Let women choose: A humble request (backed up by science)

How familiar are you with the Turnaway Study? If you attended not one but two Annual Meeting sessions on the groundbreaking look at how getting an abortion, or being turned away from getting a wanted abortion, affects women and families in the short- and long-term, you’re now intimately familiar with the study’s results. And you probably walked away with the same conclusion the research did: Women should be allowed to make choices that are best for them.

For five years, the Turnaway Study followed women who had first-trimester abortions, women who had abortions near a particular clinic’s gestational cut-off (which varies across the country) and women who wanted abortions but were turned away from 30 clinics across the country. Researchers found that women who were unable to get abortions at the clinics were often younger than those who were not turned away. Of those, most ended up giving birth and parenting as a result of the pregnancy. About 20 percent miscarried or had abortions at other facilities, which they had to travel further to get, session presenters reported.

The study confirmed what others have shown for years: That many women seek an abortion because of financial reasons. They say that it’s not the right time for them to have a baby, and nearly a third say they need to focus on the children they have already. There’s no evidence of mental health harms from abortion — in fact, most have positive emotions afterward. But even women who are denied an abortion are resilient. There’s also no sign that women who receive an abortion use tobacco, alcohol or drugs to cope with their emotions afterward, but those denied an abortion are not likely to curb problem use, according to findings presented on Tuesday in Denver.

Financially, being denied an abortion can have a big impact. Women who were turned away were more likely to be receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families than those who had an abortion. They were also more likely to be receiving food assistance and more likely to have a household income below the federal poverty level, with no change over time.

The existing children of women who sought abortions were less likely to reach developmental milestones if their mothers were denied the abortion than if they received the abortion, the study found.

But a surprising finding? Being turned away from receiving an abortion did not hinder women’s educational attainment. Women who were forced to carry a pregnancy to term tended to have lower-level degrees, but the researchers pointed out that those women also tended to be younger.

And while women who were able to have an abortion were likely to end unhealthy relationships quickly, by the end of the five-year study, women denied abortions were less likely to have quality relationships than women who received an abortion. Session presenter Diana Foster pointed to the resiliency of women.

“We don’t think having a baby is a permanent derailment of your entire life, but it does set you off course for several years,” she said.

The study authors noted that there were probably many women who did not make it into the study because they were never able to get together the money to make an appointment for an abortion in the first place. And still others were probably chasing fundraising until they passed a gestational cut-off. All the session speakers agreed that repealing the Hyde Amendment — which blocks federal Medicaid money from funding abortions — could go a long way to helping women take control of their reproductive health.

Editor’s note: This article was corrected post-publication.