​Court Cases and Law

• The Roe v. Wade supreme court abortion case decided, on Jan. 22, 1973, in favor of abortion rights. The majority opinion states that “the word ‘person,’ as used in the US constitution's Fourteenth Amendment [of the US Constitution], does not include the unborn” (7). 

• The 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a US law recognizing an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim “to protect unborn children from assault and murder” (8). 

Women's Physical Health

• A woman's risk of dying from having an abortion is 0.6 in 100,000. A woman's risk of dying from giving birth is almost 14 times higher, 8.8 in 100,000 (3). The mortality rate of a colonoscopy is over 40 times greater than that of abortion (2).

• When abortion was not legal, women would use coat hangers, knitting needles, or radiator flush to self-induce abortions (15). There were 39 deaths from illegal abortions in 1972, which dropped to two in 1976, after Roe v. Wade's national legalization of abortion (16). 

• Women's Mental Health

• A Scandinavian Journal of Public Health study found that women who undergo abortion may be at increased risk for depression (19). 

• A Southern Medical Journal study of over 173,000 American women found that women who aborted were 154% more likely to commit suicide (20). 

• Studies by the American Psychological Association, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers all concluded that links between abortion and mental health problems are unfounded (22). 

• A peer-reviewed study found that 95% of women who received abortions “felt it was the right decision” a week after the procedure (21). 

Women's Fertility

• A fertility investigation of 10,767 women found that women who had at least two abortions experienced the same future fertility as those who had at least two natural pregnancies (18).

• An International Journal of Epidemiology study estimated that about 15% of first-trimester miscarriages are attributed to a prior history of induced abortion (38). 

• An Indian Journal of Cancer study found an association between breast cancer and a history of abortions (39) (40). 

• Clinics

• 39% of US women live in counties that do not provide abortion services (5). Seven US states, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming, have only one abortion clinic (6).

• Fetus Pain

• Maureen Condic, Professor of Neurobiology, Anatomy, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics explains that the primitive response to pain, the spinal reflex, is developed by eight weeks gestation, in the first trimester (10).  

• A University of California at San Francisco study found that fetuses cannot feel pain until the 29th or 30th week of gestation (12).  The fetus's flinching and other reactions when they detect pain stimuli are mere reflexes, not an indication that the fetus is feeling anything (14). 

Women's Life Effects

• A University of California study found that women turned away from abortion clinics for passing the gestational limit were three times more likely to be below the poverty level two years later, and 76% of “turn-aways” ended up on unemployment benefits, compared with 44% of the women who had abortions (25) (26). 

• A University of Massachusetts at Amherst American Sociological Review study found that women at all income levels earn less when they have children, with low-wage workers suffering a 15% earnings penalty (29). 

• The University of California study found that women unable to obtain abortions were more likely to stay in a relationship with an abusive partner, and were more than twice as likely to become victims of domestic violence (25) (26).

Additional Statistics

• In 2014, 8.6% of abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were undergone by women who had three or more previous abortions, and 45% of abortions were undergone by women who had one or more previous abortions (4).

• 45% of American pregnancies are unintended (30). 

• 42% of women having abortions are below the federal poverty level (27). 

• A Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health study on abortion reasons found that 73% of women said they could not afford to have a baby, and 38% said giving birth would interfere with their education and career goals (28).

• Over 80% of women choose to abort Down syndrome babies (23) Between 1989 and 2005 abortions reduced the Down syndrome population by 15% (24). 

• According to the Guttmacher Institute, in the US, Black women are 3.3 times as likely as White women to have an abortion (34)

• 55.9 million abortions are performed worldwide each year (37). 

• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), evaluating an anti-abortion bill that would ban all abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy, found that the resulting additional births would increase the federal deficit by $225 million over nine years (31) (32). 

• According to a Quarterly Journal of Economics study, 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 (33).