#turnaway study

[thepro-lifemovement]

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/planned-parenthood-statement-on-new-study-on-womens-mental-health-after-receiving-or-being-denied-abortion

So one big problem with the study they linked in their article is they are using the data from the Turnaway study. They claim, "This analysis includes all 5 years (11 interview waves) of data from the Turnaway Study." I have already talked about the issues with the Turnaway Study. The scientific article below explains the many flaws of the Turnaway study:

The Turnaway Study, conducted by abortion advocates at thirty abortion clinics, reportedly proves that 95 percent of women have no regrets about their abortions and that abortion causes no mental health problems. But a new exposé reveals that the authors have misled the public, using an unrepresentative, highly biased sample and misleading questions. In fact, over two-thirds of the women approached at the abortion clinics refused to be interviewed, and half of those who agreed dropped out. Refusers and dropouts are known to have more postabortion problems. In fact, ANSIRH’s own data actually revealed that beyond this first week, the women denied an abortion who actually did carry to term had significant improvements in anxiety, depression, and self-esteem. Indeed, the researchers admitted that they could observe no significant differences between the groups. But this is only admitted in the details of the study, not the abstract, conclusions, or news releases. But ANSIRH’s spin how aborting women did as well as those who gave birth actually includes an admission most damaging to their own ideology. Specifically, ANSIRH’s own evidence suggests that there are no persistent mental health risks associated with women being denied an abortion. In other words, an equally valid headline would read: “Women Denied Abortions Face No Long-Term Mental-Health Problems.” That may help to explain why ANSIRH chose to elevate a single anxiety score accessed eight days after begin turned away from an abortion (including the anxiety of women still looking for an alternative place to get an abortion) into their misleading claim that women who are denied abortions may face more mental health problems than women who are provided abortions

For further evidence on the effect abortion has on mental health:

Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion. 

Lastly, three paragraphs of the Planned Parenthood article is them bragging to the reader how great they are. I would take anything PP says with a grain of salt because they have been caught lying many times before and change information to mislead people. There are much better women's healthcare resources available than PP that offer free services, unlike PP.

[satashiiwrites]

I want to generally avoid anything about politics on here but if anyone is interested in actual research about abortion outcomes this is interesting reading.  It’s legit research done on the long term outcomes of being denied an abortion or going through with one without just ‘assuming’ things like is commonly done or stated in legal opinions. 

Trust women.  Allow us to make our own decisions about our lives.  

[shards-of-silver]

First Book of 2024!

My New Year's Resolution this year was to finish all the books on my "to be read" list. Proud to announce that less than one week in, I have crossed my first book off the list!

The Turnaway Study describes a yearslong endeavor in which over a thousand women across the US were interviewed every six months about the consequences of whether they received or were denied an abortion. These women were either just below or just above the cutoff point in their state (study took place pre-overturning of Roe v. Wade), and tracked their life progress over the course of five years. The mix of personal narratives and data analysis is well balanced and makes for a compelling read for anyone interested in the real consequences of getting (or not getting) an abortion in America.

For my next book, I may turn to something lighter. 😅 Either keep reading my book about pre-modern Chinese history or start the Hand of Thrawn Duology.

[lcrtl]

By the ninth or tenth day of hospitalization, the woman's infection was gone and her heart had softened towards the baby, a daughter she decided to keep.

[iirulancorrino]

Diana Greene Foster, The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion

[whilereadingandwalking]

The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster is a superb and necessary book. It's the first major study done to get scientific data to compare women who couldn't get an abortion compared to women who did—rather than doing a study comparing women who got an abortion to all women who had a child, which includes wanted and planned pregnancies.

The study has a lot of learnings that I expected—but also a lot of learnings that I didn't. It's remarkably even-handed and open. But overall, its point of view is that the data shows that women accurately weigh consequences and judge for themselves whether it's the right time for them to have a child. The reasons women give for not wanting a child are carried out in the data—for example, many women say they don't have the money to raise a child, and women who are forced to carry a child to term struggle financially. Women deserve the "dignity of risk"—the right to make their own decisions, even ones they might regret—and the data shows that overwhelmingly, women who choose to get an abortion and get one do not regret it.

Now, if you believe that abortion is murder, the data from this study can't prove you right or wrong. What it can do is target misconceptions and take down conjecture. Conservatives like to argue in recent years that barriers to abortion are necessary to protect women's health. But based on the statistics, legal abortion is extremely safe (far safer than carrying a child to term). This study tells us what the actual consequences of having an abortion or being denied an abortion are—in terms of mental health, domestic violence, life satisfaction, happiness and development of existing and future children, and more.

This book is so full of vital knowledge I didn't anticipate, but the biggest one for me personally was its analysis of late-term abortions. This study showed that the main reasons for late-term abortions were learning about a pregnancy late and being delayed due to the financial and bureaucratic difficulties of accessing an abortion. She makes the case that late-term abortions could be vastly reduced if getting an abortion was easier, and that improving sex ed, contraceptive access, and other resources would help women catch pregnancies earlier. It is very rare that a woman takes a long time to decide whether abortion is right for her—she seems to make a decision quickly as soon as she knows.

The book includes a good conclusion and analysis of what will come or could come with laws against abortion, written first before Trump's presidency and then with her read on the situation upcoming to the Supreme Court. There were only one or two small flaws. One is that a couple times, she mentions obesity without any real discussion of more general fatphobia. Second, I sometimes got mixed up in her double-negatives or refutations. But overall, this book was incredibly informative and fascinating.

Content warnings for miscarriage, sexual assault, fatphobia, trauma/medical trauma, misogyny, abuse.

[kp777]

By Juliana Kim

NPR

June 27, 2022

There's a mounting body of evidence on how having or being denied an abortion affects pregnant people, including impacts on their mental health and the finances of them and their children. The effects on their male partners have received less attention.

In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, experts say that no longer should be the case.

"It's really naïve to think that the repeal of Roe is only going to impact women and pregnant people," said Dr. Bethany Everett, a professor of sociology at the University of Utah.

While the issue disproportionately impacts people who can get pregnant, Dr. Everett says it's important to look at abortion access from all sides, as limits on abortion access likely will have broader implications for society as a whole.

One in five men have been involved in an abortion, one study finds

Research on the impact of abortions on male partners has been limited, but that doesn't mean the issue isn't relevant to men.

Using existing data from the National Survey of Family Growth, a recent study estimates that one in five men have impregnated someone who's had an abortion. That's likely an undercount, according to Dr. Brian Nguyen, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California, who helped oversee the project.

"Not all men are aware of the pregnancies they cause and those that end in abortion," said Dr. Nguyen. "For some men who may see abortion as a failure on their part to be a better partner or potential father, or for those whose social and cultural backgrounds have made them feel as if abortion is wrong, disclosing an abortion can be challenging or uncomfortable."

In a separate survey of more than 200 male partners of women seeking procedures at abortion clinics, Dr. Nguyen and his team found that about half of them already had children, and supported termination of a pregnancy in order to better provide for their existing family.

Young men who have been involved in abortions are more likely to pursue college and earn more

In her study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Dr. Everett and her team found that young men who were involved with a pregnancy and whose partners had an abortion were nearly four times more likely to graduate from college than those whose partners gave birth.

Her research also suggests that males under the age of 20 who were affected by an abortion were likely to earn more money than those who became parents but did not live with their child. Earnings between those who became parents and lived with their child and those whose partners terminated a pregnancy were about the same, Everett said, possibly because those who became teen fathers entered the workforce sooner.

"But still, you likely would see later down the road economic capital build among those who were able to pursue their educational careers," she adds.

Those differences are significant but not surprising. According to Dr. Everett, previous research generally has linked delayed parenthood with greater educational achievement and future socioeconomic status for both men and women.

"Parents should really think hard about not just what the repeal of Roe is going to mean for their daughters, but what it's going to mean for their sons," Dr. Everett said. "Their sons may become dads much earlier than they're prepared for."

Debunking the "us v. them" narrative between men and women

Dr. Nguyen has been working to help people recognize cis men's role in reproductive health for more than a decade. He sees his work as inherently female focused and in pursuit of gender equality, but to others that hasn't always been clear.

"The gender-based discrimination and disparity that women have faced because of patriarchal power structures have really put a rift between the public's mental image of men and women when it comes to reproductive rights," Dr. Nguyen said.

He believes that the fight for abortion access would benefit if cis men fully engaged in the cause, and demonstrating their tangible stakes could help.

"When it comes to reproductive rights, we hear a lot of 'her body, her choice' and 'I'll support her no matter what.' But that's passive support," he said. "To me, what men need to be risking is their own comfort of having to grapple with an issue that women are forced to do biologically."

[femmefatalevibe]

Essential Feminist Texts Booklist

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

A Vindication of The Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by Bell Hooks

Feminism is For Everybody: Passionate Politics by Bell Hooks

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution by  Shulamith Firestone 

Sexual Politics by Kate Millett

Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner 

Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape by Jessica Valenti

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez 

Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit

The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women by Alicia Malone

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel

Is This Normal?: Judgment-Free Straight Talk about Your Body by  Dr. Jolene Brighten

Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D

The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism by Dr. Jennifer Gunter

The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain 

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn 

The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion by Diana Greene Foster, Ph.D

Regretting Motherhood: A Study by Orna Donath

[wormwoodandhoney]

did you read any nonfiction this year? if you did, what do you recommend?

i did! i love nonfiction!

everyone will recommend i'm glad my mom died, and they're right. the audiobook is great for this one. (if you like celeb memoirs, i LOVED gabrielle union's we're going to need more wine and amber ruffin's you'll never believe what happened to lacey (and it's sequel). definitely get the audio for amber's, although gabrielle's audio is also good!)

the turnaway study describes a ten-year long study about women who received abortions, and also women who were denied abortions.

we had a little real estate problem is a history of native americans and their relationship to comedy. i love books about how pop culture reflects our society, and this was so interesting.

84, charing cross road is a collection of real letters between an author in new york and a rare book dealer in london, spanning their twenty year friendship in which they never met in person.

we carry their bones is a book by a forensic anthropologist who worked to exhume the graves of the boys buried at the dozier school for boys, a viciously abusive school in florida that ran from 1900-2011. she talks about the history of the school, the process of finding the boys and reuniting them with their families, and the contentious relationship the scientists had with the town who wanted to hide its racist past.

[iirulancorrino]

Diana Greene Foster, The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion

[secularprolifeconspectus]

I'm adopted, because my "mother" was convinced to not abort me, and people like you genuinely scare the fuck out of me.

I was abused in the foster system, I was abused by my adoptive parents, and I was abandoned by my birth parents.

You people allow kids to be born to parents, families, and communities that don't want them. Children who aren't wanted are abused at every turn. You're literally advocating for suffering. Try to imagine what it's like to grow up without love. That's what you're advocating for.

I have the comfort of knowing I can have an abortion if something goes wrong, if Im raped AGAIN. Knowing that my body wouldn't be ruined, my life wouldn't be ruined by someone else's choice. I'm not going to be a parent.

I hope you grow up. I hope you realize the consequences of your ideology. You're taking MY autonomy, I'm not a babymaker. You're forcing kids to grow up without love.

I'm glad I don't live in a country where people take your ideology seriously.

My heart aches that you've suffered so much. That's really sad and I'm sorry you've been through so much, sincerely.

I'm glad you are here. I'm glad you are alive. I'm glad your mother protected you from being murdered. Because abortion doesn't merely prevent a person from coming into being; it kills someone who is real and alive and actually a full person. You may not agree, but it's on you to prove why preborn humans are the exception to the rule that all living human organisms are people.

My friend Braedon was sexually abused in the foster system, and he is ardently pro-life. He knows he is better off alive than dead, and I have other friends who feel the same. I even dated a pro-life communist whose mother was murdered and he was put into child slavery on a farm in foster care, and yet he STILL is pro-life. I definitely don't speak for anyone who has been through foster care, but you certainly don't speak for all of them.

It's not necessary for Pro-Lifers to fix our broken social system before we can demand an end to baby murder, anymore than it was necessary for slave abolitionists to secure reparation before they could demand freedom for Black people. You sound an awful lot like Thomas Jefferson justifying why slaves shouldn't be free when you insist babies shouldn't be alive... we must come together as a SOCIETY and a CULTURE to solve these problems, because exterminating people is NEVER the solution.

I know many people think it is more cruel to place a child in our current foster care and adoption systems than to murder a baby, but without their impetus and as long as abortion is the “simpler option”, the system may never see improvements. The less often that parents choose to carry unexpected pregnancies, the less visible they are, the more shame they face for not choosing the “simple” option, and the less accessible crisis family resources become. Cultural pressure to abort is increased, and cultural coercion is unacceptable.

That being said, I think adoption should be avoided whenever possible, and we should prioritize family preservation. I also think the kinship care model of fostering may solve a lot of the problems with our current system. Ultimately, the foster system is an extension of the police, which I believe should be abolished, and the adoption industry is just as coercive and predatory as the abortion industry.

I also want to challenge your assertion that all unwanted pregnancies lead to unloved children, and that all abortion-minded people become abusive parents. According to the pro-choice Turnaway Study, this simply isn't true: five years after being denied an abortion, 96% of participants didn't regret having their babies. It seems that over time, even parents who didn't initially want to be pregnant came to want, love, and feel deeply attached to their children. And most chose to parent their children.

I'm sorry this wasn't the case for you, you didn't deserve to be abandoned and abused.

If you're terrified of becoming pregnant and you don't want to be a parent, seriously, maybe get sterilized? If you oppose abortion except for in cases of rape and life of the mother, then you have more in common with pro-lifers than pro-choicers. You can be pro-life and advocate for a rape exception. I don't agree with the rape exception morally, but I think it's an acceptable compromise. If you think pregnancy ruins your body (which is INCREDIBLY misogynistic and patriarchal, like what the actual fuck,) then you've fallen for the propaganda pathologizing female fertility. Sorry to break it to you.

I don't think a child would ruin your life. But don't take my word for it, hear it from someone who aborted after rape. Believe it or not, 50% of women who conceive in rape keep their babies and love them. My friend Ayala conceived in rape and loved her baby deeply. I'm not taking your autonomy by insisting you should not be allowed to kill preborn people with impunity. I'm advocating against a mass human rights violation.

You should see the victims of YOUR ideology.

If you don't live in the US, kindly fuck off. You don't have a clue how extremist the US is when it comes to abortion. We literally allow abortion up until the baby begins to exit the vaginal canal for any reason. The only restriction we have is that you may not pull an infant's legs out of their mom's vagina to kill them by sucking out their brain from the back of their neck with a vacuum. That's literally the only kind of pregnancy termination that is banned.

Also, may I recommend some therapy? Your projection makes you come off as traumatized, which I know you are after all you've been through. When you grow up, I hope you heal. Get well soon.

[fearsomeandwretched]

last song: bug like an angel by mitski

currently reading: Berlin by Bea Sutton, The Glow by Jessie Gaynor, The Turnaway Study by Diana Greene Foster

currently watching: RHOM season 3

tagging: @mariacallous @barbielifeinthematrix @godofsmallthings @odekirk

[coochiequeens]

By Nicole Acevedo

Latinas are the largest group of women of color affected by current and future state abortion bans and restrictions: More than 4 in 10 Latinas of reproductive age live in the nearly two dozen states where officials are working to make abortion inaccessible.

A new analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, first shared with NBC News, found that close to 6.5 million Latinas (42% of all Latinas ages 15-49) live in 26 states that have banned or are likely to ban abortions after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade this summer.

"This community is really facing the brunt of the overturn of Roe v. Wade,” a co-author of the analysis, Candace Gibson, the director of government relations at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, said in an interview. Both groups support abortion access. 

Three-quarters of the Latinas who live in states with abortion bans or restrictions are concentrated in Texas, Florida and Arizona. 

Texas, where abortions are banned, is home to 2.9 million Latinas of reproductive age. Florida and Arizona, where abortions are restricted, are home to 1.4 million and 587,600 Latinas of reproductive age, respectively.

Roe’s repeal opened the door for 13 states, most of them in the South and the Midwest, to implement abortion bans. Six states have restricted or are looking to restrict access to abortions, and pending bans could go into effect in seven states later in the year.

“Anyone who is capable of getting pregnant at some point may need abortion care," said another co-author of the analysis, Shaina Goodman, the director for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families. 

Nearly 3.1 million Latinas affected by current and future abortion bans in the 26 states are already mothers. About 28% of them have children under age 3.

The analysis found that nearly 3 million Latinas in the 26 states where efforts are underway to make abortion inaccessible were “economically insecure” or living in families below 200% of the federal poverty line.

“The breakdown of the data is really about telling a story about who is harmed. It’s moms, it’s moms with young kids, it’s people who are struggling to make ends meet,” Goodman said.

Research shows that mothers who are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies and their children are four times more likely to live below the federal poverty line, according to The Turnaway Study, a University of California San Francisco research project that examined women who had abortions compared with those who were denied them over a 10-year period.

see rest of article

[anniekoh]

Just Get on the Pill The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics by Krystale E. Littlejohn (2021) www.krystalelittlejohn.com

The average person concerned about becoming pregnant spends approximately thirty years trying to prevent conception. People largely do so alone using prescription birth control, a situation often taken for granted in the United States as natural and beneficial. In Just Get on the Pill, a keenly researched and incisive examination, Krystale Littlejohn investigates how birth control becomes a fundamentally unbalanced and gendered responsibility. She uncovers how parents, peers, partners, and providers draw on narratives of male and female birth control methods to socialize cisgender women into sex and ultimately into shouldering the burden for preventing pregnancy. Littlejohn draws on extensive interviews to document this gendered compulsory birth control—a phenomenon in which people who give birth are held accountable for preventing and resolving pregnancies in gender-constrained ways. She shows how this gendered approach encroaches on reproductive autonomy and poses obstacles for preventing disease. While diverse cisgender women are the focus, Littlejohn shows that they are not the only ones harmed by this dynamic. Indeed, gendered approaches to birth control also negatively impact trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people in overlooked ways. In tracing the divisive politics of pregnancy prevention, Littlejohn demonstrates that the gendered division of labor in birth control is not natural. It is unjust.

The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion by Diana Greene Foster (2020)

What happens when a woman seeking an abortion is turned away? To answer this question, Diana Greene Foster assembled a team of scientists—psychologists, epidemiologists, demographers, nurses, physicians, economists, sociologists, and public health researchers—to conduct a ten-year study. They followed a thousand women from across America, some of whom received abortions, some of whom were turned away. Now, for the first time, Dr. Foster presents the results of this landmark study in one extraordinary, groundbreaking book. Judges, politicians, and pro-life advocates routinely defend their anti-abortion stance by claiming that abortion is physically risky and leads to depression and remorse. Dr. Foster's data proves the opposite to be true. Foster documents the outcomes for women who received and were denied an abortion, analyzing the impact on their mental and physical health, their careers, their romantic relationships, and their other children, if they have them. Women who received an abortion were better off by almost every measure than women who did not, and five years after they receive an abortion, 99 percent of women do not regret it.

Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion by Gabrielle Stanley Blair (2022)

In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America. In a series of 28 brief arguments, she deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating women's bodies and instead directs the focus on men's lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching, Blair builds her argument by walking readers through the basics of fertility (men are 50 times more fertile than women), the unfair burden placed on women when it comes to preventing pregnancy (90% of the birth control market is for women), the wrongheaded stigmas around birth control for men (condoms make sex less pleasurable, vasectomies are scary and emasculating), and the counterintuitive reality that men, who are fertile 100% of the time, take little to no responsibility for preventing pregnancy.  The result is a compelling and convincing case for placing the responsibility—and burden—of preventing unwanted pregnancies away from women and onto men.

[thepro-lifemovement]

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/01/416421/five-years-after-abortion-nearly-all-women-say-it-was-right-decision-study

Ah yes, the Turnaway study. Most of what I have to say about that study can be found here:

A British science magazine, New Scientist, also noted that the Turnaway Study may be “biased” because only 38% of the women asked to participate in the study actually did, and the women who dropped out or did not participate may have been the ones who felt more negatively about their abortions.

Contrary to what the study claims, abortion regret is not rare. However, sometimes it takes years – even decades – before a woman begins coming to terms with her unborn baby’s abortion death.

A British survey in 2006 found that 82% of respondents said they deeply regretted their abortions. Of the 248 women who participated, only 26 said they had few or no regrets.

Numerous studies also link abortions to an increased risk of mental health problems, including a 2009 study from the University of Otago in New Zealand. More than 85% of women reported negative reactions to their abortions including sorrow, sadness, guilt, regret, grief and disappointment, according to the study.

Other studies indicate that post-abortive women are at a higher risk of suicide. One study published in the British Medical Journal in 2013 found that women who had abortions were seven times more likely to commit suicide than women who gave birth.

Lead author Professor David Fergusson, who described himself as a pro-choice atheist, also led the research team in a 2008 study that concluded that women who continued an unwanted or mistimed pregnancy did not experience a significant increase in mental health problems. Further, having an abortion did not reduce their mental health risks.

A 2011 study in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that 10% of mental health problems among women, including 35% of suicidal behaviors, may be attributable to abortion. Women who had abortions were 81% more likely to experience mental health problems compared to all other control groups, and 55% more likely to have problems compared to women who delivered an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.

The increased risk of suicide following abortion has been recognized in Australia as well. A 2013 Queensland Maternal and Perinatal Quality Council report noted: “There appears to be a significant worldwide risk of maternal suicide following termination of pregnancy and, in fact, a higher risk than that following term delivery. The potential for depression and other mental health issues at this time needs to be better appreciated.”

The infamous Turnaway study is not as reliable as you think it is.

-Sarah