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Do abortion restrictions protect women's well-being?

by Lisa Anderson | https://twitter.com/LisaAndersonNYC | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 15 January 2015 08:35 GMT

The Planned Parenthood logo is pictured outside a clinic in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 27, 2014. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter

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* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The short answer, according to recent findings, is "No"

An increasingly popular strategy for U.S. politicians promoting anti-abortion legislation is the assertion that restrictions on abortion are designed to protect the health and safety of women and children.

It has been a remarkably effective argument. State legislatures have passed 231 restrictions on abortion since 2010, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organisation dedicated to promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights. And more restrictions are in the pipeline for 2015.

Emboldened by the success at the state level, members of the 114th U.S. Congress, which went into session on Jan. 6, proposed five national restrictions on abortion in their first week. One was a ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, when less than 2 percent of all U.S. abortions occur.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly 90 percent of U.S. abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and pose less than a 1 percent risk of serious complications.

Do more restrictions on abortion - such as the requirement that clinics offering abortion services meet the same physical standards as ambulatory surgical centres or that abortion providers be affiliated with a local hospital - increase the overall health, safety and well-being of women and their children?

According to a recent report on research conducted by Ibis Reproductive Health with the Center for Reproductive Rights, both nonprofits dedicated to advancing women's reproductive health and rights, the short answer is "No."

"As the number of abortion restrictions increase in a state, the well-being of women and children declines," said Amanda Dennis, an associate at Ibis who participated in the research, during a panel discussion of the report on Wednesday evening.

"Anti-choice politicians cannot honestly claim the mantle of protecting the health and safety of women and children," said Kelly Baden, director of state advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who also appeared on the panel.

The report, “Evaluating Priorities: Measuring Women's and Children's Health and Well-being against Abortion Restrictions in the States”, used publicly available data from states and institutions, such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The research looked for a relationship between the number of abortion restrictions in a state and evidence-based indicators measuring the physical and mental health of women and children and the provision of state policies supportive of their well-being.

"There is a relationship," said Baden, "and it's not a good relationship."

The data showed the states with the fewest of the 14 abortion restrictions studied generally scored the highest in overall women's and children's well-being.

"States with a large number of abortion restrictions tend to have lower well-being and fewer supportive policies than other states," said Dennis.

These findings are expected to be used by abortion rights advocates lobbying legislators, and by legislators trying to get support from colleagues to oppose abortion restrictions, said Baden.

Both Baden and Dennis said the report has limitations. They emphasised that while the research finds a consistent correlation between the number of abortion restrictions in a state and the overall health and well-being of its women and children, it does not find the number of abortion restrictions to be the direct cause of either good or poor scores on overall well-being.

Dennis said that, at the very least, what the research does do is allow people confronted with the assertion that abortion restrictions are for the protection of women and children "to just be able to say, 'Untrue.'"

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