​Court Cases and Law

• On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court rules in favor of abortion rights, stating “the word ‘person,’ as used in the US constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn” (Find Law). 

• The 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act (US law) recognizes an embryo as a legal victim in order “to protect unborn children from assault and murder” (NCSL, 2018). 

• On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion no longer exists (Totenberg and McCammon, 2022). 

 

Abortion Availability

• 39% of American women live in counties that do not provide abortion services (Jones and Jerman). Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming only have 1 abortion clinic (McCann, 2017).

• As of August 2, 2022, 17 states—Utah, South Dakota, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia—have banned abortion (Kitchener and Kirkpatrick, 2022)

 

Women’s Physical Health

• A woman’s risk of dying from having an abortion is 0.0006% (Raymond and Grimes, 2012).

  • The mortality rate of a colonoscopy is over 40 times greater than that of an abortion (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists).

• A woman’s risk of dying from giving birth is 14 times higher than the risk from an abortion—0.0088 (Raymond and Grimes, 2012). 

• When abortion was not legal, women would use coat hangers, knitting needles, or radiator flush to self-induce abortions (Morrison, 2014). The 39 deaths from illegal abortions in 1972 dropped to two in 1976, after Roe v. Wade’s national legalization of abortion (Cates and Grimes, 2003). 

 

Women’s Mental Health

• American women who undergo abortions are 154% more likely to commit suicide (Reardon and Ney, 2002). 

• Women who undergo abortions may be at increased risk for depression (Pederson, 2008). 

• Studies by the APA, AMRC, and Johns Hopkins BSPH conclude that there is no link between abortion and mental health issues (Cohen, 2013). 

• 95% of women who received abortions “felt it was the right decision” a week after the procedure (Rocca and Kimport, 2013). 

 

Women’s Fertility

• Women who had 2+ abortions experienced the same fertility as those who had 2+ natural pregnancies (Frank and McNamee, 1993).

• ~15% of first-trimester miscarriages are attributed to a prior history of induced abortion (Sun and Che, 2003). 

• There is an association between breast cancer and a history of abortions (Bhadoria and Kapil, 2013; Huang and Zhang, 2014). 

 

Women’s Life Effects

• Women at all income levels earn less when they have children, with low-wage workers suffering a 15% earnings penalty (American Sociological Association, 2010). 

• Women turned away for passing the gestational limit were 3 times more likely to be below the poverty level 2 years later (Chapman; Newitz, 2012). 

• 76% of women turned away end up on unemployment benefits, compared with 44% of women who get abortions (Chapman; Newitz, 2012). 

• Women unable to obtain abortions are more likely to stay in an abusive relationship and over 2 times more likely to become domestic violence victims (Chapman; Newitz, 2012).

 

Fetus Pain

• UC San Francisco finds that fetuses cannot feel pain until the 230th week of gestation (Lee and Ralston, 2005). 

• A fetus flinching when they detect pain stimuli are mere reflexes, not an indication of feeling pain (McDonough, 2013). 

• Pediatrics Professor Condic finds that the primitive response to pain, the spinal reflex, is developed by the 8th week (Bailey, 2013).  

 

Additional Statistics

• Over 80% of women choose to abort Down syndrome babies (Mansfield, 1999). 

• 18 years after abortion was legalized, crime rates began to drop abruptly, and crime rates dropped earlier in states that allowed abortion earlier, because women who had control over the timing of childbearing were more likely to raise children in optimal environments (Donohue and Levitt, 2001). 

• 73% of women who have abortions said they could not afford to have a baby and 38% said giving birth would interfere with their education and career goals (Finer and Frohworth, 2005).

• Between 1989 and 2005, abortions reduced the Down syndrome population by 15% (James, 2009). 

• Banning abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy would increase the federal deficit by $225 million over 9 years (Covert, 2013; Culp-Ressler, 2013). 

• In 2014, 8.6% of abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were undergone by women who had 3+ previous abortions, and 45% of abortions were undergone by women who had 1+ previous abortions (CDC, 2014).

• American Black women are 3.3 times more likely than American White women to have an abortion (Jerman and Jones, 2016)

• 45% of American pregnancies are accidental (Jatlaoui and Shah, 2017). 

• 55.9 million abortions are performed worldwide every year (Singh and Remez, 2018). 

• 42% of women having abortions are below the federal poverty line (Guttmacher, 2019).