From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/study-women-denied-abortions-more-likely-suffer-domestic-violence-and-be-public-assistance
A study tracks outcomes for women who seek and abortion but do not obtain one. The results are not pretty.
By Kathleen Geier
November 19, 2012
Abortion is one of the most common surgical procedures in the United States, and one of the central political issues of our time. Yet in spite of this, there is surprisingly little solid social science research on many of the important social, psychological, and economic consequences of abortion outcomes. Having good research on abortion is important, because research findings are often used to justify abortion policy and law.
For example, in the Supreme Court’s 2007 Carhart case, which upheld a ban on so-called “partial birth abortion,” Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision infamously invoked the paternalistic notion that protecting women from possible negative consequences of their own decision to abort justified abortion restrictions. In theCarhart opinion, Kennedy was influenced by junk social science studies by anti-abortion advocates claiming that women who have abortions suffer from a “post-abortion syndrome” characterized by regret and severe mental health issues. There is no scientific evidence that post-abortion syndrome exists, but that didn’t stop Kennedy from basing his decision on its alleged effects anyway.
One extremely important question Kennedy didn’t give much thought to is the other side of the question: that is, what happens to women who seek abortions but are denied them. For reasons of both ideology and feasibility, this issue had not been studied much — until now, that is. Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco are currently conducting a major longitudinal study of just this question. Known as the Turnaway Study, this project is examining “the mental health, physical health and socioeconomic outcomes of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.” The findings thus far suggest that women who are denied abortions fare significantly less well than those who are able to obtain them.
I’ll discuss those findings later, but first I wanted to describe the study’s methodology. Working with first and second trimester abortion clinics, researchers recruited about 1,000 participants who fell into these three groups:
women whose gestational age was one day to three weeks over the gestational limit and who were turned away from the clinic without receiving an abortion; women whose gestational age was one day to two weeks under the clinic’s gestational limit and who received an abortion; and women who received a medical or surgical abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/study-women-denied-abortions-more-likely-suffer-domestic-violence-and-be-public-assistance
