Overwhelming Majority of U.S. Women Don’t Regret Abortion
Image by iStockphoto
(Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than 95 percent of women surveyed in a new U.S. study said they didn’t regret having an abortion and felt that the procedure was the right decision for them.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine followed more than 600 women who underwent the procedure from 30 medical facilities over a three year period and regularly assessed how they felt about they choice they made.
The women, aged 25 on average and from different racial and social backgrounds, were asked a series of questions including what had prompted them to terminate the pregnancy, what emotions the decision provoked and if they still thought it was the right thing to do.
“Women overwhelmingly felt abortion was the right decision in both the short-term and over three years, and the intensity of emotions and frequency of thinking about the abortion declined over time,” the study concluded.
Abortion rights are hotly debated and are an increasingly politicized topic in the United States.
In many states, conservative lawmakers have passed a wave of anti-abortion laws over the past few years seeking to chip away at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion.
Eleven U.S. states require face-to-face counseling before abortion procedures – meaning a woman must make at least two trips to the abortion clinic, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive policy.
The argument that abortion causes women emotional harm is used to regulate the procedure in the United States, the study said, but added research on the issue has been inconclusive.
The stigma often associated with abortion and a lack of social support caused more negative feelings in women, researchers said.
The study’s findings applied equally to women having terminations near gestational age limits and first-trimester abortions.
The survey, commissioned by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a think tank at the University of California, San Francisco, assessed women seeking abortions between 2008 and 2010 and was published this month in the Journal PLOS ONE.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
