This is the United States of America. Civilized. First World. The Individual has rights.

Pregnancy is not a difficult discussion to have. Pregnancy in the First World means it is a mature decision. Just that simple. That decision is between a woman and her physician. If she wants to include her spouse, significant other, boyfriend or sperm donor in the decision that is up to her, but, in all honesty this is no place for government.

Raising children in the USA is suppose to be conducted by adults not children nearly not old enough to be babysitters.

When a child becomes pregnant for whatever reason she does that should never impact her life so profoundly it will alter her 'success path.' This is the year 2013, not 1913. Those decisions are very simple these days.

Post Partum Depression is not a joke. Now, be 14 years old and suffer through it while you mother is yelling at you to change the baby's diaper. That is a completely hideous scenario and it is profound child abuse. 

Post Partum Depression can lead to psychosis due to hormonal imbalances. There are studies existing that prove it. The usual scenario that is classic was seen in Texas with a woman of many children, spending most of her childbearing years in poverty and her last child was a girl. Classic. Starting a fourteen year old girl down that path is a societal illness, not a point of pride. Punitively telling her to raise a baby is outrageous.

Has anyone ever done a study on these girls and how their lives transpire? Do they ever marry? Do their children grow up without stigma? What happens to these children?

Bioethicists will state the fetus feels pain at a certain point, hence the valid reason to outlaw abortion. Abortion is a surgical procedure that usually involves anesthetics of one kind or another. That may sound cruel and cold, but, women are alive and fetus are not. 

If a fetus can be saved and provided for adoption, then I am all for it. However, there is STILL the issue of consent by the parents. At that point if the fetus is viable and alive and the parents want the child regardless of the intended abortion, they have the right to do so. This is not a harvesting procedure.

A woman's life comes before that of a fetus. There is no black and white here. The spectrum of "Mother and Baby" is infinite and every case unique. That is why there needs to be privacy between a woman and her physician. 

Let's not make this more than it is. It does not have a place in politics. Government does not have a place in this decision. This does not include criminal content such as the horrors of Gosnell. Crime is not abortion even though there are those that would like it to be so.

A woman has a right to her body. She has a right to decide about pregnancy. She has a right to prevent and abort pregnancy. There is nothing difficult here. 

Planned Parenthood has been a relief for women. Their services are vital, they add to quality of life and they uphold the dignity of women of all ages.

It is time to put this to bed. Pregnancy is serious business. It takes a mature woman to consent to it and provide a place for a child in her life, all her life.

Unless the USA is going to raise the children of women denied abortions, then they need to get out of their uterus.

Women trapped in unwanted pregnancy carry a burden more than a joy.

May 8, 2013

...Dr Rebecca Mercier, (click here) from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of North Carolina and co-author of the research said that unintended pregnancy carried to term may have a long term effect on women.

She said that healthcare professionals should therefore consider asking about pregnancy at early antepartum visits to screen for unintended pregnancy as women who report that their pregnancy was unintended or unwanted may benefit from earlier or more targeted screening both during and following pregnancy. The study has been published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. (ANI). 

Young women are worried about boyfriends and not babies. Young minds and hearts need the tools to make it to their adult years before pregnancy.

May 23, 2013
By Simone De Alba

...They give women a reality check: (click here) having a baby isn't meant to be fashionable, it's hard work that demands resources like emotional support, money, and time. One of their main prevention tools is having women talk with young parents.

Emerson said, "That's what really is getting the word out, our young parents saying, "Hey, yes, I'm doing it and I'm being very responsible but I really could have done this easier if I hadn't."

Although prevention is a priority, unexpected pregnancies still take place. Under that circumstance many young women opt for adoption....

Casey was never a clear majority.

Judging from (click here) its unexpected jump into the most-read list, this graph showing the breakdown of care provided by Planned Parenthood’s health centers is proving useful to people. So here it is again, lifted from April. Note the light blue slice, which suggests that cancer screenings account for approximately one-sixth of Planned Parenthood’s activities.

Telling a teenage girl she has no options is emotional abuse and needs to be viewed in that light.

Child Maltreatment 2011 (click here)

Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.

Teens must be given the opportunity to carry through with an abortion without guilt and with their self-esteem intact. 

The Casey decision is wrong. A teen should be required to have privacy in making decisions about contraception and pregnancy.

They must be educated to their options in preventing pregnancy and have free and open access to contraception if that is their plight.

Not all young women grow up in households prepared to educate them about sex or willing to teach them about sex. The harm comes when a teen is subjected to term pregnancies by obligation of a parent's prejudice.

A child giving birth to a child is dangerous business. Doctors are qualified to help and if sought by a teen, they should.

Pregnancy is a mature decision for people with resources. Girls are not mature nor have the resources to be a parent. It is emotional abuse plain and simple. 

March 10, 1991

...But she was only 11--an age at which most girls are considered too young to baby-sit the kids next-door. (click here)

And she was pregnant.

For months, she ignored the missed periods; her experience with menstruation had been brief, after all. She ignored the nausea and swollen stomach.

"It was, like, real denial until I actually felt something moving inside of me," says Linda Pollard, now a senior at El Modena High School and the mother of a 5-year-old daughter. "I have a big mouth--I like to tell people things. But this was something I couldn't tell anyone, I was so scared."

The statistics are frustrating and frightening. In the past decade, births among young girls have climbed both nationally and locally--although the population of 10- to 14-year-olds, caught in between baby booms, has declined.

Recently released figures show that in 1989 at least 61 girls under age 15 had babies in Orange County--up from 49 girls the previous year and 22 girls in 1979. The increase mirrors the national trend, in which, in 1989, 10,588 girls ages 10 to 14 gave birth....

The Casey decision came in 1992. The incidence of teen pregnancy from that date has risen.

The Casey decision was not a clear majority, but, a plurality.

Except for three opening sections of the O'Connor-Kennedy-Souter opinion, Casey was a divided judgment, as no other sections of any opinion were joined by a majority of justices. However, the plurality decision jointly written by Justices Souter, O'Connor, and Kennedy is recognized as the lead opinion with precedential weight because each of its parts were concurred in by at least two other Justices, albeit different ones for each part.

Casey needs to be revisited with fresh statistics. The new Emergency Contraception will mitigate the statistics now, but, I am fairly confident the impact of Casey was negative to many, many teens.

A teenage should never, ever be required to sustain a pregnancy. That mandate is out of the question.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB) — Teen birth rates in Massachusetts fall to record low levels. (click here)

The Massachusetts teen birth rate has dropped more than 50 percent since 1989.

The latest numbers from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health from 2010 show teen birth rates at their lowest level on record.

That’s good news for those who work with teens to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

“Tapestry feels really, really good about the role we play in providing preventive birth control and helping kids know how to say no,” says Leslie Tarr-Laurie, President and CEO of Tapestry health.

Tarr-Laurie also says that access to emergency contraception has reduced the number of teen births.

“One thing that has played a significant role is access to emergency contraception, which is one pill that is taken up to five days after unprotected sex,” Tarr-Laurie adds.

Last year, she says Tapestry distributed more than a thousand emergency contraceptive pills....

Medicaid is paying for half the births in Oregon? Really?

This chart is from the Kaiser Family Foundation (click here).

The year is 2009. The color of each state indicates the number of pregnancies paid for by Medicaid. If one side of a political agenda is paid for by my tax dollars why isn't there an equal representation of a women's right to choice within these statistics?

Not only that, but, what is UP with all these incredibly high Medicaid deductibles. It started with $4.00 co-pay for a medication and now it obstructs a person's ability to pay the co-pay to receive treatment? What's up with that?

If we are going to pay for pregnancy, then we sure better be able to pay for the Morning After Pill!!!!!!!!!! Dah!

In honor of National Women’s Health Week, (click here) Oregon Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie, talked up the benefits of a health initiative that encourages primary care providers to ask women whether they wish to get pregnant within the year or not.

The goal is to provide prenatal care to women who want a baby and contraception options to those who do not. Unintended pregnancies stress out family finances as well as taxpayers, who pick up the cost for half of all births in Oregon, Tomei said on the floor of the Oregon House.  

"In Oregon in 2010, 49 percent of all pregnancies were unintended. Fifty-three percent of all deliveries were paid for by Medicaid," she said.

PolitiFact Oregon was intrigued by the statistic that nearly half of all pregnancies in Oregon in 2010 were unintended. How would anyone track that? What does it mean? Plus, we wanted to know if Medicaid -- a portion of which is called the Oregon Health Plan in Oregon -- paid for 53 percent of all deliveries.  

This is the growing status of many women in the USA. Once a leader in women's rights, the USA is falling into impoverishment of women's status.

If the idea this film applies to many women in the USA makes you feel uncomfortable, it is time to face the facts about the failing status of women in the USA.

This film tells the story (click here) of Ms. A, a young Asian woman with an unwanted pregnancy. Take a walk with Ms. A and discover the barriers she encounters, the stigma she is forced to face and the legal conundrums she has to unravel before she can access safe, affordable and legal abortion. Will she succeed? Or will she become one of the 9.6 million women who are forced to risk unsafe abortions every year in Asia.

Women in the USA do not operate in a vacuum. There is an entire world of women just like them.

International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion (click here)

Date: 

11/05/2012 - 19:26

The International Consortium for Medical Abortion (ICMA) has launched a new international campaign for women's right to safe abortion. The European Society of Contraception and Reproductive Health and other relevant organisations and societies have been invited to take a part in it, so as to challenge the growing threat posed by some conservative political and religious forces that are blocking efforts to improve laws and provide services, determined to exclude abortion from maternal mortality reduction and family planning initiatives....

...Strangely, researchers (click here) have never followed American women who, like S., couldn't get the abortions they wanted, the New York Times Magazine reported. That's about to change. The magazine reported on a study, led by Diana Greene Foster, a demographer and professor of ob-gyn at the University of California, San Francisco. Foster's study is the first to track American women like this over a longer period of time—and the first in the world to compare those women with peers who successfully received abortions.

Although her study is ongoing, Foster already has some answers. Compared to their peers who received abortions, women who can't get the abortions they want have poorer health and are more likely to live in poverty two years on, even though they qualified for government assistance programs as new moms. Meanwhile, everybody in the study, whether they got abortions or not, generally had the same levels of depression and anxiety....

A government like the USA cannot limit women's options in life, assign them to motherhood and then cut off their nutritional support. They do not equate. If ever abortion was eliminated from the rights of women the government has to pick up the slack for the lack of opportunity and choices.

Enforced poverty is not an option in the USA. This is not exclusively a woman's issue. Women are often in relationships. If those relationships are strained because of an unwanted pregnancy; what is she going to do? What then is he going to do? How many men are in poverty because of unwanted pregnancies?

House votes to cut food stamps by $2 billion US (click here)

By Mary Clare Jalonick
June 19, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted on Wednesday to cut food stamps by $2 billion a year as part of a wide-ranging farm bill.

The chamber rejected 234-188 a Democratic amendment to the five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm legislation that would have maintained current spending on food stamps, now called the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program,  or SNAP. The overall bill cuts the $80 billion-a-year program by about 3 percent and makes it harder for some people to qualify.

The food stamp cuts have complicated passage of the bill and its farm-state supporters were working to secure votes Wednesday. Many conservatives have said the food stamp cuts do not go far enough since the program has doubled in cost in the last five years and now feeds 1 in 7 Americans. Liberals have argued against any reductions, contending the House plan could take as many as 2 million needy recipients off the rolls. The White House has threatened a veto over the food stamp cuts....

They were promised they would have a life of hope and prosperity if they concentrated on their education. That promise came from our country's expectations.

Women have a rights. Let's start there.

Women have rights to birth control as a means to achieving their life goals. They have a right to an abortion when strategies to prevent pregnancy fails.

A uterus is a management issue, not a procreation issue.

If you want to worry about procreation, take it up with the church, not the government.

February 21, 2013

By Allie Grasgreen

The facts of women being more likely than men to go to college, (click here) perform better academically, and major in fields other than science, technology, engineering and mathematics are mostly attributable to factors affecting students before – in some cases, long before – they enter the halls of academe. But that doesn’t mean colleges can’t do anything to mitigate the consequences.

Those are the conclusions of the authors of a new book, The Rise of Women (Russell Sage Foundation), about how and why female students continue to outpace their male counterparts in education (yet still can’t seem to earn a comparable paycheck).

“We’ve seen astonishing change over a very short historical period,” Thomas DiPrete, the book’s co-author and a sociology professor at Columbia University, said on a call with reporters Wednesday.

Starting with the people born around 1950, the rate of men’s bachelor’s degree completion stopped growing, and it stayed stagnant for years. In 1970, 20 percent of men and 14 percent of women finished college. By 2010, women’s graduation rates had “skyrocketed” to 36 percent, DiPrete said, while the rate among men grew only seven points, to 27 percent.

Today, women outpace men in college enrollment by a ratio of 1.4 to 1....

This is outrageous.

Perhaps pregnancy from rape is something Congressman Franks understands better than we know. Texas jail employees? Were the women provided the Morning After pill by the medical office?

By Jill Heller

June 17 2013 5:29 PM

Two women (click here) who served sentences at Live Oak County Jail in South Texas have filed a federal civil lawsuit charging prison guards with running a brutal “rape camp.” Although three of the jailers named in the suit were previously arrested on sexual assault charges, the plaintiffs are seeking damages for civil rights violations....

Abortion is not about babies. 

It was never about babies. 

It is about women. 

Women are citizens. The interest the country has is with the woman. A pregnancy is not a citizen and has no rights.

The 19th amendment recognized the fact women are in control of their own decisions. It validated their power as a citizen. Acting responsibly as a citizen does not include getting pregnant or keeping an unwanted pregnancy.

The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

It's Sunday Night

A mature woman is allowed to have her life the way she wants it.

Have you seen her latest tour. Wow.

"It feels reductive." ... "Look it up."...(Tending to present a subject or problem in a simplified form, esp. one viewed as crude.)

The Tour:

...Hours (click here) before her concert event, "Madonna: The MDNA Tour," airs June 22 on the EPIX network, the queen of reinventing herself invited 500 of her biggest fans to audition for a chance to work out with her, learning the movies the megastar uses to train for her mega-tours....

The tour until the last segments of the show is all done in contrast. Black and white contrast. There a less than five minutes during the body of the performance interspersed with red or orange. The colors are introduced for a reason.

But, the use of contrast rather than color creates a blending of performance and audience. She is completely in her element. She is passionate and engaged. When the performances are coming to conclusion she literally turns the microphone over to the audience to join her.

The performance turns up the house lights and adds lots and lots of color to bring everyone back to reality. She is quite the showman or in this case, show lady.

She is also a very interesting business woman. She sells her products in "local" currency to avoid inflated prices due to rate exchanges (click here).

"Express Yourself" by Madonna and Stephen Bray (click here)

[Spoken:]
Come on girls
Do you believe in love?
'Cause I got something to say about it
And it goes something like this

Don't go for second best baby
Put your love to the test
You know, you know, you've got to
Make him express how he feels
And maybe then you'll know your love is real

You don't need diamond rings
Or eighteen karat gold
Fancy cars that go very fast
You know they never last, no, no
What you need is a big strong hand
To lift you to your higher ground
Make you feel like a queen on a throne
Make him love you till you can't come down

Don't go for second best baby
Put your love to the test
You know, you know, you've got to
Make him express how he feels
And maybe then you'll know your love is real

Long stem roses are the way to your heart
But he needs to start with your head
Satin sheets are very romantic
What happens when you're not in bed
You deserve the best in life
So if the time isn't right then move on
Second best is never enough
You'll do much better baby on your own

Don't go for second best baby
Put your love to the test
You know, you know, you've got to
Make him express how he feels
And maybe then you'll know your love is real

Express yourself
(You've got to make him)
Express himself
Hey, hey, hey, hey
So if you want it right now, make him show you how
Express what he's got, oh baby ready or not

And when you're gone he might regret it
Think about the love he once had
Try to carry on, but he just won't get it
He'll be back on his knees

So pleaseDon't go for second best baby
Put your love to the test
You know, you know, you've got to
Make him express how he feels
And maybe then you'll know your love is real

Express yourself
(You've got to make him)
Express himself
Hey, hey, hey, hey
So if you want it right now, make him show you how
Express what he's got, oh baby ready or not

Express yourself

Express yourself

Hey, hey
So if you want it right now, then make him show you how
Express what he's got, oh baby ready or not

Express yourself

What I always find completely laughable about egotists like Art Pope is their innate ability to disregard the USA Constitution.

If our Founders wanted to propagate a dictatorship they sure as heck fooled me.

Let's just get right down to it. This is criminal activity by the North Carolina Budget Director, Art Pope.

Hiding in what Pope would call private hubris lies real danger to the people on this LIST. This LIST is highly immoral and irresponsible behavior by such a high ranking North Carolina unelected authority.

Leave it to the Pope Administration to go well over the line. He is entitled, you know.
Completely, completely inappropriate values and behavior by any government. 

The Moral Monday Protesters (click here)

Someone needs to find a MUGSHOT of Pope and place it on every telephone pole in North Carolina.

The McCrory administration has more moves than a Pole Dancer. No offense to Pole Dancers.

I found this really interesting. I mean these guys are so corrupt they need their own toxic waste dump.

...In 2002, (click here) North Carolina became the first state to adopt judicial public financing. The opt-in system works by requiring candidates to raise $39,450 from 350 donors in increments between $10 and $500 to qualify. Once candidates have raised this amount of money, they can access funds provided by a special account run by the state so long as they cease other private fundraising.

Their political aspirations beyond North Carolina has become very limited at this point.

This IS the McCrory Administration in name only. It is corrupt and out of control. They have no intention of leaving the public sector alone. These guys want money and plenty of it. The North Carolina Treasury and all the federal aid the state can get is their oyster.

That said, this LIST is no hidden agenda to destroy lives, either through violence, incitement of violence, creating and propagating hate to bring about favorable verbiage throughout the State of North Carolina of the Pope Adminstration. They want to destroy voices of opposition. That is oppression. It is very southern. It gives the USA a bad name and it victimizes.

But, the article above is interesting to me because it caused the rise of the Republican majority in the state. It was done through MONEY dedicated to image building. It didn't matter the concessions they made, the lies they told or the reputations they destroyed along the way, they were going to be elected.

Now. They no longer need the monies and the ending of the program is intended to limit any and all opposition in elections in North Carolina. To state the Pope Administration is a grievance to democracy is an gross understatement.

He is not a benevolent presence within the state. He has sold his soul more times than there are numbers in the universe to get to this point and now everything is a power grab.

This would be a very sad portrait of a wayward man, but, his power within the state is significant and if he can destroy these people he will and the method does not matter.

Within the context of this LIST is a threat. A huge threat and he knows it. He will use the power of the NC Budget to leverage power to destroy these folks. He will lean on their employers, their churches, their affiliations and will move beyond just them to their families. That is not hysteria, that is fact. This is a warning to the people of North Carolina. "Do something about this, or you will feel the pain."

The hate of Art Pope is completely transparent in his actions in GOING THROUGH THE TROUBLE of even compiling this LIST. Why do this? He is the State Budget Director. He has time to assign these tasks to staff either public or private? Really? He has this as a priority? He sanctions this? Someone had to go through a lot of WILLINGNESS to put together a list and then pretend it was hubris. Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone based in democratic content do this? There is only one logical conclusion. It is vindictive, cruel and seeks control over any outcomes of The Pope Administration.

The ONLY reasonable actions by an elected Governor would be to ask for the resignation of Mr. Pope. That won't happen. This aggravation of the public will escalate. Mr. Pope controls the McCrory administration; these actions state so. Would anyone carry out such a horrible idea if he were worried about his job? Of course not.

Now. The moral people of North Carolina will huddle in places where those loyal to Pope can't be found so they can formulate how to reclaim their freedom AGAIN.

The observer believes this is a flame at the BP Deepwater Horizon.

The more likely definition of this discovery is the release of methane. This is most likely a methane hydrate. As far as we know underwater fires are not that common yet, UNTIL, the saturation of 'aqueous' amounts of methane and hydrocarbons allows it to happen.

The question is how much does the global community tolerate of these mischievous activities for profit when Earth's intolerance of excess greenhouse gases is already know. The excesses of greenhouse gases has been well known for decades. That knowledge is what sparked the conservation movement in the 1960s in the USA.

What is of concern is the complete irreverence by governments, especially the USA, to allow atmospheric deterioration which has lead to deaths, droughts and suffering to benefit wealth. Here again the concept within capitalism raises it's ugly side which is the wealth of a few causes suffering of many. Capitalism is not demanded to be benevolent. This is one of the prime examples of how when allowed to compel economies can actually destroy them.

Capitalism has characteristics, no different than the physical characteristics of petroleum products. The characteristics of capitalism are on a spectrum. This level of disregard of life and quality of life and the right for all peoples to their lives is one of the more egregious characteristics of capitalism in practice.

When does this end? Never?

March 15, 2013

Japan announced Tuesday (click here) that researchers had succesfully produced natural gas from offshore methane hydrates, a breakthrough with potentially explosive consequences for both global energy markets and the effort to tackle climate change.

The Japanese Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry announced that a team aboard a drilling ship pearched above the Eastern Nankai Trough had extracted the gas from hydrates trapped 1,000 feet below the sea floor surface. Methane hydrates, also known as clathrates, are deposits of natural gas trapped within the crystaline structure of frozen water, leading some to refer to hydrates as "fire ice."...

When does automated capitalism realize it has destroyed the potential employment of a generation of Americans. Not just employment, but, their birth right and promise.

One of the dreamscapes of the petroleum industry is for a CEO to be able to sit on a beach to soak up the sun (I am assuming with ample supplies of sunscreen) while controlling the production in the companies oil and methane fields by computer. I suppose the joke is the salary would justify the burden.

But, the fact of the matter is the petroleum industry is seeking that path. The industry wants completely automated production that cannot be stopped except by those controlling the computer panel. Question comes to mind, "Where are the Chinese hackers when one needs them?" Anonymous, I suppose.

But, levity aside. These same people want to automate everything. No unskilled labor required. They want to automate all forms of transportation including tanker trucks and even personal automobiles. These folks want to live in a world controlled by computers and untouchable by those outside the 'privilege' of wealth.

That arrogance exists, it exists to control wealth and to insult from regulation that might impinge on that wealth. This dreamscape is an outcrop of a characteristic of capitalism. Us and them. Wealth vs poverty. Lack of belonging vs conscience. Preference to isolation in comfort vs suffering. The list is endless.

All these so called discoveries to benefit petroleum discovery and use are all outdated as they happen, because, the planet we live on can't tolerate the abuse. Why go there at all?

To listen to this scientist from Woods Hole is to understand the complete and absolute fluidity of knowledge and how perfection begins to limit that fluidity.

Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution say they know where all oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill went - it's 3,000 feet under the sea. Invisible but still there. This happens the same week shrimpers head back into the water. We talk with one of the author's of a new study who says it may not be visible but the oil is still very much in the Gulf, and hasn't disappeared.

Anoxic water means there is no or depleted dissolved oxygen. Anoxic waters suffocate sealife.

This is modeling, not the actual measurements of the reality.

What We Are [and are not] Modeling (click here)

A simple model of the temperature-dependent biological decay of dissolved oil is embedded in an ocean climate model and used to simulate underwater plumes of dissolved and suspended oil originating from a point source in the northern Gulf of Mexico, with an upper-bound supply rate estimated from the contemporary analysis of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. The behavior of plumes at different depths is found to be determined by the combination of sheared current strength and the vertical profile of decay rate. For all plume scenarios, toxic levels of dissolved oil remain confined to the northern Gulf of Mexico, and abate within weeks after the spill stops. An estimate of oxygen consumption due to microbial oxidation of hydrocarbons suggests that a deep plume of hydrocarbons could lead to localized regions of prolonged hypoxia near the source, but only when oxidation of methane is included. [Abstract from GRL paper]...

One of greatest immediate contributors to dead sealife is anoxic water conditions in the case of underwater oil deposits due to manmade releases. This model attempts to illustrate how the characteristics of the oil and methane contribute to those conditions.

...Changing the decay rate for the oil will affect the extension of the dissolved oil plumes and the timing of oxygen draw-down, but any rate that is broadly consistent with the laboratory studies of the decay of oil in seawater will give broadly similar results. It is only when the dissolved oxygen is fully consumed that the decay rates will be dramatically slower. 

Not in this study are the long term effects of the hydrocarbons themselves in creating birth defects resulting in death of sealife and slowing their recovery curve, especially endangered and threatened marine mammals.