Do many women regret abortions? New study ‘debunks’ that perception, experts say
A newly released study “debunks” the idea that women who choose to have abortions have lingering regret about that decision, according to researchers.
Five years after an abortion, 95 percent of women reported that it was the right choice for them — and 84 percent of women said they had either positive feelings or no feelings at all about their choice five years later, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a news release Monday on their findings.
“This debunks the idea that most women suffer emotionally from having an abortion,” Corinne Rocca, a professor at UCSF and a study author, said in a statement. “Even if they had difficulty making the decision initially, or if they felt their community would not approve, our research shows that the overwhelming majority of women who obtain abortions continue to believe it was the right decision.”
The authors published their findings Sunday in Social Science & Medicine, saying in the news release that the conclusions “come as many states are requiring waiting periods and counseling for women seeking abortions, based on the assumption that they may regret having them.”
The authors wrote that the “findings challenge the rationale for policies regulating access to abortion that are premised on emotional harm claims.”
To complete the study, researchers analyzed five years of data on the health and socioeconomic impacts for nearly 1,000 women who considered abortions in 21 states — including 667 women who had abortions at the beginning of the study, researchers said.
A week after the women sought abortions, they were surveyed over the phone about their feelings. The study followed up with the women every six months, researchers said. That gave researchers a total of 11 interviews with the women in the aftermath of their decision.
But just because women did not report regret didn’t mean their decision was easy: Researchers said 27 percent found the decision to end their pregnancy “very difficult,” and another 27 percent found the choice “somewhat difficult.” The remaining 46 percent said their decision wasn’t difficult.
“A really interesting finding is how the intensity of all emotions is so low,” Rocca said, according to The Washington Post. “What this study is showing is that there is a small minority who do regret their abortions. I in no way want to reduce the struggles of those who regret their abortions, but it is misguided to take away the options for everyone based on this minority.”
A significant majority of women — 70 percent — said they felt their communities would stigmatize them if they knew of the choice to seek an abortion, according to researchers.
Researchers said “those who struggled with their decisions or felt stigmatized were more likely to experience sadness, guilt and anger shortly after obtaining the abortion.”
But for women in the study, negative emotions around the decision fell drastically with time — particularly in the first year, and even for those who might have wrestled with the decision most, researchers said.
Instead of regret, the most prominent feeling women experienced by the end of the five-year study was something almost entirely opposite: relief, researchers said.
And that feeling of relief endured.
“One might think that relief was a short-term feeling that would go away after weeks, but it does not fade like the other feelings,” Rocca said, according to CNN. “Relief was constant.”
The findings are more comprehensive than earlier research on the topic, experts said.
“This research goes further than previous studies, in that it follows women for longer, and was conducted on a larger sample from many different clinics throughout the U.S.,” Julia Steinberg, a professor at the University of Maryland who wrote a commentary on the study, said in a statement. “It shows that women remain certain in their decision to get an abortion over time. These results clearly disprove claims that regret is likely after abortion.”
Researchers suggested stigma could be driving the unease a minority of women reported after their abortion decision, writing in their conclusion that “future research should explore the possibility that the social discourse, perhaps including antiabortion discourse that assert negative emotional outcomes, ... may itself contribute to the negative emotions it describes.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 12:06 PM with the headline "Do many women regret abortions? New study ‘debunks’ that perception, experts say."
