Do Women Who Had Abortions Feel They Made the Right Choice?

Six American researchers analyzed data from the Turnaway Study, which compared the experiences of women who had had legal abortions with those who were denied abortions because they were too far along in their pregnancies. Abortion is currently legal all over the United States, but individual states set the limits as to when a woman can have an abortion. 

 

In some states, a woman may have an abortion as late as the end of the second trimester (at the end of the sixth month). In other states, abortion is limited to the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

 

In this study, researchers telephoned women who had had abortions at 30 different abortion clinics across the United States. Each abortion clinic included in the study offered abortions later than any other clinic within a 150-mile radius. This allowed the researchers to interview women who had had abortions later in their pregnancies. 

 

The research team looked at whether women had planned their pregnancy, whether they had access to counseling when they made their decision to terminate the pregnancy, whether they were in a relationship when they had the abortion and the preference of the man regarding the abortion, whether they had support for daily tasks of life during pregnancy, the degree of social stigma they felt they would experience due to the abortion, and how late in pregnancy they had the procedure. 

 

From time to time up to three years after the abortion the women were asked whether they felt happiness, relief, guilt, sadness, or anger, and how often, in the week preceding each interview. 

 

Participants in the study received a $50 gift card after each interview. Although the majority of women in the study were 20 to 25 years old, like the majority of women who get abortions in the US, their ethnic diversity (white, African-American, Asian, Hispanic) roughly reflected the ethnic diversity of the country as a whole.

 

Most importantly, no matter how soon or how later women had their abortions, whether their pregnancies were planned or unplanned, a month after the procedure or three years after the procedure, more than 99 percent of women who had abortions reported that they had made the right decision. 

 

In any given interview, there was a greater than 95 percent chance that the woman would report she made the right choice. Negative emotions, in this study, tended to subside over time. Guilt over abortion seems to be minimal.

That doesn't mean that most women see abortion as a good thing. The idea that an abortion could be desirable is not utterly unknown among American women, but it is a very rare point of view. Most women in the USA who have abortions simply believe they were necessary, and move on with their lives.