A new five-year study of women who had abortions has some interesting conclusions:
Starting one week after their abortions and then twice yearly after that, the women were asked about their feelings. The authors said they wondered about stigma and how the women would reflect on their decisions as time passed.
What they found was a surprise: Over time, all emotions, good and bad, faded.
“A really interesting finding is how the intensity of all emotions is so low,” said Corinne Rocca, lead author of the study and a UCSF associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences.
A week after their abortions, about 51 percent of women expressed mostly positive emotions, 17 percent expressed negative emotions and 20 percent said they had none or few. As time went by, the number who felt few or no emotions rose sharply. At the five-year mark, 84 percent reported either primarily positive emotions or none at all, while 6 percent had primarily negative feelings. There was “no evidence” of new negative or positive emotions, the authors said.
Immediately after their abortions, 95 percent of those who agreed to interviews said they had made the right decision. At five years, that percentage increased to 99 percent.
Here are a bunch of other facts from the Guttmacher institute. Two that jump out is that, at the 2014 rate, about 24% of all women will have an abortion by age 45, and in 2017, 39% of all abortions used medication, not surgery.
Litzz11
This is interesting. Years ago there was an excellent series of articles about the trauma experienced by women who went full-term and chose adoption. First-person stories by women who spent years wondering what became of their babies, guilt and depression, really long-lasting trauma that nobody felt they were able to talk about publicly. I wish I could find that series now, looked for it recently, it was really powerful and important part of the conversation.
Baud
Good. This seems like something that should have been studied long ago.
bbleh
Yet more scientific facts for right-wingers to ignore angrily!
Baud
@bbleh: Fuckem’
Barbara
@Baud: There have been, and they found the same thing. Anyone inclined to think that UCSF might have spiked the protocol or the data might want to read about this study, from 30 years ago: Sourc
ETA: Another article about the study referred to in the first article. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/15/us/koop-challenged-on-abortion-data.html
Basically, the Reagan administration through C. Everett Koop thought it would be able to document the baleful consequences of abortion and when not a single study supported its position, it called the data “inconclusive” and refused to issue a report. As the second article states, the data weren’t inconclusive, they made it pretty clear that negative repercussions either physical or psychological were few and far between.
Ohio Mom
One thing that always strikes me about all dIacussions of how women feel about their abortions is the lack of focus on hormones and their effect on emotions.
I was only pregnant once and it was 23 years ago, so the details are fuzzy, but it was a tremendously emotional time, and it was obvious to me that my hormones were behind it all. I particularly remember crying at moderately sappy TV commercials, a distinct departure from my usual cynical personality. And it was a hormonal rollercoaster after giving birth.
So yes, it seems very reasonable to me that as time passes, and hormones return to their normal state, women would look back at their abortions dispassionately.
justawriter
Of the six percent that had negative feelings after five years, I wonder how many had a pro-life relative who was still haranguing them after all those years.
Barbara
@justawriter: Or were the victims of some kind of abusive or coercive conduct.
Baud
@Barbara:
They didn’t invent that tactic with climate change.
oldster
I’m glad that they focused on the question, “did you make the right decision,” rather than the question, “do you regret doing it.”
With any hard choice, many people will feel regret when they focus on the alternatives. Did I get the chicken? Maybe I should have taken the fish. Did I go for option A? Darn, now option B looks better.
So if you go fishing for expressions of regret, it’s not hard to find some.
But those regrets do not show that you made the wrong choice. If you had taken option B, you might be feeling just as much regret over that choice now — or much more.
I regret most things in my life — what I did, what I did not do, what could have been, what never could have been. That’s just a reflection of my character.
But I made the right choices on some important questions.
And I had the choice.
And we still have to fight so that our kids and grandkids will have a choice.
the Conster
Seems like men need to all sit down and STFU about this issue, and keep it in their pants.
Just off the top of my head.
Eunicecycle
@justawriter: Several years ago I was stuck in an office listening to a religious broadcast. The subject was married women who regretted having abortions. I was amazed that these religious women would even dream of having an abortion. And struck by the fact that they had a choice, that they want to take away from others.
AliceBlue
Speaking as one who had an abortion 40 years ago, the feelings and emotions reflected in this study are exactly my own.
Kay (not the front-pager)
I suspect the reason for, and timing of abortion might have an effect on whether emotions are negative or positive. A relative recently aborted a much-wanted fetus at 5 months after they discovered it had a catastrophic brain anomaly. She was/is heartbroken, has feelings of guilt, and is just very very sad. Of course these feelings are worse because of all the hormones roiling around at that point in a pregnancy, but a lot of it is the circumstances of this particular pregnancy. I’m encouraged to hear that these feelings are likely to fade. I’m going to forward a link to the study to her mom. There’s really not much you can do to ease the pain.
I did send a $600 donation to Planned Parenthood in the upper mid-west, where women in her situation don’t have the options she had. After talking to someone there, it sounded like that would cover a procedure for a woman who might find herself in a similar situation. It’s not much but it eased my grief a little.
H.E.Wolf
Ursula Le Guin published an essay in 1982 about her illegal abortion when she was a university student (1940s-1950s), and its aftermath.
The essay is quintessential Le Guin; a blend of humor, seriousness, and insight. Her emotional experience was consistent with the majority of the study’s respondents.
An abridged version is here:
https://www.readingistherapy.com/ursula-le-guin-on-abortion/
[Edited to clarify time period.]
H.E.Wolf
@Eunicecycle:
This was the subject of an article in 2000: ” ‘The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion’ : When the Anti-Choice Choose.”
https://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/anti-tales.shtml
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Stuff like this just plays into the Wingnut’s game, dont’ you think? Their goal isn’t to have a rational discussion on the in and outs of abortion. one thing is for sure if their teenage daughter got knocked up they would be off the doctor without hesitation, the goal is to have a topic they can attack the Libertards on. All the Wingnut has to do is troll around for some minor point that questionable and inflate into a major controversy until that plays out and then move on to the next minor point and repeat. What we really need is more studies on how the anti-abortionists are nothing but a pack of lying hypocrites and throw the burden of proof back on them.
Nicole
I like that the researcher specifically pointed out that regret is a separate emotion from positive or negative feelings about having an abortion- it’s possible to regret, but still feel it was the right decision.
I recorded textbooks for awhile, including a lot of sociology books, so I was familiar already with the data that said the vast majority of women do not have negative feelings about having had an abortion, and this article reminded me again that the thing I liked most about recording sociology books is that I learned that basically everything I had been taught about society was wrong. ;)
Nicole
@H.E.Wolf: That article is such a good read. I’m glad you posted it. Everyone should read it.
laura
Hey ladies! If you were a man and you suffer from erectile disfunction you’d be free and able to order boner on demand pills from the safety and comfort of your home using any web-enabled device and you wouldn’t have had the endless delays at your various legislatures, editorials in your news places, nary a peep from the pulpit, no shame, no strained family relations or secrets, no surveys, no threats to arrest or trials, your providers remain safe in their homes and workplaces and places of worship, no groups to keep kill lists of your providers, or show up at your homes or scream in your face when you go out to your porch or mailbox picking up your delivered order.
Whether any man has regretted ordering and using a prescribed medication that he and his “doctor” decided on in private has not been studied.
OzarkHillbilly
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That’s exactly what this study does.
Jay
Barbara
@oldster: Think about how many people regret their choice of marriage partner. Obviously, the only solution is to outlaw marriage.
Barbara
@Nicole: A phenomenon that is well-known to a lot of women with religious friends. I had a friend in high school who was born again and opposed to abortion. When she got pregnant I was fully expecting to be lending moral support and holding a baby shower. Instead, I secured my mother’s car for an entire day under false pretenses and drove her to a PP clinic and sat with her all day.
Any woman who tries post-abortion to “make sure” no one else feels their guilt is displaying the cheapest kind of grace imaginable. I have nothing but contempt for all of them.
Baud
@Barbara:
But that would just lead to more sex and therefore more abortions.
prufrock
To quote Don Draper, “It will shock you how much it never happened.”
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
Unfortunately, not nearly enough people regret voting for Trump.
H.E.Wolf
@Jay:
Did any wombats (or Australian) government officials discuss their abortions?
* * *
One of my cousins worked for a Planned Parenthood office as an administrator, about 30 years ago. It was not far in time or place from an anti-choice gunman’s mass murder of staffers at a PP facility.
I asked my cousin what my uncle and aunt thought of the PP job, and the answer was, “They are strong supporters! So was Grandma, you know. [I hadn’t.] She used to smuggle illegal birth-control supplies over the state line, and hand them out to ladies who needed them.”
Eunicecycle
@H.E.Wolf: Wow that is an amazing article. I didn’t know it was so widespread (anti choice people having abortions). The cognitive dissonance would blow my mind.
geg6
I have never once felt the slightest bit of regret or negative emotion over my abortion. Never. It was absolutely the right thing to do and I’ve never thought any different for even a minute.
The child my mother forced me to have and then put up for adoption? That’s a whole other kettle of fish. I regret everything about that, except the adoption.
Barbara
@geg6: There are lots of studies that document lasting negative emotional effects of giving birth and putting a child up for adoption. These range from being forced to give birth, to being forced to give up the child, to losing contact after what was thought to be an open or partially open adoption.
Kent
Thumbs up everyone.
Anything else I would have to say would be “mansplaining” so I’ll just wait for another thread to comment.
Nicole
@Jay: It turns out the herding bit is not actually true, though the sharing their massive burrows is. I got a little wombat-obsessed yesterday morning and did a lot of searching.
Eunicecycle
@Barbara: My daughter gave a baby up for adoption. Although we haven’t talked about it in a long time (he is 19) I believe it was really her choice. I guess I was dumb but didn’t find out she was pregnant until she was 6 months along, so too late for an abortion. I was planning to quit my job and help raise him-i had already told my boss-when she came to me and said she wanted to look at adoption. She knew the father would not be there for her (he wouldn’t have) and that she would constantly have to deal with him not showing up, etc. So we went to a private agency and she was able to pick the parents and meet them. The day she actually had to leave the hospital without him was the worst day of my life. She then had to go to the Family Court and give up her parental rights. The judge was very kind to her and made her feel better. She corresponded with the parents for about 5 years when it seemed to peter out mutually. I still think about him though and hope he is doing well.
Jager
@laura:
Don’t these good Christian men understand that God decides whether you can get a stiffy or not? It’s in His hands. (so to speak)
Nicole
@Barbara: That’s what really gets me about assumptions about abortion- it’s not just women not wanting to have a child, it’s that they don’t want to be PREGNANT. Having been pregnant and given birth once, even though my kid was much wanted, I totally, totally get it. Pregnancy was rough, and childbirth was really, really, really hard. And your body does not come back the same as before, and I’m not just talking stretch marks. It’s not like taking a dump, men!
I think it was Anne Laurie who posted one of my most favorite tweets I’ve ever seen, last Mother’s Day, that said something like, “You’re the reason she pees every time she coughs. Buy her some flowers.” The pelvic floor very, very seldom goes back to what it was before, especially after more than one kid.
Barbara
@Eunicecycle: You can be totally on board for the adoption and still feel tremendous grief for not being in a position to become that baby’s parent. It’s just amazing to me that people who think that abortion would be traumatic think that adoption would be emotionally easy. Blinded by ideology is too kind of a description for them.
Barbara
@Nicole: My sister gave up a baby for adoption. Among other things, she had serious eclampsia for three days after the birth.
Eunicecycle
@Nicole: My daughter that gave up her baby became a labor and delivery nurse. Pregnancy is a very dangerous condition for mothers! No one should be forced to stay in that condition against their will. Many things can go wrong. Luckily she never had a woman die on her shift but it happens. But she did have mothers who had strokes, hemorrhages, etc.
Jager
@Nicole:
When I was a kid, our neighbors had 11 kids, 6 boys, 5 girls. The mom had all those kids in just over 15 years. Mrs. W was the same age as my mother, she looked older than my grandmother. The W family had 3 sets of “Irish Twins”. I ran into one of the girls years later. She had one child, none of the sisters had more than two. She said, her mom told her to “keep her legs together’.
OzarkHillbilly
@H.E.Wolf: That is rather enlightening. I’ve bookmarked it. Thanx.
Eunicecycle
@Barbara: Oh she was definitely emotionally affected. I think she had some symptoms of PTSD afterwards; her baby was born right before 9/11 and on that day she was hysterical that something had happened to him. We got her counselling right after her baby was born but she was resistant to it. Looking back I should have tried another counselor, but then she left for college so I dropped the ball, I guess.
Eunicecycle
@Barbara: and I totally agree with you that adoption is not easy! Like the antichoice people want you to think.
Nicole
@Barbara: I had preeclampsia and had to be induced early because of it. My husband got to watch the first bath, have our son fall asleep holding onto his finger, while I spent the first night alone in a recovery room on another floor, hooked up to what felt like 100 machines, any of which started beeping if I moved because there were so many of those adhesive things on me that any change of position caused one to pop off. Not conduce to sleeping, that’s for sure.
@Eunicecycle: I had a friend have a stroke 3 days after a c-section (after hours and hours and hours in labor) and another acquaintance die after having twins due to hemorrhages. Having a kid is dangerous. Legal abortions are much safer.
@Jager: I read an article a couple years ago (on Slate, I think) about writings left behind by women in the 19th century expressing gratitude for miscarriages, because for so many of them, their adulthood was a series of pregnancies and childbirths.
geg6
@Barbara:
I was forced into that situation. I don’t regret giving up the baby for adoption. Hell, I was only 16. I wanted an abortion. My parents (really just my mom; dad would have supported whatever I wanted) said no way. I was shipped off to a Catholic home for “wayward” girls, hidden away and no one cared much about what I wanted.
Nicole
Oh! Found the article about 19th century women and miscarriages:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/11/miscarriage-19th-century-women-loss-book.html
Martin
@Baud: For those that don’t know, UCSF is a University of California campus dedicated to medical instruction. They have a dedicated group of researchers that focus on women’s health and abortion. They’ve been contracted by the state to review abortion regulations and look for ways of expanding them to make care cheaper and easier to get. They advocated for and got standard training of nurses in abortion procedures across the UC system (most UCs have teaching hospitals) and they have the lead in the process to provide abortion services in student health at all UC and CSU campuses.
The state, and the state government is leaning into women’s health and it shows. California has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the country – it’s half of the next best state (MA) and 1/10 of many states like Georgia. UCSF deserves enormous credit for leading on this issue, not just in the state but nationally.
oldster
@Barbara:
Right — and even people who think that they made the *right* choice of marriage partner will still have an occasional wistful regret over the one that got away. Even if you know that the one you did not marry would have been a disaster as a mate, you might still remember some good times and feel a regret about how it ended.
That’s the point: regrets are cheap, and ubiquitous. And they do not tell us anything about whether the choice was right.
So this study got off on the right foot in asking about decisions, not regrets.
What they should really do, as a follow-up, is to ask parents whether they think they made the right choice in *having* children. I doubt that 99% of them would say that they did, even (esp.?) at the five-year mark!
Nicole
@oldster:
As I recall, there was a famous Ann Landers or Dear Abby thing about that, and most of the respondents said if they had to do it over again, they wouldn’t have kids. Self-selecting population, to be sure, but an eye-opener for the columnist.
catclub
Their stock in trade.
Time to re-read “The Authoritarians”, then you will not be surprised.
Barbara
@Martin: I agree that California and UCSF have led the way. California began targeting maternal mortality around five years ago and provides resources and education to all hospitals not just the UCs.
I have read prior articles about the “Turned Away” series of studies and the professor who is the lead has said things in articles that made me wonder about her motivation (as in, she thought that if her study had negative findings it might be okay for policy makers to rely on them in regulating abortion).
Whereas, as far as I am concerned, regret is what usually comes with freedom. I regret to some extent the choice of where I went to college, along with many other key decisions in my life. Very importantly, my regret doesn’t mean that third parties would have made better decisions for me than I did for myself, or that I wouldn’t have even bigger regrets if I turned over the choice to someone else. That is what needs to be brought home: regrets or not, who would have had the means or information to make a better decision than the person most affected by what was being decided? Not some random state official or priest whose views I overwhelmingly disagree with on nearly everything.
Annie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It’s not necessarily the case that “if their teenage daughter got knocked up they would be off the doctor without hesitation”. A distant relative of mine — I grant you, not a teenager — is very anti-abortion. She got pregnant during an attempt to reconcile with her husband. The reconciliation did not work out, but she could not stand the idea of having an abortion — those were her exact words. She already had 2 kids. Unfortunately the baby was born with serious developmental disabilities and will probably not ever be able to live entirely independently. As far as I was concerned, it was a disaster all around — she had to move in with other relatives, ex-husband was nasty about property and support — but everyone in that branch of the family feels she did the right thing.