The relationship between legal abortion and marriage

Abstract

Tay‐Sachs disease is a recessively inherited, invariably lethal, degenerative neurological disorder caused by a lack of hexoaminidase‐A. It is a hundred times more prevalent among the American‐born descendants of the East European Ashkenazim Jews than among any other people in the world. The present retrospective study demonstrates that the currently observed increased gene frequency among these formerly endogamous, highly fecund people is most probably a result of genetic drift. Unique and drastic population contractive and expansion phases are documented to deduce the formation of numerous founder populations which were scattered throughout Eastern Europe by the nineteenth century. The subsequent mass familial migrations to the United States, coupled with the cultural practices of the immigrant generation, greatly enhanced the chances for heterozygote carriers to marry each other. Even if some form of selection were operative in the past, the concatenation of unique cultural events provides convincing evidence for the acceptance of drift as the primary cause for the differential gene frequency.     

The relationship between abortion rates and economic fluctuations

We analyze the relationship between abortions and economic fluctuation at the U.S. state level for the 1995–2016 period. We do not find a statistically significant association between the overall abortion rate and the unemployment rate across the full sample period. However, we observe a procyclical association from approximately 2004 to 2010, during which a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with a roughly 5% decrease in the abortion rate. This procyclical association is confirmed when we subsample our data to the 2005–2016 period. Our subgroup analysis indicates a procyclical association for the abortion rates for younger women, while we do not observe statistically significant associations when the analysis is stratified by race or ethnicity. The associations we observe for the younger age groups are especially pronounced in states with restrictions on Medicaid funding of abortions. Our analysis suggests that economic conditions may be an important factor in the reproductive choices by women.     

Importance of the marriage structure in predicting abortion

Examination of randomly selected pregnant women of the Kharkov city showed that the structure of marriage had undergone considerable changes during two successive generations. The number of endogamous marriages decreased, the percentage of marriages between persons of different nationalities being increased, which adequately reflects social-demographic processes taking place currently in all human populations. Judging by the data obtained, these changes in percentage of exogamous marriages do not considerably influence the probability of pregnancy failure which can be accounted for disturbed foeto-maternal immunological interrelations. No correlations between immunological indices and the degree of heterozygosity in women and the structure of marriages was demonstrated. The percentage of married couples with tainted heredity (spontaneous abortions, still-birth) was considerably higher among women with habitual pregnancy failure, which may testify to a certain role of hereditary predisposition to immune failure.     

Fertility and legal abortion in England and Wales: performance indicators for family planning services.

The relation between fertility rates and legal abortion rates was investigated in a sample of health authorities in England and Wales to see how these varied. Total period fertility rates and total period legal abortion rates were derived from the average number of live births or legal abortions that would be experienced per woman if women experienced the age specific rates of the year in question throughout their childbearing years. The sample of 30 health authorities was selected by taking the districts with the highest and lowest fertility rates in each English region and in Wales in 1986. Total period fertility rates varied from 1.37 in Riverside to 2.42 in Tower Hamlets, while abortion rates varied from 0.25 in East Yorkshire to 0.99 in Riverside. When the two rates were added to provide a potential fertility rate it became clear that some districts with similar potential fertility rates had very different underlying component rates. Such comparisons can be used for service monitoring, indicating the need for better abortion and family planning services in districts with high fertility rates and for better family planning services in those with high abortion rates.     

The MHC: relationship between linkage and function.

It is intriguing that several genes with associated functions, including all of class I and class II genes, as well as some genes affecting antigen presentation of both class I and class II pathways, are linked in the MHC. Recent observations have led to speculation that there may be a functional explanation for keeping these related genes together.