Abortion has become a very controversial topic and has been causing a lot of inequality. “In 2019, 629,898 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. Among 48 reporting areas with data each year during 2010–2019, in 2019, a total of 625,346 abortions were reported, the abortion rate was 11.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 195 abortions per 1,000 live births”, according to the CDC. Black women have been experiencing racial inequality and induced abortions at a rate nearly 4 times that of white women for at least 3 decades. And due to this many women of many races have experienced a lot of stigma and inequality. A major historical event was Roe v. Wade, which allowed Americans to receive an abortion without states restricting it. In January of 1993, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Roe, which affirms that the US Constitution protects a woman's right to receive an abortion without unnecessary restriction against it. After this court decision, federal and state laws across the country that restricted access to abortion was struck down, opening up access to abortion services. And yet states have begun to limit when women can receive an abortion. According to the Commonwealth Fund, black infants in Texas were twice as likely as white infants to die before their first birthday. “While Texas does not report deaths among new mothers by race, we know the national black maternal mortality rate was 44 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 compared to a rate of 17.9 white deaths”. In 2018, black people were almost twice as likely as whites to die of preventable causes but didn’t receive the healthcare they needed.
Recently Texas has implicated a new law that prevents women from getting an abortion within 6 weeks of pregnancy. That is way too soon for a woman to know if she’s pregnant. And most women figure out they are pregnant around 5-7 weeks, so it would be too late for a woman to receive an abortion in Texas even if the pregnancy is harmful to the mother. According to Planned Parenthood, nearly 9 out of 10 abortions are performed during the 12th week of pregnancy. Some states such as Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wisconsin still have unenforced pre-Roe abortion bans in their laws, which could be enforced if Roe were overturned. I’m 2016, in an interview with CBS’s Leslie Stahl on ‘60 Minutes’, former President Donald Trump said he would appoint ‘pro-life’ judges to the Supreme Court and that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, women would “have to go to another state” if they want an abortion. This sparked much controversy over the people of the United States. Many people agreed and disagreed with Trump's statement. And Trump did try to overturn the Roe v. Wade outcome, but the Court was mostly pro-choice and would not vote to overturn the outcome.
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According to Forbes, a poll, conducted in June of 2021 among 1,125 US adults, found that 57% of respondents believe abortion should be legal overall in all or most cases, with 23% saying it should be legal in all cases, and 33% saying only in most cases, including 76% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans. That percentage was higher when asked if it should be legal during the first trimester, with 61% in favor. 34% of people believe that abortion should be illegal in the second trimester, and 19% said during the third trimester. “A further 30% believe that abortion should be illegal in some but not all cases in the second trimester, and 26% believe it should be illegal but with exceptions in the third trimester”.
Excluding all the political controversy on this subject, receiving an abortion takes a mental toll on the mother. According to Apa.org, “Women who are denied an abortion are more likely to initially experience higher levels of anxiety, lower life satisfaction, and lower self-esteem compared to women who received an abortion”. The World Health Organization and Guttmacher Institute found that the vast majority of abortions are safe when countries where abortion is broadly legal, while most countries are unsafe where abortion is highly restricted. There is a strong relationship between an unwanted pregnancy and interpersonal violence. The inability to get an abortion may cause women to stay in contact with violent partners and are putting their children at risk. And now that laws have begun to restrict access to safe, legal abortions will be particularly harmful to low-income women of color, sexual and gender minorities, and also those who live in rural or medically underserved areas. When women receive or experience an unwanted pregnancy appears to be strongly associated with poor mental health effects for women later in life. A Cambridge study says, “Women who received abortions had rates of a mental disorder that were about 30% higher”. Other pregnancy outcomes were not related to increased risk of mental health problems. The outcomes of abortion were many health disorders including depression, anxiety, substance use, suicidal behavior, and self-harm. According to a Cambridge study, of women between 15-30 years old who got an abortion, 90% of them said that they were unhappy, distressed. Their reactions were reported on a 5-point scale from distressed and unhappy to very happy, the results were mostly distressed and unhappy. For the present analysis, the measures of pregnancy history were defined using a combination of both prospective and retrospective reports. Using the information on timing and outcome for each reported pregnancy, the woman's pregnancy history for any given period of interest was classified using four measures of pregnancy outcomes. These outcomes included: whether a woman reported having an elective abortion during the interval, whether the woman experienced a pregnancy loss during the interval, pregnancy loss is defined as a miscarriage or stillbirth, whether the woman had a live birth during the interval for which she reported an adverse reaction to the pregnancy. “Based on the combined results of these reports, 284 women reported a total of 686 pregnancies before age 30. These pregnancies included a total of 153 abortions, 138 pregnancy losses, 66 live births that resulted from an unwanted pregnancy or one that provoked an adverse reaction, and 329 live births resulting from a pregnancy for which there was no reported adverse reaction”. There is not any data on the psychological impact of one way to receive an abortion, medically or surgically.
In more recent times the US Supreme Court has challenged whether the new Texas law banning abortion after six weeks is constitutional according to Roe v. Wade. “The decision came after justices heard arguments in a separate case on a Mississippi law that threatens the constitutional right to abortion enshrined in the Roe v. Wade ruling”, says Kevin Breuninger from CNBC. The Supreme Court allowed the Texas law to stay in effect while the decision was being made. My solution to this problem is to follow the outcome of Roe v. Wade. And to do this we need to pass more bills on reproductive rights and establish more places women can go to receive the help they need.
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