A new peer-reviewed study written by scholars from the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) and American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) suggests that women whose first pregnancy ends in abortion have worse mental health outcomes than those whose first pregnancy ends in birth.
The study focused on continuously eligible Medicaid beneficiaries who were age 16 in 1999 and followed their mental health claims histories through 2015. There were a total of 1,331 women whose first pregnancies ended in abortion, whereas there were 3,517 women whose first pregnancies ended in birth. By studying women’s mental health services utilization rates, the methodological limitations of relying upon patient surveys were avoided.
Three outcomes were studied: outpatient visits, hospital inpatient admissions, and duration of hospital inpatient admissions. For all three outcomes, women whose first pregnancy ended in abortion fared worse than did their peers who gave birth. They were 3.4 times more likely to have outpatient visits, 5.7 times more likely to experience an inpatient admission, and the duration of those admissions averaged nearly twice as long (32.6 days compared to 16.8 days for the birth cohort).
Interestingly, the study found that, prior to their first pregnancies, women who gave birth had higher mental health services utilization rates than women who had abortions, further highlighting the dramatic difference in utilization rates following those pregnancies.
Abortion advocates insist that women who abort their children do not suffer mental health consequences, and frequently cite the repeatedly debunked Turnaway Study – which relied on survey data from post-abortive women obtained over a five-year period following their abortions – to bolster that claim. That questionable study, riddled with issues, has been used to support the claim that 95% of post-abortive women are happy with their decisions and do not experience regret of any kind.
However, this new study from CLI/AAPLOG researchers casts further doubt upon Turnaway Study-based conclusions by demonstrating that post-abortive women seek mental health services far more often – and for a longer period of time – than their peers who give birth.
