Why hundreds of scientists are weighing in on a high-stakes US abortion case: Studies suggest that a reversal of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision would be detrimental for many.
EXCERPT:
But as he wrote those words, studies to supply such data were in the works. Chief among them was an initiative to compare women who had abortions with those who wanted them, but were turned away from clinics for various reasons, including state restrictions or a lack of doctor availability. Called the Turnaway Study, the effort followed about 1,000 women in the United States for five years after they sought abortions. The women were similar in terms of physical, mental and economic well-being initially, but diverged over time1.
In more than 40 reports published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, researchers analysed what happened to the women, adjusting for potential confounding factors such as age. The overall finding was that, on average, receiving an abortion didn’t harm women’s mental or physical health, but being denied an abortion resulted in some negative financial and health outcomes.
“The science clearly shows that abortion is incredibly common, and it is important to women living full lives,” says Diana Greene Foster, leader of the Turnaway Study and a reproductive-health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Recent years have seen the Turnaway and other studies referenced in abortion court cases. For example, judges have cited a 2018 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report finding that abortion is safe. This and other reports find that mortality rates are nearly 4 times as high for colonoscopies — and 14 times as high for childbirth2 — as for legal abortion procedures.
No comments:
Post a Comment