This won't come as a surprise to the vast majority of women: abortion doesn't have much effect on mental health, unless it's denied.
It’s an idea that has long been used as an argument against abortion—that terminating a pregnancy causes women to experience emotional and psychological trauma.
Some states require women seeking abortions to be counseled that they might develop mental health problems. Now a new study, considered to be the most rigorous to look at the question in the United States, undermines that claim. Researchers followed nearly 1,000 women who sought abortions nationwide for five years and found that those who had the procedure did not experience more depression, anxiety, low self-esteem or dissatisfaction with life than those who were denied it. […]
The study, published on Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, found psychological symptoms increased only in women who sought abortions but were not allowed to have the procedure because their pregnancies were further along than the cutoff time at the clinic they visited. But their distress was short-lived, whether they went elsewhere for an abortion or delivered the baby. About six months after being turned away from the first abortion clinic, their mental health resembled that of women who were not turned away and had abortions.
News flash: women have been dealing with unwanted or unexpected or unplanned for pregnancies for as long as women have existed. They've been getting rid of those pregnancies for the whole of that existence, as well. So, yeah, we've pretty much known all along that this medical decision, this controlling-your-own-life decision, is something the vast majority of us are capable of making, and capable of living perfectly well with, thank you very much.
And, yes, having ridiculous barriers put in front of us when we're needing to make this controlling-our-lives decision is going to make us distressed, and pissed off, and anxious. Because someone who has nothing to do with your life taking away the most basic power you should have—the power to say what happens to your body—is distressing, to put it mildly. This myth has been perpetuated by the forced-birthers who pretend that their anti-abortion jihad is about protecting women. It's not. It's about controlling women.