he would not have been pleased, especially since he would never gotten a fat check for it. Yet when a billion dollar media conglomerate - the kind he supposedly hated - offered him money, he happily took it.

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Hank Campbell | 03/14/13 | 16:22 PM

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You've taken that quote completely out of context. He was a 20 year old boy at the time, talking about information that had been published over the centuries and that no one now 'owns' other than the public in general, not your medical records!

The JSTOR information that he downloaded and later returned, was publicly funded by the tax payers and therefore publicly owned, so his logic was that it should therefore be freely available to the public. At least I think that was his logic.

So I don't think that he believed that Harry Potter and James Bond or even his own programming code should have been freely available to the public, as Hank said somewhere else here, because these were not publicly funded or publicly owned. Correct me if I'm wrong :) Ha ha.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/14/13 | 18:09 PM

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Information that has been published over centuries IS publicly available. It is in the public domain and things like Project Gutenberg ensure that it is freely available for download, so I don't accept that explanation. You want "Origin of Species". Here it is ... free.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2009

He specifically downloaded information from federal computers to the tune of 18 million pages of federal court records. This is hardly the "public domain" stuff you're referring to.

Regardless of whether he thinks that taxpayer funded works should be publicly available, that is simple foolishness. The mere fact that tax dollars pay for the military, doesn't entitle me to simply walk on a military base and borrow a jeep for the weekend.

He certainly had enough money to discuss legal approaches with his attorney, and then set up a test case to bring it to court. Instead, he behaved as a reckless kid, thumbing his nose at the FBI, and then getting upset when they took his bait.

Gerhard Adam | 03/14/13 | 18:19 PM

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He certainly had enough money to discuss legal approaches with his attorney, and then set up a test case to bring it to court.

He had run out of money paying legal fees. You would have put him in priison yourself you say, even though this would have meant he could never become an elected politician or be employed by many employers because he would be a felon with a criminal record for the rest of his life? Borrowing a military jeep is not the same as being able to look at it, why are you being so over the top and aggressive yourself?

The poor boy is dead now, I would have been incredibly proud to have a son like him, my only criticism of him is that he suicided and has caused so much grief to his family, friends and the many people who loved him. How could he hang himself knowing that his girlfriend would find him and have that memory of finding him hanging for the rest of her life?

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/14/13 | 18:50 PM

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You're right in one important respect. His suicide was a waste, as was his childish attempts at open access.

He certainly had the money to consult with attorney's before the charges were brought [i.e. before he stole the documents]. With some consultation, he could have created a test case by stealing a few documents, and raising the issue into the courts. They could have mounted a reasonable legal challenge. Instead, he decided to steal millions of documents, completely on his own, then continue to hack into systems after attempts were made to keep him out, and he kept it up for months. Even to the point of illegally hardwiring his laptop in MIT servers in a restricted utility closet.

In that regard, he had definitely crossed the line from simply downloading some documents to taking aggressive and physical action to violate these systems.

More importantly, he had the means of raising public awareness of the issue, and most importantly, he didn't need to go out of his way to piss off the FBI.

None of these were particularly intelligent moves, so while I can sympathize with those that suffered from his loss, I cannot applaud his antics which were simply immature and amateurish.

Gerhard Adam | 03/14/13 | 19:31 PM

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Helen

You may wonder why my reaction is aggressive, but it's primarily because I hate to see people suffer because someone engages in foolishness and then lacks the wherewithal of their convictions to see it through.

I'm sure there are many friends and supporters that will miss him. I'm sure there are many that support his views. Hell, I support his views.

What I can't tolerate, is for someone to be arrogant and cocky, thumbing his nose at authority, doing whatever he chooses [especially when he had so much at such a young age], and then lacking the courage of his convictions to see it through. Yes, I get that a felony conviction would have been hard, but let's remember that the DOJ offered him a three month prison sentence, so the 35 year argument is simply nonsense.

He made these decisions. Not once. Not twice, but hundreds of times, over months, stealing millions and millions of documents. I'm sorry, but when you set out to send such a message, then one shouldn't be surprised when that message is received "loud and clear" and responded to in kind.

It didn't have to go this way, and it didn't have to end this way. But in all if it, every aspect of it was Aaron's choice. It's no one else's fault that he chose badly.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/03/11/130311fa_fact_macfarquhar

Gerhard Adam | 03/14/13 | 19:37 PM

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Helen

He was a 20 year old boy at the time.

I strongly dislike such excuses. When I was 20 years old, I was already serving my 2nd year in the U.S. Marines and right now there are lots of these "boys" risking their lives in the U.S. military in Afghanistan and in Iraq. So while I can appreciate that they are young, and even that they are foolish, but calling them "boys" is merely insulting.

Gerhard Adam | 03/14/13 | 22:12 PM

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So while I can appreciate that they are young, and even that they are foolish, but calling them "boys" is merely insulting.

Gerhard, you are the one flinging around the insults here not me. In this blog alone you have repeatedly insulted Aaron Swartz by calling him a 'smart-ass, aggressive, foolish, lacking the wherewithal of his convictions, a reckless kid, a violator of systems, immature and amateurish, arrogant and cocky'. All your words. Maybe I shouldn't have called a twenty year old man a boy, for that I'm sorry. I have a 20 year old son myself and I still don't see him as a man yet, I expect that I will when he turns 21 and will be legally entitled to full adult status. The idea of 20 year old 'men' risking their lives and psychological health in Afghanistan and Iraq at such a formative age, also makes me very concerned for them and their future.

So, can we now just let Aaron Swartz rest in peace? He apparently hated being talked about. I personally believe he was a gentle, sensitive, highly intelligent, very good person, who made a couple of pretty bad decisions like many of us do, especially when we are young, but that he also achieved an awful lot to be very proud of and that his legacy will live on. This is how he described himself :-

Aaron Swartz is the founder of Demand Progress, which launched the campaign against the Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA) and now has over a million members. He is also a Contributing Editor to The Baffler and on the Council of Advisors to The Rules.He is a frequent television commentator and the author of numerous articles on a variety of topics, especially the corrupting influence of big money on institutions including nonprofits, the media, politics, and public opinion. From 2010-11, he researched these topics as a Fellow at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. He also served on the board of Change Congress, a good government nonprofit.

He has also developed the site theinfo.org. His landmark analysis of Wikipedia, Who Writes Wikipedia?, has been widely cited. Working with Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT, he helped develop and popularize standards for sharing data on the Web. He also coauthored the RSS 1.0 specification, now widely used for publishing news stories.His piece with photographer Taryn Simon, Image Atlas (2012), is has been featured in the New Museum. In 2007, he led the development of the nonprofit Open Library, an ambitious project to collect information about every book ever published. He also cofounded the online news site Reddit, where he released as free software the web framework he developed, web.py.

I think he probably suffered badly from ulcerative colitis which is a very painful disorder to live with and it is on the increase for some unknown reason, along with IBS, gluten intolerance, coeliac disease and various other stomach, intestinal and bowel disorders. For whatever reason that we will never know, he couldn't face living any longer that day but many people are remembering Aaron Swartz in a much more favorable way than you are and his family and friends must still be grieving for him and probably always will. Very sad :(

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/15/13 | 19:15 PM

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All that's fine. My only point was that people were turning him into a martyr, and he wasn't. I would think that this is precisely something that would concern you, because of how many people may look at this and seek to emulate this behavior.

HE COULD NOT deal with people talking about him. It’s taken me some time since he died to get used to talking about him because I was under such strict instructions not to. But he fucked up something really major. He made a really dumb, bad decision. And it’s my right now to ignore all the other things that I thought were dumb, too. Maybe if I hadn’t felt I couldn’t talk about him to other people this wouldn’t have happened. I’m not going to let those preferences that led, in one way or another, to him killing himself guide my life anymore. I reject them.
Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Aaron Swartz’s girlfriend

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/03/11/130311fa_fact_macfarquhar

I have a 20 year old son myself and I still don't see him as a man yet, I expect that I will when he turns 21 and will be legally entitled to full adult status.

I thought the age of majority was 18 in Australia. When did it change?

Gerhard Adam | 03/15/13 | 20:19 PM

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As I said earlier, my only criticism of him is that he suicided and probably ruined so many people's lives with such a selfish action.

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/15/13 | 20:25 PM

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Agreed.

Gerhard Adam | 03/15/13 | 20:32 PM

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BTW the age of consent for homosexual sex in Western Australia is still set at 21 years and I think there are similar age restrictions in Australia on being a juror, judge etc

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/15/13 | 20:39 PM

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What on earth does homosexual sex have to do with anything?

Gerhard Adam | 03/15/13 | 23:26 PM

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Maybe in Australia you are still a 'boy' until you can have homosexual sex?

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Want more no-nonsense, independent science? Buy Science Left Behind

Hank Campbell | 03/15/13 | 23:38 PM

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What on earth does homosexual sex have to do with anything?

You're the one who started questioning the age of majority in Australia. The age of consent to do things is directly related to the age of majority in any country. Your 20 year old American soldiers are old enough to fight in wars but not old enough to drink alcohol and our 20 year old Western Australians soldiers are old enough to drink alcohol and fight in Afghanistan but not old enough to consent to homosexual sex, unlike these guys :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78LAgl90UyM

That isn't you in the background wearing the brown cowboy hat is it?

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/15/13 | 23:45 PM

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I see the age of consent has raised its ugly head here.

Some years ago, there was a programme on TV, presented by a journalist from the Guardian, arguing for the age of consent in Britain to be reduced from 16.

The journalist presented two case studies. One was a couple, who at the ages of 15 and 14 had conceived a child, and were now bringing up said offspring in what seemed a very happy family. I was quite sympathetic to them; they were only [Creation Mode] doing what God had told Adam and Eve to get on with.

Her other case was a young man who had been sexually active from the age of 12, and whose only argument was “Why can’t I do what I want to do?” My feeling about him was that [Evolution Mode] in any properly run primate troupe he would have been driven out by the older males.

I was on a knife-edge as to which way to decide. In the end, my decision went against, because of the person of the journalist. There is a traditional Chinese Story which would illustrate this perfectly, but because this is a public forum, I had better keep it under my hat.

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Robert H. Olley Quondam Physics Department University of Reading England

Robert H Olley | 03/16/13 | 10:16 AM

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Well one thing is for sure Robert, the age of consent and the age of majority for many of these options, including having sex, marrying, drinking, driving, being a juror and fighting for one's country, varies a lot from country to country because it is an arbitrary figure, that these justice systems make a best estimate for, as being the age when the majority of their citizens are deemed to be well enough informed and mature enough to make these decisions.

I think the same should to some extent apply to abortions, the age is obviously no longer relevant as the woman or girl is already pregnant. An informed decision to have an abortion can however still be made if the woman is then provided with free, non-directive, professional counselling, by a qualified counsellor (not necessarily a psychologist) informing her of all of her options and helping her to decide upon and achieve the best outcome for her and ultimately one would hope for her baby and family.

Most teenage girls and single women are capable of being perfectly competent, good mothers if they are in a financially supportive environment. So maybe society has a responsibility to provide this for them, rather than to kill an already conceived, unborn baby, if this is being done purely because of negative economic reasons, that are directly impacting upon the mother's ability to continue to have the baby?

Millions of dollars are constantly being provided as investments into the future of many big, commercial and non-commercial industries, so why not also invest in the financially unsupported, single mother pregnancy industry, by at least giving these women some financial support to enable them to keep their babies if they choose to?

Very few single women are going to deliberately get themselves pregnant in order to become poor, single mothers but many pregnant single women might prefer to be poor, single mothers until they can improve their situation down the track, than to terminate their pregnancies?

Surely a fair, democratic society has a moral obligation to protect its most vulnerable citizens by providing at least this minimal financial support? What price can you put on a baby's life and an already pregnant woman's happiness, especially if she has been a victim of some form of violence or abuse that the society she lives in failed to protect her from?

Obviously the opposite can also be true, abortions and non-directive counselling should also be freely available, as there are probably too many people on this planet and not all women want to be mothers regardless of whether they are financially supported or not, especially single mothers or women in abusive relationships.

Society should allow its well counselled and well informed pregnant women to choose whether she wants to become a mother or not and then we should support her choice, one way or the other. Also, good education, sexual equality and freedom from religious indoctrination regarding contraception and birth control, would automatically lower the overall birth rates and eventually produce a manageable world population level.

We also need a certain percentage of new babies just to support the existing, aging, world population, unless we also provide voluntary euthanasia clinics next door to the abortion clinics?

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Make love not war

Helen Barratt | 03/18/13 | 14:50 PM

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Helen,

A most thoughtful contribution. But mentioning single mothers, what of the fathers?

Now I am not talking about single fathers here. One of our students was bringing up his daughter by himself (with only a four-footed friend for company.) I have a high regard for him, but alas I have lost touch.

I am referring to those whose sole contribution to the exercise is insemination. One girl either “with child” or with a child was overheard pointing out a boy to her friend, and saying “he’s the sperm donor”.

But to more pleasant matters. The EU seems to be getting round to the banning of three neonicotinoid insecticides (that organization does have some uses.) And some research appears to show that wild bees significantly increase the pollination of crops, even when hives of honeybees are present.

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Robert H. Olley Quondam Physics Department University of Reading England

Robert H Olley | 03/19/13 | 16:17 PM

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"history of sexual abuse ... a risk factor for abortion"
who would have thought

Scientists met ...

Sascha Vongehr | 03/17/13 | 04:33 AM

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who would have thought

Hilflos gehen sie durchs Leben
Wie ’ne Katze ohne Schwanz!

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Robert H. Olley Quondam Physics Department University of Reading England

Robert H Olley | 03/19/13 | 16:23 PM

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