The Turnaway Study
Para ver este contenido en español, clic aquí The Turnaway Study is ANSIRH’s prospective longitudinal study examining the effects of unwanted pregnancy on women’s lives. The major aim of the study is to describe the mental health, physical health, and socioeconomic consequences of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. The main finding of The Turnaway Study is that receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of women, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health and family outcomes. Highlighted resources include: Factsheet: The Harms of Denying a Woman a Wanted Abortion A Summary of Publications on The Turnaway Study What is The Turnaway Study? The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, A Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having - or Being Denied - an Abortion Before the Turnaway Study, there was little quality research on the physical and social consequences of unwanted pregnancy for women. Most of the research that did exist focused on whether abortion causes mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, or alcohol and drug use. That body of work often used inappropriate comparisons groups—comparing, for example, women who obtain abortions with those who continue their pregnancies to term by choice—and used retrospective designs that depended on women’s reporting of pregnancies and abortions in hindsight. Such comparisons are inherently biased and paint a distorted picture of life following an elective abortion or pregnancy continuation. Key Findings ANSIRH has published more than fifty scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals using data from the Turnaway Study. Our annotated bibliography provides a complete list of publications. Issue briefs on the mental health and socioeconomic consequences of having an abortion versus carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term are also available in Spanish (salud mental and resultados socioeconómicos). The Turnaway Study team of scientists from The University of California San Francisco have also created a lecture series which examine the consequences of receiving versus being denied an abortion in the United States, found here. Findings of the Turnaway Study, the largest study to examine women’s experiences with abortion and unwanted pregnancy in the United States—have also been collected and described in a new book The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, A Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having - or Being Denied - an Abortion, available now in bookstores and online. A factsheet on the Turnaway Study's findings can also be found here. The study finds that many of the common claims about the detrimental effects on women’s health of having an abortion are not supported by evidence. For example, women who have an abortion are not more likely than those denied the procedure to have depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation. We find that 95% of women report that having the abortion was the right decision for them over five years after the procedure. The Turnaway Study does find serious consequences of being denied a wanted abortion on women’s health and wellbeing. Women denied a wanted abortion who have to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term have four times greater odds of living below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).
