How safe is abortion?
We were surprised to find out just how much safer abortion is than pregnancy (6 deaths per 100,000 vs. 330 deaths per 100,000).
How common is abortion?
It’s a bit shocking to realize how much abortion is stigmatized despite being so common, effective, and safe. About one in four people who can get pregnant have an abortion in their lifetime.
What do abortion bans mean for broader medicine?
Pregnant people in states with abortion bans are seeing worse health outcomes, increased cost of care, and higher health complications. In several cases, people experienced severe infection, organ failure, and loss of ability to bear children. Research has long shown that abortion bans don’t prevent abortions, they only make health outcomes worse for those who have them.
What are some of the key points of a pregnancy timeline?
Pregnancies typically last an average of 40 weeks, measured from the first day of the person’s last menstrual cycle.
Why was Roe v. Wade overturned?
In 1973, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decided that Americans’ right to privacy protected abortion care as a fundamental right. However, the government retained the power to regulate or restrict abortion access depending on the stage of pregnancy.
For the following 49 years, states, health care providers, and citizens fought over what limits the government could place on abortion access, particularly during the second and third trimesters. But abortion was a fundamental right in all 50 states during that period.
In 2022, six of the nine justices on the US Supreme Court decided that Americans no longer had the right to privacy in making their own decisions about abortion care. Now each state determines whether people in that state have the right to privacy, including abortion care.
How does abortion access affect the greater public?
Contrary to popular belief, abortion bans do not just impact access to abortion care. Everyone born in the presence of a doctor is impacted when OB-GYNs are not allowed to provide evidence-based medicine to their patients.
Abortion bans lead to fewer medical services available for all women and people who can get pregnant living in those states.
Doctors are showing — through their words and actions — that they are reluctant to practice in places where providing evidence-based care for a patient could result in huge fines or even a prison sentence. And when clinics that provide abortions close their doors, all the other services offered there also shut down, including regular exams, breast cancer screenings, and access to contraception.
Doctors who want to provide the highest standard of care for their patients and love their communities nonetheless find themselves with few options in abortion ban states but to leave.
