USA – Abortion influences everything

By inhibiting drug development, economic growth, and military recruitment, as well as driving doctors away from the places they’re needed most, bans almost certainly harm you — yes, you.

By Keren Landman, MD
Mar 20, 2024

Last year in Texas, federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that, based on his read of some very bad science, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needed to withdraw its approval of the safe and widely used abortion drug mifepristone. He claimed that the FDA hadn’t adequately considered its safety (it had) and that the lack of restrictions on the drug (there were plenty) had led to many deaths and severe adverse events (demonstrably false).

… Restricting abortion means removing women’s control over not only their bodies, but also their futures — and giving that control to someone else. In a nation where sex education and contraception access are already spotty and about half of all pregnancies are unplanned, that act is a population-level assault on women’s autonomy. The result is a psychic wound even to those who aren’t seeking abortions.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/even-better/24106111/abortion-mifepristone-kacsmaryk-fda-economic-military-readiness-mortality-mental-health-poverty

USA – Researchers call for more abortion studies to be retracted

The criticism of four older studies alleging abortion causes mental illness follows high-profile retractions of studies claiming the abortion pill is dangerous.

BY: SOFIA RESNICK
FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Health and science experts published a commentary in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday calling for the retraction of four older abortion-related studies that, despite documented flaws, have influenced major anti-abortion decisions over the past 20 years, including the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned federal abortion rights.

The commentary comes the same month academic publisher Sage Journals retracted studies calling into question the long-established safety record of the abortion drug mifepristone, which were produced by anti-abortion activists shortly before they sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the same drug.

Continued: https://kentuckylantern.com/2024/02/27/researchers-call-for-more-abortion-studies-to-be-retracted/

Abortions Later in Pregnancy in a Post-Dobbs Era

Ivette Gomez, Alina Salganicoff, and Laurie Sobel - KFF
Published: Feb 21, 2024

Abortions occurring at or after 21 weeks gestational age are rare. They are often difficult to obtain, as they are only available in a handful of states, performed by a small subset of abortion providers and are typically costly and time-intensive. Yet, these abortions receive a disproportionate share of attention in the news, policy and the law.

…This brief explains why individuals may seek abortions later in pregnancy, how often these procedures occur, and the various laws which regulate access to abortions later in pregnancy across the country.

Continued: https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/abortions-later-in-pregnancy-in-a-post-dobbs-era/

21.02.2024

Research

abortions after 20 weeks

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

USA – The Least Understood Impact of Abortion Bans

BY MICHELLE OBERMAN
FEB 01, 2024

For the vast majority of Americans who support legal abortion in cases of rape, there is a visceral horror evoked by the news that, in the months since the Supreme Court, in Dobbs, ended the constitutional right to an abortion, rape has led to an estimated 65,000 pregnancies in states where abortion is banned. Part of the horror reflects a gut sense that it would be particularly hard, and therefore cruel, to force someone to continue a pregnancy under those circumstances.

But how does it feel to be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy under “ordinary” circumstances? Forced pregnancy has become commonplace, yet there is almost no research documenting the mental health impact of abortion bans.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/abortion-bans-forced-pregnancy-mental-health.html

01.02.2024

Commentary

abortion denial and mental health

abortion for mental health

These Are The Abortion Stories You Don’t Hear After Roe v. Wade

Why telling all kinds of abortion stories — particularly the mundane — is important in helping achieve reproductive justice.

BY DANIELLE CAMPOAMOR
DECEMBER 28, 2023

In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, countless stories of people being denied access to abortion care emerged, the majority focusing on instances of fatal fetal abnormality, rape, incest or catastrophic pregnancy complications.

From a woman in Texas being admitted to the ICU and nearly dying, to a 10-year-old girl in Ohio forced to cross state lines to access care after she was raped, to a mother who says she was told to wait in a hospital parking lot until she was closer to death before doctors would treat her, these stories saturated headlines across the country, and for good reason — people with the capacity to get pregnant losing the Constitutional right to bodily autonomy is, it turns out, deadly.

Continued: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/these-are-the-abortion-stories-you-dont-hear-after-roe-v-wade

All Eyes on Texas: Republicans and Business Leaders Decry Court Ruling Denying Kate Cox’s Abortion

With abortion banned in nearly two dozen states, stories like Kate Cox’s are going to keep happening. And voters, business leaders and even fellow Republicans aren’t turning a blind eye.

12/16/2023
by KATHY SPILLAR, Ms. Magazine

A case out of Texas demonstrates the shocking cruelty and extraordinary lengths to which anti-abortion ideologues will go to deny women access to critical healthcare. The state’s Supreme Court intervened last week and denied an emergency request for an abortion by a woman named Kate Cox. Cox was experiencing fetal abnormalities that made her pregnancy unviable and potentially dangerous. The ruling, which forced Cox to leave the state in order to legally terminate the pregnancy, attracted the ire of even some Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

A fundamental part of the conservative rhetoric used to justify draconian abortion bans is the premise that abortion “hurts women.” But as studies and these real-life cases continue to prove, the opposite is actually true: abortion bans hurt women and endanger their lives—and what’s more, abortion actually helps women.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/12/16/republicans-business-texas-supreme-court-abortion/

How to Spot Abortion-Related Misinformation

Between pregnancy “crisis centers” and “abortion pill testing,” there's a lot of questionable info out there. Here's how to tell what's evidence-based and what's not.

Lux Alptraum
Oct 24, 2023

In mid-September, the New York Times Opinion section ran a piece with a shocking headline. “In Poland, Testing Women for Abortion Drugs Is a Reality. It Could Happen Here,” the paper breathlessly declared.

As I read the piece, I felt a shudder of panic go down my spine. For years, abortion advocates have been confidently assuring people that abortion pills cannot be detected in the system when they’re taken by mouth. An effective test for abortion pills could have terrifying ramifications—at a bare minimum, it could discourage people from seeking follow-up care after a self-managed abortion.

And yet, at the same, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right here. What was the scientific justification for developing such a test?

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-spot-abortion-misinformation/

USA – Medical exceptions to abortion bans often exclude mental health conditions

Pregnant people were more likely to die from mental health conditions than any other cause, a CDC analysis found.

Nada Hassanein, Stateline
October 24, 2023

More than a dozen states now have near-total abortion bans following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with limited medical exceptions meant to protect the patient’s health or life.

But among those states, only Alabama explicitly includes “serious mental illness” as an allowable exception. Meanwhile, 10 states with near-total abortion bans (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming) explicitly exclude mental health conditions as legal exceptions, according to an analysis from KFF, a health policy research organization.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/10/medical-exceptions-abortion-bans-mental-health-conditions/

USA – Measuring the long-term cost of restricting abortion access

By Annalisa Merelli
Oct. 17, 2023

When Diana Greene Foster and her team at the University of California, San Francisco, started their study on the lives of women who were denied abortions in 2008, they sought to investigate a rather commonly held view: That having an abortion hurt women’s mental and physical health, including by leading to PTSD and drug and alcohol use disorder.

A series of laws had been passed based on this belief, introducing compulsory counseling and waiting periods for people seeking abortions, thereby adding barriers to accessing the procedure, especially for patients with lower incomes who couldn’t afford repeated time off work, travel, and associated costs such as child care.

Continued: https://www.statnews.com/2023/10/17/harms-from-restricting-abortion-access-research/

17.10.2023

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

USA – Women denied abortion more likely to be in a poor-quality relationship 5 years later compared to those allowed to abort

by Vladimir Hedrih
September 29, 2023

A study analyzing women who sought abortions discovered that one week after the request, there was a 58% likelihood of the women remaining in a relationship with the man involved in the conception. This number dropped to 27% five years post-request. Importantly, women denied an abortion demonstrated significantly higher chances of being in a substandard romantic relationship five years on, in comparison to their counterparts who had abortions. The study was published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Abortion, a procedure terminating a pregnancy before the fetus can live outside the womb, is usually conducted within the first 24 weeks of gestation. It can be pursued for diverse reasons, from medical imperatives to personal choices. The procedure frequently becomes a contentious point in public discussions, which encompass women’s reproductive rights, ethical dilemmas, and the legalities governing abortion accessibility.

Continued: https://www.psypost.org/2023/09/women-denied-abortion-more-likely-to-be-in-a-poor-quality-relationship-5-years-later-compared-to-those-allowed-to-abort-213868

29.09.2023