Women who have abortions have better health five years later than those denied abortions, according to a new study published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine. The data came from the Turnaway Study, a long-term study of women who underwent abortions and women who were denied abortions due to restrictive state-level abortion bans. The study is another piece of the mounting avalanche of data showing that abortion is key to women’s health and well-being, and that the right wing lies when it claims abortion harms women.
Does Abortion Mean Better Health Five Years Later?
The new study followed 874 people who sought an abortion between 2008 and 2010. 328 participants had first-trimester abortions; 383 had second-trimester abortions, and 163 were forced by abortion restrictions to give birth.
Researchers looked at numerous measures of health, including abdominal, back, and joint pain; headaches, hypertension and diabetes, obesity, and death.
There were no significant differences in self-reported health or pain between those who underwent first or second-trimester abortions. However, pregnant people denied abortions were significantly more likely to report poor health 5 years later. Twenty percent of people who had abortions reported poor or fair health 5 years later, compared to 27% who gave birth.
Two participants who gave birth after being denied an abortion died in the postpartum period—a maternal death rate that is much higher than the national average. This suggests that research emphasizing that abortion bans will kill women may greatly underestimate the impact on maternal mortality. While more research is needed, it’s possible that women who are denied abortions they want are much more likely to die during or immediately after pregnancy.
Debunking the Right’s Lies About Abortion’s Impact on Health
Pro-choice leaders have long emphasized that abortion is a key prong of women’s healthcare. Anti-choicers have continued to spread lies about abortion:
- They say women regret their abortions. The research says women are more likely to regret not having an abortion, and to feel relief after.
- They say abortion is dangerous. Women are actually at least 14 times more likely to die giving birth than having an abortion, and that figure is rising.
- They say abortion causes breast cancer. It doesn’t.
- They say they want to enact clinic restrictions to protect women. Medical research shows that abortion restrictions are the real threat to women’s health.
- They say they want to protect women from coercive partners, when the research shows that women denied abortions are more likely to remain in abusive relationships.
The latest study is just one more link in the chain connecting abortion access to better health. Women denied abortions are more likely to live in poverty, to need government assistance, to be abused, and to face a host of other barriers to a healthy, good life. Anti-choicers don’t actually care about families. And they certainly don’t care about telling the truth. One recent study found that media coverage of abortion is so skewed toward right-wing propaganda that it is more likely to feature men lying about abortion than sound medical research.
The Link Between Abortion and Maternal Mortality
Numerous states have recently passed highly restrictive abortion laws in an attempt to get the Supreme Court to revisit its original ruling in Roe vs. Wade. Abortion clinics in Georgia would, under a law that goes into effect January 2020, be prohibited from performing an abortion after about six weeks, when fetal cardiac activity is detectable. The states enacting the most draconian legislation also have some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world. Georgia ranks last in the United States for maternal mortality. It is more dangerous to give birth in Georgia than in 100 other countries, including Vietnam, Iran, Iraq.
Despite this, anti-choicers have done nothing to improve maternal health outcomes. In some states, they even support the death penalty for people who seek abortions. If strict abortion bans go into effect, more pregnant people will die. For anti-choice leaders, life has always begun at conception and ended at birth.