Saturday, August 6, 2022

Clarifying Some Facts About Abortions

While I don’t usually get into politically charged issues like abortion, I think it’s important for people to be aware of the health statistics that are out there on the impact of abortions. This information was reported in an article in this month’s Prevention magazine. 

First of all, you need to be aware that abortion is a medical procedure and that one in four women will undergo an abortion during their lifetime.

 There were four facts that were reported on in the article:

1. An Abortion is actually safer than being pregnant and giving birth to a child. While the odds of dying from any of these is low, the possibility of potential complications are lower if a woman had an abortion. These statistics rise dramatically for black women as their risk of dying from pregnancy is three times greater than that of white women.

When a woman delivers a child her possibility of death is 14 times higher than having an abortion.

If the woman has a serious medical condition during the pregnancy, having an abortion can save her life which means she may be able to have a child in the future.

2. Here’s some surprising information – more babies die in their first year in states where women have limited or no access to abortion. These women tend to be low income and don’t have the ability to afford raising a child. This produces psychological stress in the women that produces inflammation in their bodies that can be passed onto the baby in utero.

These babies are also more likely to suffer from poor nutrition and reduced medical care and teenage girl’s babies suffer even more.

3. There are states that require that providers have to tell the woman seeking an abortion that she might develop anxiety, depression or PTSD after the procedure and that that there is a link between having an abortion and getting breast cancer or becoming infertile. According to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists none of these are true.

The woman won’t develop any of these after an abortion.

4. The effect of not having an abortion for woman who wanted to have one but was prevented from doing that impacts her entire life. The woman was more likely to be in poverty four years after the birth of their child. Fewer of these women will go to college and fewer are able to finish and get a degree which affects their ability to earn money to support them and the baby. Another way this affects these women is that they are more likely to die earlier.

So…I hope this gives some people pause to think about the impact that not having access to an abortion has on both the mother and their baby. 
(Reported Prevention.com, August 2022)


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