Church interferance in the abortion debate?

Once again theocracy seems to be creeping into our democracy this time in the sensitive matter of abortion which is to be examined by the Joint Select Committee of Parliament shortly. Similar to the interferance of the Sexual Offences Bill debate when certain sections which spoke to buggery, sexual intercourse definitions and related matters where blatantly ignored, twisted or strongly opposed by christian lawyers & their allies who used their influence to push their own agenda, totalling ignoring the matter of choice. This letter in today's Observer seems to reinforce a similar concern in the tense abortion debate. Watching other legal matters clearly exposes how certain sections of our society choose to encroach on the rights of others in the name of morality.
See posts on the Sexual Offences Bill Debate and extensive coverage from the debate on GLBTQ Jamaica which includes Senate presentations and other letters.

Church-commissioned abortion poll unscientific
dawncaribbean@gmail.com
In the Don Anderson polls on abortion, commissioned by the Mustard Seed Community, the reason given for the poll is to ensure that legal provisions on abortion that are proposed for reform should be "informed by scientifically gathered data".

A perusal of the comments on the Observer website gives us a clear understanding that even persons who have no experience or firm knowledge in survey methodology can see that there is nothing scientific about how the data was gathered, how the questions were posed and even possibly in the selection of the sample.

Another problem with the Don Anderson poll on abortion is that while a poll is supposed to specifically address an issue, this is not clear.

If the government, through the Abortion Policy Review Group, has made some recommendations for amendments to the Offences Against the Persons Act (1864) relating to abortion, shouldn't the survey seek to address people's opinions on these recommendations? Or at the very least seek to solicit the public's opinion on whether or not abortion should be decriminalised and under what circumstances should a woman be allowed to seek an abortion, if at all?

Mr Anderson claimed in a recent radio interview on Nationwide that the persons at Mustard Seed drafted the questions. This in itself is biased; the entity that commissioned the study should not really have a hand in the design of the questionnaire. This should be left up to survey experts. In the case of Mustard Seed, their agenda is clear - preventing the government from making legislative changes that would enhance women's reproductive health and attend to the problems that the health-care system has with women coming to hospitals due to complications of unsafe abortions.

According to esteemed scholars on social research methodology such as Judith Green, John Brown and Earl Babbie, the objective of a survey is to gather unbiased and objective information from a selected sample (of a population) on a particular issue. Good questions are considered to have met the standard requirements of professional survey methodology when several principles in questionnaire design are observed. First, neutral wording is used and the questions are not value-laden. The idea behind this is to allow persons to give their own thoughts, rather than be swayed in any direction.

In other words, the questions should not be leading. A second principle in questionnaire design is that the questions should not make unwarranted assumptions. The question: Should abortion be used to control family size? makes an unwarranted assumption and is also misleading because it assumes that abortion is on the table to control family size when that is not what is being considered by the government at all. The question also puts forward the view that abortion is implicitly a form of birth control. Again, this is a form of manipulation that the pollsters should have guarded against. This question above also violates the third principle to which we now turn.

The third principle is that a question should not be phrased in a way that implies the desired answer. Take the question: Should doctors and nurses be forced to perform abortions under the law? This one clearly sets up the respondent to say no; of course, doctors and nurses should not be forced. At the same time it is manipulative because this is not what the proposed legislation says. Indeed, the proposed recommendation recognises medical practitioners' right to conscientious objection and asks that in such cases where they do not wish to provide the service that they refer the patient, that is, the woman, to another medical practitioner who is willing to do so.
Fourth, the format of the questions should not use negative phraseology. Fifth, the questions should avoid using words that encourage acquiescence. None of these principles were observed. For instance, take the question: How do people feel about the statement: In cases of rape or incest, the crime of the father should not bring about the murder of the child. In the case of this question, it is value-laden and lacks objectivity insofar as it assumes that the respondent is in agreement that abortion is murder. It also doesn't directly address who is being affected and who has to make the decision - the woman. An alternative framing would be: Should a woman who has been raped be allowed to have an abortion?

Finally, the poll claimed to be representative of the Jamaican population, by interviewing 534 persons. A rule of thumb in survey methodology is to make every effort to interview five to 10 per cent of the population. Given this challenge, it would be interesting to know what sampling method was used and how narrow or wide was the dispersion. These factors affect the results.

While the poll was commissioned to encourage robust debate, it has instead promoted a one-sided agenda embedded in manipulation serving only to sideline the key areas of concern - the reproductive health risks of Jamaican women, public policy and amendments to an antiquated law based on social realities. The questions asked are arbitrary and have very little to do with the recommendations under review. There is no striving for objectivity in the framing of the questions. The questions clearly and undoubtedly lead the respondents into soliciting the answers they (Mustard Seed Communities) want to receive. Given the fact that the questionnaire seems to have defied even the most basic principles in social research, the results cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered "scientifically gathered data". It is hoped that the Joint Select Committee reviewing this issue has enough sense not to take this poll seriously.

The above is by DAWN Caribbean Working Group on Women's Reproductive Health and Rights.