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20 November 2012

Here’s some abortion science for Maria Miller

Abortion "turnaways" three times more likely to fall below poverty line.

By New Statesman

The debate over abortion limits drags on, Maria Miller has enraged Women’s Hour listeners by suggesting that the limit should be set by “people’s opinions rather than science”, according to the Huffington Post.

If I was being nice, I’d say Maria Miller is suggesting that the cold hard anatomical data doesn’t cover important social factors that can only be gathered by talking to people. But science also includes social science,  and these controlled studies can give a much better idea of the social factors than mere “opinion”. Here’s one recent example.

New research from the University of California, the “Turnaway Project”, studied women who had turned up at the abortion clinic a few days too late – looking at how they fared compared to their contempories who had got there in time. Here’s a summary of what they found, taken from their statement on their Facebook group:

We have found that there are no mental health consequences of abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. There are other interesting findings: even later abortion is safer than childbirth and women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term are three times more likely than women who receive an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later.

The study chose two groups with similar demographics – two thirds lived below the poverty line, and 45 per cent was recieving state assistance. A year later, the groups had dramatic differences. 76 per cent of those who were refused abortions were now recieving state help, against 44 per cent from the other group.

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The new mothers were also more likely to live below the poverty line, and more likely to be out of work – 48 per cent were working, against 58 per cent of those who got abortions.

Differences also appeared in vulnerability to domestic violence: Turnaways were much more likely to stay with an abusive partner. Reports of incidents of domestic violence for this group in the last 6 months were at 7 per cent, compared to 3 per cent for those who got abortions. The researchers commented that this was completely down to the difficulty of getting out of an abusive relationship when a young child was involved.

The blog io9 spoke to the researchers about the emotional health of the study participants:

As the researchers said at the American Public Health Association Meeting, “One week after seeking abortion, 97% of women who obtained an abortion felt that abortion was the right decision; 65% of turnaways still wished they had been able to obtain an abortion.” Also one week after being denied an abortion, turnaways told the researchers that they had more feelings of anxiety than the women who had abortions.

Women who had abortions overwhelmingly reported feeling relieved (90%), though many also felt sad and guilty afterwards. All of these feelings faded naturally over time in both groups, however. A year later, there were no differences in anxiety or depression between the two groups.

Controlled studies like this one provides meaningful information that mere “public pressure” can’t. It’s time they were taken seriously by policy makers.

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