Studies Show How Abortion Restrictions Hurt Women; New Investigative Report Shows Why More Restrictions Are Medically Unnecessary

By Rachel Walden — August 23, 2013

We recently wrote about the Turnaway Study, a research project that involved following women who were denied an abortion because they were past the provider’s gestational age limit and comparing their outcomes to women who received an abortion (either during the first trimester or at near-limit, when the women were almost out of time). Women were recruited for the study from “last stop” abortion clinics — those where there’s not a provider with a later gestational age limit within 150 miles.

A new paper released in the American Journal of Pubic Health begins to present results from that study, focusing on the reasons for delays in seeking abortion care. The research has been conducted by the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health group at UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

One of the findings provides further evidence of important disparities in access to abortion care: the women who received abortions in the first trimester instead of near the limit were more likely to have a college degree and to have a higher income.

For women who were turned away or had near-limit abortions, “money” and “finances” were the most likely reasons for delay. The authors report that reasons for delay among women who were turned away for being over the gestational age limit included travel and procedure costs (58.3 percent of “turnaways” reported this issue), not recognizing the pregnancy (almost half of turnaways), insurance problems, not knowing where to find abortion care (reported by a third of turnaways), and not knowing how to get to a provider.

Interestingly, the near-limit women in this study reported less difficulty deciding to have abortions than the women who had the procedure during the first trimester. This finding runs counter the anti-abortion notion that women who have late-term abortions have simply been irresponsible in waiting so long to make a decision.

The authors also performed some calculations to try to estimate how many women are turned away each year due to gestational age limits. They concluded that 4,143 women in 2008 were forced to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term because of gestational age limits. This does not include additional women who would have been turned away for medical, financial or parental consent reasons. We can only assume this number will increase if the current anti-abortion push for 20-week limits gains ground.

In related news, the National Women’s Law Center has released a new report, “‘Shut That Whole Thing Down:’ A Survey of Abortion Restrictions Even in Cases of Rape.” A year after former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin’s remarks on abortion and rape (Happy Road Trip Anniversary!) NWLC has analyzed state and federal abortion restrictions proposed in the first six months of 2013 for how they would affect victims of rape.

Astonishingly, NWLC found that the vast majority of proposed legislation would create barriers to abortion for rape victims. For example, 27 provisions in the 38 state provisions restricting women’s access to abortion would apply to a woman whose pregnancy resulted from rape. These include provisions such as forced ultrasounds and requiring women to listen to a fetal heartbeat where there were no exceptions for rape victims.

“The GOP could have learned an important lesson: Picking on rape victims, even in the context of abortion, doesn’t play very well with the voting public,” writes Jill Filipovic at Salon. “Instead, the Republican party seems to have internalized the message that marginalizing rape victims is ok, as long as you don’t brag about it.”

And in case you missed it, RH Reality Check published an impressive series of investigative stories this week that proved abortion is already highly regulated and overwhelmingly safe. There’s a huge database of state documents available for review.

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