Notably, though, the charts start showing massive growth in depression around 2012, which was long before Dobbs.
And there are some trends in the opposite direction - iirc hormonal birth control used to be much harder to get (telehealth has made the prescription requirement much less onerous), and anecdotally nowadays it seems a lot easier to get info on sterilization or methods for intentionally changing menstruation (ex. skipping the placebo week).
I'm not saying Dobbs doesn't matter, only that I both 1) doubt it's a central driver of the trend, and 2) think [outside the world of news/social media] most women can still expect more rights & a higher quality of care in most US locations than they could a decade or two ago.
> I’m not saying Dobbs doesn’t matter, only that I both 1) doubt it’s a central driver of the trend
Yeah, I’m not saying it (or reproductive rights & health care more generally) is the central driver of the trend, I’m saying its one of the key reasons why if someone asked me, today, what group in American society would be most depressed, my intuitive response would be “white liberal teen girls” (particularly, its a key reason why “female, white, and liberal” are parts of that) – why that element that was called out as surprising upthread would not be.
Though Dobbs didn’t just appear ex nihilo without many years of clear lead up to it that reflected a change in the direction of society, so I wouldn’t dismiss the issue being deeply connected to an important part of the broader, earlier trend.
Interesting. I would much rather be a (white liberal) teen girl today than in ~2012, but I can see how insofar as Dobbs is only a manifestation of existing trends, I might be in the minority.
It's just hard to wrap my head around what this trend would be, or why teens started picking up on it in 2012. I am not conscious of any major modern debates around women's rights except abortion/birth control, and I see no particular link between the causes of Dobbs and that generic time period.
Also, possibly as proof that I'm not a great commenter on the issue, I thought only ~8% of women had abortions, but in looking it up while writing this comment apparently it's more like 25% (so abortion & related issues affect way more women/girls than I expected).
Miscarriages are abortions. Often times if the miscarriage happens late enough, a doctor must intervene to assist in the removal of the dead fetus, which is the same medical procedure as one may remove a viable one.
No, "abortion" is not a medical procedure. There are several medical procedures used for abortion, some of which have uses other than abortion.
The medical procedure you're referring to is dilation and curettage (a.k.a D&C / DnC). The common term "abortion" is imprecise, and refers to several medical procedures, and D&C has multiple uses other than pregnancy termination.
In the case of spontaneous abortion (commonly called "miscarriage"), even in early pregnancy if the fetal remains are allowed to naturally be expelled, afterward the ob/gyn will often need to inspect the uterus and perhaps remove some remaining tissue. So, rather than waiting for the fetus to naturally be expelled following spontaneous abortion and going through the pain and trauma of seeing the blood and tissue being passed at home, the ob/gyn will often advise a D&C rather than waiting for the body to naturally resolve the lost pregnancy.
Unfortunately, my wife has had 3 first trimester miscarriages under 2 ob/gyns, both of which advised D&C rather than waiting for the fetal remains to pass. Also, her ob/gyn performed a 4th D&C to make sure the surface of the uterus is free of tissue that might interfere with pregnancy. This 4th D&C seems to have worked (along with a ton of medications), as we're expecting identical twins in September. Every D&C weakens the cervix, so it's a delicate balancing act.
In any case, D&C has several uses and shouldn't be conflated with "abortion". In our case, my wife's 4th D&C was a fertility treatment, and the first 3 were to resolve lost pregnancies.
> I am not conscious of any major modern debates around women’s rights except abortion/birth control, and I see no particular link between the causes of Dobbs and that generic time period.
2011-2012 was when the major wave of state anti-abortion laws (135 in those two years) and the first notable state executive measure defunding Planned Parent that represented the beginning (well, the visible conversion to a major active push rather than mere rhetoric) of the anti-abortion push by the Republican Party that led to Dobbs occurred.
The abortion changes don't seem to have been major enough for me to easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States), but I've definitely become a lot less confident in my initial opinion that it's nearly-universally better to be a white liberal teen girl today, so thank you for the interesting conversation.
I still think social media / smartphones / etc as an explanation fits the trend more simply & cleanly, but I'm much more open to the idea that I could be wrong.
> The abortion changes don’t seem to have been major enough for me to easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States), but I’ve definitely become a lot less confident in my initial opinion that it’s nearly-universally better to be a white liberal teen girl today, so thank you for the interesting conversation.
Prior to the Texas private-enforcement-only hack that occurred just before Dobbs (and was huge news before Dobbs eclipsed it), most of them were either funding/access restrictions that didn’t directly target the Constitutional right just made it difficult to exercise in practice (because that had some chance of surviving the courts), while the rest were struck down (or enjoined, and then struck down later) before going into effect and never enforced, serving primarily as strong social messaging rather than enforced law.
And yet fertility rates had another strong step down around that time.
One conjecture could be that fewer young women with children is correlated with higher rates of diagnosis of mental illness. And if I know I had mental illness, I'd be scared shitless to let it known on the record I had a disorder that a CPS worker or family courts could use against me -- without a child those concerns are lessened. I can also attest having a child means you have way less time for your own personal care, which means perhaps these women now have more time for their own care.
> It's just hard to wrap my head around what this trend would be, or why teens started picking up on it in 2012.
One reason could be they started talking to each other more. Women and girls who had similar life experience shared them on the internet. This is how the whole Me Too movement started; the experiences shared during the Me Too movement were old, but it was the internet and social media which acted as a catalyst to dislodge them from the past and bring them into the present.
> I am not conscious of any major modern debates around women's rights except abortion/birth control
Don't you recall the 2016 Presidential election? There was a huge debate about whether or not a woman was ready to be President of the United States. I don't know about your family, but in my family people thought it very clever to say that a woman could never become president, because her period would make her too volatile. This kind of rhetoric may have flowed right past you, but it wasn't lost on women (especially the very cogent point that men have in fact started most wars in all of human history).
The outcome of that election was that America chose a serial sexual predator who has admitted to spying on women in changing rooms, has raped women, and who has admitted to using his power and prestige to assault women. It wasn't lost on women that this man, with a famously volatile temper, was chosen over a women because he was viewed as more trustworthy and more stable than her.
That man ended his term by waging a violent coup against the United States government with his supporters, who themselves made an effort assassinate the vice president. Yet it was the female candidate that America considered a priori too "volatile".
> I thought only ~8% of women had abortions, but in looking it up while writing this comment apparently it's more like 25% (so abortion & related issues affect way more women/girls than I expected).
As with rape, the number of women who have abortions and the number of women who report abortions are quite different. That number is going to diverge even more now that it's illegal and criminalized in many jurisdictions.
I could definitely see something like MeToo being a cause, but I still would put that as a "social media" effect and not a "women's/girl's irl day-to-day lives get worse" effect.
Most of my family voted for Trump, but mostly for immigration & military reasons. I don't remember anyone I knew in real life saying anything negative about Hillary on the basis of her gender -- though, as always, there was plenty of it online. Pretty much all of the negative talk I heard about her (irl) was about her emails, her policies, or her party.
(My mother is still angry about Hillary's "there's a cold place in hell for women who don't vote for a woman" thing, but that wasn't the main reason for her vote.)
The presidents bracketing Trump (Obama & Biden) seem generally feminist, so I'd be surprised that the trend started during Obama and continued to accelerate during Biden if something like Trump / related to Trumpism was a big cause. Maybe the SCOTUS justices he left behind could be pointed to as a continuing political pain point now?
I agree that our abortion statistics will become less indicative of the actual rate now that we're post-Dobbs; this'll be a very interesting time to look back on.
There was definitely also a lot of misogyny in the 2008 primaries as well, even coming from liberals and especially the media:
Previous research has suggested that news and commentary concerning political candidates can vary based on a candidate's gender or race. Race and gender were especially salient in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. A content analysis of editorial cartoons was conducted to examine patterns in content or imagery related to race and gender. Editorial cartoons that featured Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and/or John McCain and were published during the primary season were analyzed. Cartoons featuring Obama were more likely to be favorable than those featuring the other candidates; those featuring Clinton were more likely to be unfavorable. Clinton was more often presented as ugly and small in size than was Obama. Clinton was shown perpetrating violence more often than the male candidates; she was also portrayed as the recipient of particularly gruesome violence. Some cartoons featured imagery or content that relied on racial or gender stereotypes; a qualitative analysis of these cartoons is provided. Overall, findings support previous research showing the continued relevance of race and gender in media coverage of political campaigns.
And there are some trends in the opposite direction - iirc hormonal birth control used to be much harder to get (telehealth has made the prescription requirement much less onerous), and anecdotally nowadays it seems a lot easier to get info on sterilization or methods for intentionally changing menstruation (ex. skipping the placebo week).
I'm not saying Dobbs doesn't matter, only that I both 1) doubt it's a central driver of the trend, and 2) think [outside the world of news/social media] most women can still expect more rights & a higher quality of care in most US locations than they could a decade or two ago.