I’ve been following the discussion of Dr Koch’s academic article on MMRs in Chile with interest – mainly on Twitter. I found Koch’s conclusions (and his references to Ireland) thought-provoking because they runs counter to all the conventional wisdom about the impact of restrictive abortion legislation on women’s health and, indeed, on the level of clandestine abortions.

When the debate developed into a spat between Dr Koch and the Guttmacher Institute, I became even more fascinated, as GI’s Abortion Incidence Complications Method (AICM) methodology for estimating clandestine abortion rates in Africa, Latin America and Asia has been used for two decades with little controversy. Until now.

When the focus of the spat then moved from Chile to Columbia, I began to think there was something else at play here – perhaps a ‘wider agenda’ as Ireland’s Senator Ronan Mullen might put it. All previous estimates for the level of clandestine abortions in Columbia were in the ‘100,000 – 500,000 a year’ range – a wide range admittedly, but perhaps not surprising when you consider the use of different estimation approaches over different time periods. GI’s estimates (from a comprehensive report which can be found at www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Unintended-Pregnancy-Colombia.pdf) is towards the top end of the range, at 400,000.) Enter Dr Koch with a new estimate of 22,000 abortions a year, giving Colombia one of the lowest, if not the lowest, abortion rates in the world.

At this point I smelt a rat, so I did a bit of digging.

It happens that Dr Koch is also on Twitter as @ElardKoch on Twitter. He doesn’t tweet much – mainly retweeting Pro-Life messages from a guy called @StevenErtelt and there’s nothing wong with that, I thought. But one of the biggest attackers of @Guttmacher on Twitter is a ProLife organisation called www.lifenews.com. When you try to follow Life News on Twitter, you get directed to the Twitter address of, wait for it, @StevenErtelt. Worrying.

Another big attack on @Guttmacher's research into abortion in Columbia is Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute. I thought the Population Research Institute must be a well-respected academic institution so I googled it: www.pop.org. It turns out that the Population Research Institute is just another Catholic Pro-Life organisation which also opposes same-sex marriage in strident terms.

So it seems this diverse group of rightwing Catholic Prolifers lining up against @Guttmacher are pushing a Catholic agenda opposed to both contraception and abortion. As a Catholic myself, I get annoyed when fellow Catholics will ignore scientific evidence in favour of a strongly-held religious belief. When scientists doing it, my annoyance turns to horror.
Back to Dr Koch: On 27 May 2012, @ElardKoch launched a scathing attack on @Guttmacher on Twitter in which he told me:
“I'm not surprised with the desperate attempt by GI. They are defending a poor methodology biased by an ideological agenda”
“GI used opinion surveys to estimate induced abortions in Colombia and LA. It is not a valid method in Epidemiology.”
“An opinion survey to 289 individuals: How many stray dogs exist in Colombia? Evidently, it is just an ‘opinion’ "

In fairness to @ElardKoch, he also said: “Perhaps it is the first publication by an independent research team seriously questioning the metodology by the GI” and he may well have a point there. However, it’s hard to take him seriously when he appears to let his own Pro-Life views influence his scientific conclusions, particularly when he paints Colombia as an almost abortion-free country. He also does his fellow-countrymen and women a disservice by brushing under the carpet the tragic human issues associated with clandestine abortions.

Thanks for this. I just had a rebuttal to Koch published on Friday: www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/01/anti-choice-researchers-in-chile-try-to-hide-illegal-abortion-and-women-who-die-f

And a second statement responding to some points in Koch's rebuttal of Guttmacher is here: http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/Koch-rebuttal.html

Koch is definitely anti-choice, he is also an affiliate of this site: www.wecareexperts.org/affiliates, with the purpose of producing anti-choice "research."

Mr. O'Diothigh (I hope I wrote your last name correctly) has very interesting views. I have no doubt that when data fits so perfectly well with a particular agenda, my first thoughts are of disbelief or suspicion. Nevertheless, I follow up with carefully reviewing the evidence (press coverage, social networks, commentaries and the whole shebang) before making a statement. After all, big minds argue ideas and solely little minds argue with people. So here it goes...

As a scientist myself, I am bound to make deductions on the basis of data and observation. My personal opinion and views (whatever they may be) are not involved in the process (or at least I try my best for them not to be). After reviewing several works in the subject, I can make two deductions:

1. Out of the articles I read, apparently the only one using actual vital records to obtain a conclusion in this matter is the study by Koch et al. The other studies were based on opinion surveys and not actual data. Therefore we have observation versus perception in the literature. I lean towards observation rather than perception here. Elard Koch may or may not be biased in his thinking-process (I am not inside his head) but that cannot alter hard data that I have corroborated myself. The data is there for anyone who want to look.

2. The study by Koch et al. concludes that the main factor influencing the decrease in maternal mortality in Chile is women's educational level and that abortion legislation had nothing to do with it. I can't see the flaw in that statement. It's a logical deduction from the hard data. The way I see it is that this conclusion turns out to be in line with a pro-life agenda, but it just turns out to be that way. It appears unlikely that one can make hard data to conveniently change out of sheer willpower. Not when the data has been obtained by an independent entity and has it out there for anyone to check on them. After all, the data is the data...

Finally, and on a personal note, I hate labels... pro-life versus anti-choice... pro-choice versus... anti-life? (wow there!). I'd rather be labeled as pro-active :)

Just my 2 cents... Paula

Quite certainly to me there is nothing wrong with personal standpoints as long as they do not use the scientific method to twirl numbers and turn them into a specific statement that fits personal agendas. Sir Karl Popper clearly stated:

"...the tabula rasa theory is absurd: at every stage of the evolution of life and of the development of an organism, we have to assume the existence of some knowledge in the form of dispositions and expectations. Accordingly, the growth of all knowledge consists in the modification of previous knowledge - either its altaration or its large-scale rejection. Knowledge never begins from nothing, but always from some background knowledge..."

One that claims himself a scientist, must therefore be aware of this previous knowledge, and inexorably subjet it to his inner moral system, to finally state a conclusion, which finally represents the personal standpoint. To deny this personal standpoint is to deny our own nature of being human, which is -logically- impossible.

Paula: You talk about "hard data that I have corroborated myself" and that the "data is there for anyone who want to look." But the point is that the data is NOT there for anyone to look at. Data on illegal abortion and its consequences are missing because illegal abortions are not reported. This is Koch's major flaw and bias - he pretends that only vital statistics are valid because that's all there is, conveniently ignoring the fact that illegal abortion is widespread, as it is anywhere where abortion is criminalized.