What's Wrong With Nickelback? . . . an Exercise in Critical Thinking

We’ve been hearing a lot over the past two years about the “death of civility” in this country. But almost as dire has been the scarcity of critical thought. Much of the problem is that whenever one has an emotional investment in the issue, it’s far more difficult to apply one’s critical skills (assuming you have any) to it.

I’m going to offer an example of a critical analysis of a topic about which I had zero knowledge or emotional investment.

Several months ago on a music lovers page I frequent, someone posted a link that featured a three-minute video about a band called Nickelback. As best I can tell, the video had originated on a site called Smosh Bits, and was titled “SCIENCE: Why Nickelback Sucks.”

People who like the band got upset; others chimed in their approval. I had no opinion on the matter: I’d barely heard of Nickelback. I’m not sure I knew a single one of their songs (and I still don’t). Without watching the video, I suggested to the others that it might have been offered with tongue in cheek.

A fan of Nickelback urged me to watch the video anyway because, she claimed, it was symptomatic of the recent lack of civility in this country, so I watched it. My assumption going in was that the video probably shouldn’t be taken seriously because it starts from an untenable position (basing an aesthetic value judgment on “science”), and that makes it something of a joke from the get-go.

It was created, I supposed, only to attract clicks and be viewed by as many web surfers as possible, and therefore was framed in a way to attract viewers who are either Nickelback lovers and haters, and stir up discussion, disagreement, and further web traffic (presumably to justify or raise the site’s ad rates).

INITIAL REACTION

I wrote: “Anyone who takes it seriously might be said to be participating in, and contributing to, the divisions in this country -- and the extent to which the news media play this game in order to whip up traffic and clicks by reporting on the extremes is somewhat analogous to what is happening here, but I doubt most people who watch or share this video take the subject half as seriously as the people who argue about gun control, immigration, or the idiot incumbent in the Oval Office.

If someone made such a video about, say, The Monkees, The Eagles, Chicago, or anybody else I like (Led Zep I adore, but I’ll readily agree that Jimmy Page is not a very admirable person), I won’t get worked up about it, or regard it as symptomatic of the bigger conflicts and problems facing this nation. 

The person who felt the video was mean-spirited still didn’t see what I called “the joke,” and labeled it an expression of unnecessarily nasty currents in this nation. So I decided to analyze the video in depth. Below, edited somewhat for length and clarity, is what I wrote, as an exercise in -- and illustration of -- critical thinking, especially when one has no emotional stake in the subject.

Here’s the original video. Below is my analysis of it.

WHAT THE VIDEO SAYS (AND DOESN’T)

First, the entire premise of “SCIENCE: Why Nickelback Sucks” -- that “science” could render a definitive judgment on a matter of taste – is suspect, and therefore, I would say, intended to be tongue in cheek. Perhaps if a research scientist had done an in-depth analysis of tone patterns and chord progressions, then discussed their potential effects on the brain and thereby human psychology, there might be something to it, but none of that was the case here.

Second, the piece leads off with assertions that are instantly disprovable: for example, at 0:11, “everyone, even Nickelback fans, seem [sic] to know the band is trash….” Well, I didn’t know that; I’ve barely heard of them, so I’m perfectly indifferent, and there are undoubtedly other people of all ages for which this is also true, so that’s a false statement.

The so-called scientist cited as authority is “Finnish researcher Salli Anttonen” [0:22]. Before I Google this person’s credentials, I’ll just critique the attributed content. I won’t repeat the title of Anttonen’s study, which also has “joke” written all over it. (Turns out, the title took most of its content from a phrase in a disparaging review of the band, which we will eventually discover was very much to the point.)

Anttonen reportedly studied music reviews from 2000 to 2014 [0:31-0:36]. There’s nothing particularly scientific about doing a content analysis of reviews; that would be like writing the history of a U.S. President’s tenure in office based solely on editorial columns from newspapers of the day, which would tend to be critical, and focus on immediate concerns to the exclusion of the big picture.

Briefly, the band formed in 1995, had its first major hit in 2001, and subsequent singles did not do as well. Also “Nickelback received negative reviews from most critics” [1:11], from which the study “drew convincing conclusions about why some people might like this band” … and the video quotes terms such as “boring,” “bland,” “fake,” “unoriginal,” “borrowed,” and “sounds wrong.”

Any of this sound the slightest bit scientific to you?

HIGH-SPEED DISDAIN

From there, the video shifts into cheap but flashy insults, and it’s impossible to tell whether they came from the original music reviews or the Anttonen study, or were simply cooked up by the video maker himself. There’s no chain of evidence or citation of authorities here.

A conclusion of sorts turns up at 2:16: “Basically, Nickelback is just a little bit of everything and a lot of commercialization.” But one could say as much about many bands, big and small.

On to part three, “Their lyrics suck” [2:31], which declares that Nickelback songs “mostly … have sentimental lyrics targeted toward women…” [2:36]. One could readily argue the same about most songs by Billy Joel, post-1977 Chicago, even gay singers such as Elton John and Freddie Mercury/Queen.

“It’s definitely not how most rock bands do business” [2:40] is an easily debatable statement (and possibly even scientifically disprovable). Lyrics at a “third grade reading level” [2:56] characterize some of the greatest rock and pop hits in history, from Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” to Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac.”

Note how the video shifts into the passive voice: Nickelback’s lyrics “were also ruled ‘dumber’ ” than Eminem’s Nicky Minaj’s, and Mariah Carey’s [3:06]; “were ruled” by whom? There’s no attribution.

“Ruled” by what measure? Richness of vocabulary and grammar? Yes, ELP/Pete Sinfield, and Gentle Giant all had far more intelligent lyrics than Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, or Chuck Berry, but that didn’t make them greater or more beloved by the public.

Finally, the video fails to close the logical circle of its argument: It doesn’t show why its supposed “objective” criteria for rating the band low would cause both its critics to hate them and its fans to feel ashamed of them.

That’s a social phenomenon, not a scientific one. Science could perhaps measure the nature of those social norms -- the details of taste (such as why certain rhythms or chord progressions and lyrics can have an emotional resonance for the average person) -- but never really tell you WHY.

The final statement in the video -- “Share this with a Nickelbacker to ruin their [sic] love of the band!!” [3:12] -- openly acknowledges the nonscientific motivation of the enterprise. It’s a nyah-nyah exercise that’s not going to alter anyone’s taste based on bogus scientific “facts,” but merely seeks to make people feel smaller or cooler over a mere matter of taste.

So much for what meets the eye in the video itself. Now let’s go and see if we can find anything “scientific” in the background: the source of this “scientific” analysis and the researcher. . . . 

WHAT A LITTLE RESEARCH TURNED UP

Here’s a more fair-minded report about what the Finnish doctoral student (not a “scientist” at all, really; I doubt she would claim the term for herself) in cultural studies wrote.

First, Anttonen studied music reviewers and critics, and the concept of “authenticity” from their perspective, not the wider one of fans and haters, or the nature of music in general, or the average person’s emotions and motivations.

Note also that Anttonen was ONLY studying music reviews and critics IN FINLAND and what they had to say about a Canadian band . . . again, not a particularly broad canvas, let alone fundamental psychology of the human species.

Finally, here are the crucial three paragraphs from a BuzzFeed report that might well have inspired the Smosh Bits video (although my Google search for Anttonen turned up reports on her paper that ran on BBC Newsbeat, US Magazine, and mentalfloss[dot]com):

One thing Anttonen noticed is that earlier reviews of the band were not as negative. The more successful the band became, the more critics delighted in hating on it.

“It became a phenomenon where the journalists were using the same [reasons] to bash them, and almost making an art out of ridiculing them,” she said.

The reason, according to her, is that rock critics see themselves as the protectors and arbiters of authenticity and originality. Hating on Nickelback is a way to assert their authority. So the more success the band has on the charts, the more critics feel emboldened to dismiss Nickelback as inauthentic commercial crap.

WHAT GOES UP GETS KNOCKED DOWN

Those of us who’ve been around a while have seen this phenomenon many times. Bands or artists who looked or sounded new and different at one point received warm attention from critics who “discovered” them early in their careers, for instance:

• white boys from Britain who performed African-American blues with a heavy beat and loud guitars 

• a permanent brass section (such as this band . . . or this one)

• dual female guitarists/singers performing hard rock and metal

• earnest singer-songwriter sincerity (James Taylor, Elton John, Billy Joel, etc., etc.)

. . . only to be thrashed later when they achieved massive sales, and tried either to duplicate the pattern of their early success or dared to try something different.

In sum, Anttonen was studying and drawing conclusions primarily about FINNISH MUSIC CRITICS and THEIR PERSONAL AGENDAS (although the odds are high reviewers in other countries operate in a similar manner) . . . which is to say, self-appointed experts or “gatekeepers,” and not really Nickelback’s music per se or the band’s fans at all.

None of this constitutes “science” (certainly not any direct scientific evaluation of the music itself); it’s about perception (particularly the self-image of critics), cultural supervision, and the creation and maintenance of professional reputation. It’s about justifying oneself and one’s job as a music reviewer, rather than taste itself.

Thus, the video is little more than a labored version of a political photo-with-caption meme. Various publications, from the BBC to Smosh Bits, took the barest notions from Anttonen’s study and ran with them, to produce fodder for their news feeds that largely had little to do with what she had actually written.

THE LESSON OF A SILLY VIDEO

Similarly boneheaded (and even mendacious) videos and memes, not to mention entire “news stories” -- or at least proper news reports with improper and misleading headlines -- are circulated on topics of much greater import (climate change, Russian collusion, the supposed crimes of past U.S. presidents) every day.

It is OUR job to:

1. regard them ALL more skeptically, ESPECIALLY when we like what they say

2. read and listen to them carefully, and watch for the cutting of corners and leaps in logic

3. NOT pass them on to others until one has made some attempt to verify their worth independently

One of the best critical comments I ever got on a college paper, early in my schooling, was “You move too fast here.” This is an ongoing problem with public debate everywhere, but particularly on the Internet.

People respond to others before they’ve fully absorbed what the other person has said. They often argue with what they THINK the person wrote, not what he actually said. They react from the gut . . . which usually means nothing more than their biases, prejudices, and assumptions.

When I get in arguments on social media, much of the time my basic message is “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Slow down. Read more carefully. Check the background.


And try to be more polite and respectful of others, whether they’re average people on the Internet like yourself or celebrities.

Abortion, part 2a: Illegal Abortions in Douglas County, Oregon, conclusion

This is the second half of a feature about the history of illegal abortions in Douglas County, southern Oregon, which originally appeared in the Roseburg, Oregon News-Review on Feb. 4, 1991. . . . 

*      *     *      *      *

A box of Chi-ches-ters turned up in the dusty basement of Chapman’s Pharmacy during a recent inventory. Undated directions to the pharmacist say the product is “no longer an emmanogue” -- emmenagogues are agents that stimulate menstrual flow -- but should be used only “for relief of functional menstrual pain.”

This could mean that an active ingredient was removed at some point, or simply that the company was trying to protect itself from false claims about its product.

Don Wells, owner of Gordon’s Drug in Canyonville, remembered throwing out a number of boxes of Chi-ches-ters when he bought the business 26 years ago. “I question whether they changed the formula one bit,” he said. “They just couldn’t make the claim, so they stopped making the claim.”

Wells cited the example of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, which became Carter’s Little Pills after the federal government cracked down and said the product had no effect on the liver.

Virginia Proctor of Canyonville graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1937 and recalls her sorority sisters using Chi-ches-ters.

“The girls used them to bring on their periods or induce abortion if they could,” Proctor said. “Not only that, but they used them when they knew they were going to a prom and they wanted to get their period over with early. Girls are like that, you know. They’re no different today than they were 50 years ago,” she said with a laugh.

Many other herbs and extracts have been used throughout history as abortifacients, among them parsley seed, jalapa root, calomel, aloes, savine (an extract of juniper), castor oil, quinine, oil of pennyroyal, ergot preparations, and slippery elm bark. All of these ploys were risky, undependable, and sometimes fatal.

Nathan Fullerton, a druggist with the firm of Fullerton and Richardson, was indicted by a Douglas County grand jury in 1907 for “selling oil of tansy without due inquiry.” He admitted he had sold two small vials to a Wilbur resident who subsequently died.

Oil of tansy is extremely toxic. Ten drops may be fatal, according to the CRC Handbook of Medicinal Herbs. The court file does not say whether the woman was trying to abort or commit suicide, or had something else in mind. Fullerton, however, was found not guilty.

Castor oil was “frequently used by gals who were sick and tired (of being pregnant), and let’s get this thing over with,” Roseburg pharmacist Tom Hornsby said. “Generally it gets them in more trouble than it’s worth.”

Ergot preparations are “vaso-constrictive,” which means they cut off blood supply, in this case to the fetus. Ergot alkaloids are used legitimately for migraine headaches and to inhibit bleeding after childbirth.

“Ergot comes from a sort of fungus that grows on rye in wet weather,” according to Wells. “Hundreds of years ago they noticed that women who ate rye bread from bad flour were losing fingers and toes … and fetuses.”

Slippery elm bark was a gummy substance that apparently aborted fetuses by physical irritation. Women bought a 6- to 8-inch sliver and inserted it vaginally. “That’s an old, old one,” said Dr. George Constantine, associate dean of the college of pharmacy at Oregon State University. “People used to buy them and say they wanted to make tea.”

Constantine, who had pharmacies in San Jose, Calif., Salt Lake City, Utah, and Corvallis, said he would offer the elm bark in powdered form. “They said, no, they’d rather grind it themselves so it would be ‘fresh.’ We didn’t sell it to them (in that case). We always happened to be out of it that day. You have some ethical standards to abide by if you suspected what they were planning to use it for.”

In 1968, James R.D. Little, a 48-year-old osteopath whose office was at 214 S.E. Locust St. in Oakland, pleaded guilty to a grand jury indictment charging manslaughter by abortion.

According to a memorandum by then district attorney Doyle Schiffman, investigation turned up evidence of at least nine abortions performed in Little’s office. One woman had obtained two in one year. Clients came from Roseburg, Sutherlin, and Eugene.

One 25-year-old Roseburg resident told authorities her 58-year-old husband “does not believe that any of their previous children are theirs and has threatened to kill her if she ever got pregnant again,” according to the police report. “They have a blood Rh factor problem and in addition use a contraceptive, thus the husband will not accept that he may be the father.”

Schiffman’s memo noted that “the small office used by Dr. Little … was unkept and … filthy.” Police said the smell was “almost unbearable.” The seized tools were rusty, no anesthesia was used, and “the majority of the operations were performed on a wooden kitchen table.”

The defendant received a 10-year sentence. His physician’s license was automatically revoked. After 2-1/2 years in prison, he was paroled.

Local physicians do not recall seeing women with complications that might have resulted from illegal or self-abortions. “Personally, I think that’s grossly exaggerated, the number of women who used a coat hanger,” said Dr. Warren Kadas of Sutherlin.

Jeppeson said he did have patients who had gotten abortions years before, when they were 15 and 16, and discovered much later to their sorrow that they could not conceive.

“I saw them after they had gotten married and wanted to have a baby,” he said. “It’s relatively common information that about a good 10 percent of illegal abortions end up with infections, and the majority of those are sterile forever.”

A 1969 Oregon law reaffirmed the illegality of abortion but loosened the exceptions to include health risk to the mother, serious physical or mental defect in the infant, or pregnancy resulting from “felonious intercourse.” Although that law was not removed from the books until 1983, it was effectively overturned in 1973 by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.

*      *     *      *      *

In a sidebar to the main story above, I added the account of a grisly murder case that originated in an incident outside Glendale, a small town of fewer than 900 inhabitants at the southern edge of Douglas County, 56 miles northwest of Medford and 116 miles south of Eugene . . . and ended up going all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court.

*      *     *      *      *

An apparent abortion attempt figured in one of Douglas County’s most spectacular murder cases.

Roy A. Farnam, 23, lived on a farm 12 miles east of Glendale with his parents and siblings, and had dated 14-year-old Edna Morgan through most of 1914, according to court records. Morgan lived with her father and sister on a farm five miles west of the Farnam place, where she was a frequent visitor and sometimes stayed overnight.

At 1:30 a.m. Dec. 9, H.H. Beamer, whose farm was just west of the Morgan place, discovered his barn on fire. In the morning he found a body in the ashes. Hairpins, a corset stay, and three pieces of flat lead that were thought to be melted bullets were found with the remains.

Also, a fetus in the fifth month of development was discovered near the corpse. Physicians later testified that the fetus had been expelled through an operation by hand or instrument, and that Morgan’s death probably occurred after the birth.

Farnam’s first trial, for rape, twice resulted in hung juries. With the turn of the year and his third trial, a new prosecutor had to be appointed because Douglas County District Attorney George Brown had been elected state attorney general and left for Salem.

In the third trial, Farnam was convicted of rape and given a sentence of three to 20 years. Five months later, his trial for second-degree murder resulted in a manslaughter conviction. He received a 1-to-15-year sentence, to run after completion of his rape sentence.

Appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, the case takes up 87 pages of “Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon,” volume 82, when most cases require only five to 20 pages.

The majority agreed “it is conclusively proved that the defendant lured this poor … child into a barn remote from human habitation, and that he either murdered her outright, or, in an attempt to produce an abortion to protect himself from the consequences of his own lust, so dealt with her as to bring about her death.”

Forty-five pages of the Supreme Court decision consist of Justice Burnett’s vigorous dissent from the majority side. He argued that the evidence against Farnam, though considerable, was still completely circumstantial. He added that certain hearsay evidence should not have been admitted, and the jury received some improper instructions.

*      *     *      *      *

Read part 1: Abortion, past and future. . . 

Read part 2: A History of Illegal Abortion in Douglas County, Oregon, part 1

Abortion, part 2: An Inquiry into the Illegal Past, Douglas County, Oregon

Here’s another part of the series I wrote on abortion for my employer, the Roseburg, Oregon News-Review, in the spring and summer of 1990 as context for that November’s election, which included two anti-abortion measures on the ballot: a total ban and a requirement of parental notification for pregnant minors to obtain one.

The series did not appear in print until the following February 1991 -- months after the election for which I intended it, and many weeks after I’d left the newspaper’s employment. I’ll explain why after I’ve posted all the series. This part, with the snore-inducing headline “Law Books Reveal County’s Abortion History,” was published Feb. 4, 1991, and buried on page 8.

The initial section in italics is a prehistory I had included as background. The editor(s) cut all of it and went straight to the section on illegal abortions in Douglas County, which was justifiable, I suppose. One or two other things were not. I’ll tell you about that later. (This history portion will appear in two parts for length).

*      *     *      *      *

Abortion is as old as the family. Women in ancient as well as contemporary primitive cultures found it as necessary to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies as the modern career woman sometimes does.

Methods ranged from gentle Asian massage to damage the fetus and rupture the sac, to the Yąnomamö Indian women, who would simply have a friend jump on their bellies.

The older women of the village often instructed young mothers in the use of poisonous herbs that could rid them of a fetus, although they often screwed up their insides and even endangered their lives.

Abortion was not outlawed in this country until after the Civil War. In the colonial and pre-Revolutionary United States, the doctrine of “quickening,” which held that the fetus was not alive until its movement could be felt, meant that courts readily acquitted doctors who aborted babies during the first three to five months of pregnancy.

According to James Mohr’s Abortion in America, reformers estimated one abortion for every 25 to 30 live births between 1800 and 1830. By the 1850s, the proportion had increased to as many as one in every five or six.

A report issued by the Michigan Board of Health in 1878 guessed that one-third of all pregnancies in that state ended in abortion, and that 70 to 80 percent were sought by “prosperous and otherwise respectable married women.”

So it should be no surprise that there was a significant demand for the service in Douglas County, and physicians that were willing to meet it. It is not the sort of thing for which records exist, but it was fairly common knowledge.

Abortion had been made illegal in the Oregon territory under a manslaughter statute in 1845.

One Richard S. Price was indicted by the Douglas County Circuit Court in 1873 on two rape charges and “procuring abortion.” A young woman signed a statement declaring that she became pregnant “by means of forced connection” with Rice, who gave her “certain drugs and medicines … for the purpose of procuring an abortion” four months later.

The court file says nothing of a verdict or sentence, let alone the victim’s age. The other rape charge, though, involving “a female child under the age of fourteen years,” resulted in a 10-year prison sentence for Rice.

To judge by the handful of cases that were appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, most manslaughter by abortion prosecutions in the state involved the death of the mother rather than simply the killing of a fetus, perhaps because the former was less easy to hide from authorities.

During time within memory, local residents can testify to a continual demand for abortions, legal or otherwise. “There are people I know of that performed them as early as 1920,” said Dr. Donald Jeppeson, who was in family practice in Roseburg some 35 years.

“I think chiropractors and naturopaths performed the majority of abortions back when they were illegal. They had a looser arrangement.

“One of “the Roseburg physicians) was not particularly known as an abortion doctor, but there were a couple that were wide open. Most of these birds were still alive when I came to town but they were old and retired.”

Jeppeson said estate sales from various physicians’ offices turned up such instruments as suction curettes. “Now you tell me they used that to scrape their toenails. They didn’t.”

These physicians were employed at the Catholic-run Mercy Hospital -- the only such facility in town before 1951 -- but performed the abortions in their offices, according to Jeppeson. Most were in the Medical Arts Building, now the Professional Center at Oak Avenue and Main Street. “It wasn’t some back-street office,” he said.

Jeppeson does not believe any of the doctors were ever prosecuted. “They were famous (well-known) but (the authorities) needed someone to file a complaint,” he said.

Women apparently found other ways to rid themselves of an unwanted pregnancy. Eunice Wight, a 72-year-old resident of Azalea, recalled using a drug to expel a fetus when she was newly married. This was in 1938 or 1939, she said.

She later raised a daughter by that husband. But at the time, he was 20 years her senior and already had two kids from his first marriage. Also, families were “hard pressed” in the post-Depression era.

The husband was familiar with a pharmaceutical called Chi-ches-ters because his first wife had used them to abort herself, according to the woman. “They didn’t actually advertise them as abortion pills. They were a laxative or something.

“It was a cheap abortion. I never regretted it. I hate to think what would have happened if I’d had that child. He didn’t have a job, I didn’t have a job. A lot of people say, ‘Well, you probably weren’t pregnant at all,’ but I know I was.”

According to Wight, the late Fred Chapman, a longtime Roseburg pharmacist, remembered Chi-ches-ters. “When we went in and asked about them, he laughed and said we used to sell a lot of those,” she said. “Mr. Chapman also told me they were taken off the market when abortion became legal.”

*      *     *      *      *

NEXT: Part two of a history of illegal abortion in Douglas County, including other herbs, extracts, and preparations women used to rid themselves of a fetus; and the prosecution of an Oakland, Oregon osteopath who pleaded guilty to manslaughter by abortion in 1968. . . 

Read the introduction to my series, Abortion, past and future

Abortion, past and future . . . part 1

Underneath the tweets and insults, this president (or at least the longer-term reactionary forces who are using him as a handy cover) will be laboring to change the scope and direction of this nation’s policies and laws.

As I’ve noted, each new vacancy on the Supreme Court provides another opportunity for the religious right to overturn Roe v. Wade. Don’t think they won’t do their utmost to make it happen.

Oregon has the dubious honor of being only one of three states that will vote on an anti-abortion measure (the other two are Alabama and West Virginia) this November: Measure 106, to ban public funding for abortions, so our state will end up with more babies born into poverty, and thereby more future welfare, government control, and crime. Initiative signature gatherers got 106 approved a month ago.

Effectively, it’s already happened across much of the nation, years and years ago. It’s difficult but vital for those of us who live on the coasts, and in the big “blue” metro regions, to keep in mind that abortion is not even available to women who live in 87 percent of all the counties across the U.S., legal though it might be.

Back in the late 1980s, when I was a reporter in southern Oregon for the Roseburg News-Review, my work on the police and medical beat made me aware that even then, a woman who wanted an abortion could not obtain a legal one anywhere in Douglas County -- the fifth largest in Oregon in terms of square mileage, ninth (out of 36) in population.

For a time after abortion had been legalized everywhere in the U.S., a veteran pediatrician in Roseburg had performed them, but by the summer of 1990 he had retired, and as far as I could tell, nobody else would do them: no private practitioners, not the county health division, and none of the hospitals.

On top of the financial and emotional costs, pregnant teenagers as well as single adult women and overburdened moms had to find someone to drive them to Eugene, Ashland, or Portland (more than an hour at the nearest) to get it done. Such appears to be the case across much of the nation today, especially in the Midwest and the South.

Back in 1990, two anti-abortion measures were scheduled for the November ballot in Oregon: Measure 8 sought to prohibit abortions altogether with the usual trio of exceptions (rape, incest, and to prevent the death of the mother); and Measure 10 would compel doctors give parents or a custodial adult two days advance notice before a minor could obtain an abortion.

I figured this was an excellent time to inform local readers what abortion had been like before it had become legal (since not a few voters appeared to believe it would be a great move to return to that condition) . . .  and what motivations (and obstacles) faced local women since it had supposedly become their right.

How and what I managed to get published about abortion in Douglas County (and not) is a story in itself. The short version is that the managing editor initially tried to wrest the idea away from me and give it to someone else . . . then assigned additional reporters to the project who hadn’t been motivated to tackle it before I proposed to do it . . . and the ultimate result was that publication got delayed so long that the series not only didn’t appear before the election, but got held up an additional three months until after I was no longer employed at the paper! (Plus, one piece and several details turned up missing, and I was never consulted about any of it.)

Although the effort was a disappointment in toto, I felt proud of specific work I’d done: researching what I could find on abortions in the region before they became legal, interviewing the pediatrician who did them after, and several women with varying personal experiences and points of view.

But let’s start with a small but essential piece that never saw the light of day. I did a sidebar to explain that, although women could not get an abortion on demand in Douglas County, this did not mean the procedure never occurred (which I suspected a lot of citizens believed). Here’s the draft report I turned in about that, which somehow never got into the paper. . . . 

*      *     *      *      *

Each year, an average of 250 Douglas County women seek abortions elsewhere in the state. So why doesn’t anyone offer the service locally any more?

“That’s a very tough question,” Dr. J.M. Vargas-Bozo said. “I don’t think anyone feels comfortable doing them. Also, there’s pressure from some groups.”

“Yes, it wasn’t easy,” said retired Dr. Jim Harris, who was picketed during the time he performed legal abortions. “I certainly didn’t appreciate it when the pickets came around. Fortunately, they didn’t know where my office was.”

This is not to say abortions are never performed in Douglas County. Both Roseburg hospitals perform “therapeutic abortions” for incomplete miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other medical reasons.

According to Sandy Hendy, nurse manager of the Women’s Center at Douglas Community Hospital, medical authorities estimate that one in six to one in eight of all fertilized eggs pass out of the woman’s system unnoticed with her menstrual bleeding within 12 to 14 weeks from conception.

For first-time conceptions, the rate of “natural” abortion may be as high as 25 percent.

“That changes the focus from the abortion issue,” Hendy said. “Mother Nature has said, ‘this isn’t gonna go,’ and already taken care of it.”

Local hospitals will perform dilation and curettage to clean the inner lining of the uterus if a woman has not passed all the products of conception and continues to bleed. DCH performed 22 D&Cs on that basis in 1989 and 16 this year to date, according to Hendy.

“They’re technically an abortion, but as far as the Department of Vital Statistics is concerned, they’re not,” Hendy said.

An ectopic pregnancy occurs when the egg implants in one of the fallopian tubes. This poses a grave health risk to the mother because she is apt to experience severe abdominal pain and the tube may rupture. Hendy estimates DCH performs roughly a dozen abdominal surgeries for ectopic pregnancies per year.

But if a woman seeks an abortion for anything other than medical reasons, no hospital or clinic will do it in Douglas County.

“It’s a real emotional issue, and physicians have chosen not to do them,” Hendy said.

“Nobody wants the harassment and it’s certainly not a moneymaking proposition,” Harris said. “It isn’t worth the hassle you’d have to go through to do them.”

NEXT: a history of illegal abortions in Douglas County, Oregon, circa 1873-1968

A Harlan Ellison Memory - Cambridge, MA, January 1981

Harlan was at least an hour late, of course. He had enjoyed a lengthy dinner with friends before striding in dressed in a jacket over a black T-shirt that depicted a penguin armed with a submachine gun with the caption “Penguins Have No Mercy!”

I apologize, he said to the room; I’ve got only about 11 pages written of a 16-page story I had intended to read tonight. But with your indulgence, I’ll finish it right here and then read it. It was a Friday and I could walk the 10 blocks home, so I wasn’t worried about staying out late. I don’t recall that anyone else objected (or walked out) either.

The Sheraton Commander is a grand old hotel at the north end of Cambridge Common, the “village green” that stands northwest of Harvard Square, between most of the campus of Harvard College and the former Radcliffe College. (The two, Harvard and Radcliffe -- once all-boys and all-girls schools -- gradually merged in the late 1960s and 1970s.)

In retrospect, I was lucky to have arrived from Oregon the very year (1977) that a small second-floor operation known as the Science Fantasy Bookstore opened just a half block south of Harvard Square. Back then, the street leading down to the river (and the Anderson Memorial Bridge, from which Quentin Compson was said to have leaped to his death by drowning, according to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury) was known as Boylston. It became JFK Street in 1981.