Anti-abortion rights groups in the US often showcase the stories of women who were tormented by their decicions to terminate their pregnancies. A recent study of 667 women who had abortions, however, finds that 95 percent believe they decided correctly.
There was a time when abortion was a horror that followed American women for the rest of their lives. That time has almost completely passed, but where abortions are difficult to obtain, desperate women sometimes take desperate measures.
Botched, Back Alley Abortions Ruined Women's Lives
Two women I knew, both born about the end of World War I, had abortions in the 1930's. Both had conceived a child out of wedlock. Both would have been alienated from their families and shunned by the small towns in which they lived had they brought the baby to term. Neither had the support of a home of unwed mothers or an adoption agency to provide them with shelter, clothing, food, and medical care while they might have brought their unborns to term.
Both found doctors willing to perform illegal abortions in secret.
One paid the doctor the then-considerable sum of $40 for the procedure. In 1932, this was approximately a month's pay. The pregnancy was terminated, but she developed sepsis and nearly died. (This was about a decade before antibiotics were available.) She managed to have a happy marriage, but never achieved a stable relationship again after her husband died suddenly of a heart attack at an early age.
The second had her abortion in 1933 at the age of 16, with no complications other than the doctor also tied her fallopian tubes. As a result, she never conceived a child. When I last saw her in 2008, when she was 91, she had every surface in every room of her large home filled with a doll, except her kitchen table, where we had coffee.
She mourned her inability to have another child for the rest of her life.
Abortion Safety Today
Abortion is a safer procedure in the US today. In many states it is difficult to find an abortion clinic, but very few women endure backroom or botched procedures. (They are not unknown, especially in deep South Texas.) Fewer women suffer injury or death from abortion than endure complications of pregnancy at every stage of gestation.
When abortion is induced by medication, or medication is used to induce labor before a surgical procedure, complications are essentially zero. Under one percent of women undergoing surgical abortions will develop infections. Death of the mother as a result of abortion is not unknown, but it is:
- Approximately 1 woman in 250,000 when the procedure is performed during the first 8 weeks of pregnancy,
- Approximately 1 woman in 33,000 when the procedure is performed in the ninth through fifteenth weeks,
- Approximately 1 woman in 8,000 after the fourth month of pregnancy.
Death, when it occurs, is typically due to pulmonary embolism, leakage of amniotic fluid into the bloodstream, or complications of anesthesia. In the United States, fewer than percent of all abortions involve induced labor (giving pills to force a miscarriage is much more common in other countries), and essentially all abortions after the first trimester involve surgery.
About one in three pregnancies is ended by abortion in the United States. The procedure is most often performed on women who are 20 to 24 years old. Unintended pregnancies are most common among African-American women, about twice as often as other groups in the USA.
Clearly, elective abortion in the twenty-first century leaves few lasting physical effects on women, but what about its emotional effects?
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.
The study found that:
- Women who had more difficulty finding an abortion provider experienced more negative emotions after they had the procedure.
- Women who had planned to become pregnant experienced more negative emotions after their abortions.
- Women who had more social support for their decisions, or who had had a previous abortion, experienced fewer negative emotions about the procedure.
- The closer a woman was to the time limit to get an abortion, the more positive emotions she felt about the procedure.
- Older women had more positive feelings about the procedure than younger women.
- African-American women and Hispanic women had fewer negative feelings about their abortions than White women.
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.
- Rocca CH, Kimport K, Roberts SCM, Gould H, Neuhaus J, Foster DG. Decision Rightness and Emotional Responses ot Abortion in the United States: A Longitudinal Study. PlosOne. 8 July 2015.
- Photo courtesy of akk_rus via Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/akras/15273149673
- Photo courtesy of Fibonacci Blue via Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/fibonacciblue/6905464604
- http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/252560-overview#3 (Free, but registration may be required.)
- www.newsnet5.com/newsy/study-finds-most-women-dont-regret-getting-an-abortion
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