From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/abortion-poverty-study_n_2130890.html
By Aaron Sankin
Posted: 11/14/2012
Women who attempted to get abortions but were denied are three times as likely to fall into poverty than those whose efforts were not blocked, a recent study conducted by researchers at University of California San Francisco found.
UCSF’s Bixby Center on Global Reproductive Health examined 3,000 interviews conducted with over 1,000 women from across the United States who had either received abortions or were turned away because their pregnancies had already passed the clinic’s gestational limit. The study aimed to determine the effects carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term had on women’s mental, physical and socio-economic health.
Researchers found that a year after seeking an abortion, more than three-quarters of the women turned away were on public assistance and 67 percent were below the poverty line. Fewer than half of those turned away held a full-time job.
Figures dropped significantly for the women who received abortions.
“When a woman is denied the abortion she wants, she is statistically more likely to wind up unemployed, on public assistance, and below the poverty line,” lead researcher Dr. Diana Greene Foster explained to io9. “Another conclusion we could draw is that denying women abortions places more burden on the state because of these new mothers’ increased reliance on public assistance programs.”
Research also revealed that one of the main reasons women sought abortions in the first place was monetary: 45 percent were on some form of public assistance and two-thirds had incomes below the federal poverty line.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/abortion-poverty-study_n_2130890.html
