October 9, 2013 (NRLC)
- The reasons women have abortions are not simple and thus can be
difficult to study and/or categorize. That’s one reason why the two most
recent previous studies on abortion reasons, from the Guttmacher
Institute, date from 2005 and 1988.
Now, though, the same team from University of California, San Francisco
(UCSF) that brought us the “Turnaway” study, has used the same data set
to lay out the reasons the nearly one thousand women in their study had
abortions. While their data set included more women with advanced
pregnancies and reasons did not always fit into clear categories, the
results are revealing nonetheless.
The article, “Understanding why women seek abortions in the U.S.,” was published in the July 5, 2013, edition of BMC Women’s Health and can be freely accessed.
As noted above the authors, M. Antonia Biggs, Heather Gould, and Diana
Greene Foster, all participated in the “Turnaway” study. They are part
of the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIR) project at
the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF), the notorious abortion research center
from the west coast.
Biggs and her fellow researchers began the “Turnaway” study in 2008.
They were specifically looking to contrast the consequences of those who
received abortions versus those who were “denied” abortions. Women were
“denied” either because available abortionists were not trained or
facilities were not equipped to handle those women presenting at those
particular gestations, or because state law, for some reason, prohibited
abortions at a particular stage.
We discussed this study in a five-part series National Right to Life
News Today ran back in January. (Part Five, with links to four previous
articles, can be found here.)
The UCSF team took data from the same set of 956 women, 273 who
received first trimester abortions, 452 who obtained abortions just
under the gestational limits, and 231 who sought but did not receive
abortions. They asked them two open ended questions: the first about why
they sought an abortion, and, second, what their main was reason behind
the request. (Two women out of the 956 in the study did not answer
questions on the reasons for their abortions.)
The findings are both illuminating and ambiguous. Women rarely gave a
single reason and often gave additional, maybe even different reasons
when pressed as to their main reason. Researchers attempted to gather
these into basic themes or categories, but some of these were harder to
categorize than others.
For example, one 19 year old gave the following list: “I already have
one baby, money wise, my relationship with the father of my first baby,
relationship with my mom, school.” Another woman, 27 years old, said “My
relationship is newer and we wanted to wait. I don’t have a job, I have
some debt, I want to finish school and I honestly am not in the
physical shape that would want to be to start out a pregnancy.”
These cover the gamut–financial, relationship, school, and, in the way that some count it, even maternal health.
Essentially, the study authors decided just to identify certain general
themes and then count every time a woman gave a response in this
category. The authors seem to have abandoned the effort to identify a
woman’s primary reason for abortion, as that data is not listed
anywhere. Thus the best one can do with this data is to simply see how
often women offered a particular rationale.
Researchers found 40% of these women mentioning something
financial, 36% in some way discussing the bad “timing” of the pregnancy,
31% raising a partner issue, 29% speaking of “other children,” 20%
talking of the child somehow interfering with future opportunities.
Less than 20% mentioned something about not being emotionally or
mentally prepared (19%), health related reasons (12%), wanting a better
life than she could provide (12%), not being independent or mature
enough (7%), influence of family or friends, and not wanting to have a
baby or to place a baby up for adoption (4%). [1]
These do not add to 100%, of course, because women tended to give more
than one reason. And some other important qualifications need to be made
to give a proper analysis
Looking more carefully at the data
These responses reflect a women’s self-reported subjective assessment,
not some independent analysis of her situation. As such, it is a good
guide to her perceptions (or at least to her beliefs about what others
will consider an acceptable justification). But they do not necessarily
tell us the facts about her circumstances.
For example, though we know from demographic data reported by the
authors that 45% of women participating in the survey were receiving
public assistance and that a considerable portion (40%) were not able to
indicate that they had “enough money in the past month to meet basic
needs,” we do not know what these women’s precise income was or what mix
of public and private resources were available in their communities.
Would they have arrived at the same conclusion if someone had sat down
with them, looked at the sort of resources available to them, and given
them the sort of budget planning advice and assistance that is available
at many local pregnancy care centers?
Finances are an issue for many a young couple starting out, and it is
common to wonder or even worry as to exactly how one can “afford” a
baby. Some circumstances are admittedly more dire than others, but it is
remarkable how that year after year, decade after decade, century after
century, people, some with larger families, find ways to give birth to
all their children and care for them.
How much these women were aware of or considered taking advantage of these resources is unknown [2]
Twelve percent is a higher figure than we are accustomed to seeing
citing “health” reasons, but a few caveats are needed here as well. To
start with, this study group includes more women with advanced
pregnancies than would be found in a general sample of aborting women.
This could mean a slightly higher likelihood of physical issues (though
researchers specifically excluded any women seeking abortions for “fetal
anomaly” from their sample and concluded, in contrast to some other
previous studies, that gestational age was not a factor here). But a
bigger issue, again, is that these are subjective reports of concerns
about possible health problems with the mother or the unborn child, not
medical determinations of any particular risk.
Data and interviews bear this out. Almost half of the 12% reported were
attributed to concerns that the woman had about the impact of her own
tobacco, alcohol, or drug use on the health of her child or on her
ability to care for the child. One woman said, “because I had been doing
drinking and the medication I’m on for bipolar is known to cause birth
defects and we decided it’s akin to child abuse if you know you’re
bringing your child into the world with a higher risk for things.” There
is no indication that this mother or any of the other patients giving
these answers had medical tests showing any problem with the child, or
were told by a doctor that having a child posed any threat to the
mother’s health.
Other issues like “timing” are amorphous and hard to analyze. About 34
points of the 36% raising this issue said they simply weren’t “ready,”
that it wasn’t the “right time.” Discussions involving timing often bled
into other more tangible issues related to finances, school, or work
schedules. Sometimes this was simply expressed in terms of emotional
stress. Two percent expressed concerns about being “too old.”
Women often mentioned concerns about already born children when talking
about timing or finances and nearly one in three (29%) mentioned this
concern about other children overall. Though the sample here in this
study is somewhat different in composition, the percentage of women
reporting already having or caring for at least one child (62%) is
similar to national figures on abortion patients having previously given
birth obtained by Guttmacher and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
How much would change if partners were supportive and encouraging and
women felt they would have help raising another child (women said 8% of
partners were “not supportive,” 6% of partners did not want baby, 3%
were abusive). No indication, again, of whether women knew of or had
access to other support in their wider communities.
Demographic correlations
One thing useful that the study does is to match reasons with
demographics. Perhaps not surprisingly, younger women seeking abortion
were more likely to report concerns about immaturity, a lack of
independence, or the child interfering with future plans. Younger women
also more frequently mentioned the influence of family or friends either
in pressuring to have an abortion or as people from whom they trying to
keep their pregnancies secret by aborting.
African American women were more likely to report problems with their
partner but less likely to report being emotionally or mentally
unprepared to raise a child at the time. Women who were separated,
divorced, or widowed were more also likely to report partner issues.
Women who were employed were half as likely to report a health related
reason, while those who had a history of depression or an anxiety
diagnosis were more than three times more likely to mention health.
It is not clear why, but women with more than a high school education
were more likely to express concerns about not being financially
prepared and to want to abort because they said they desired a better
life for the child than the mother felt she could provide.
Some women (4%) simply admitted they wanted abortions because they
didn’t want a baby or didn’t want any children and/or wouldn’t consider
adoption. More than two thirds (68%) of the women saying this had never
born a child. A handful of women sought abortions because of legal
issues they were going through (3 women) or because of fear of giving
birth (2 women).
Some of what we learned
Though it is not brought out in any detailed analysis here, it is worth
noting that despite what appears to be a general resolve to abort among
women in the study, data on the same women in the turnaway study show
that, even as little as one week later, more than a third of the women
(35%) were no longer convinced that abortion was the outcome they
wanted. How many more shared that view once the child was born is not
addressed here or in that earlier paper.
Identifying one single approach that will address every woman’s
concerns and change her mind is difficult, given the multiplicity of the
reasons and rationales given by women for seeking abortion. Some will
be benefited by being connected to better support systems, while others
need practical economic assistance. Anything making men more responsible
for the children they father will go a long way towards helping many of
these women care for their children.
Yet abortion’s legality and the implied social sanction that comes with
it is clearly a major part of the cultural machinery that forces these
cruel choices on women, that lets men off the hook, that leaves women to
care for households of children all alone, and that makes society less
accommodating to the demands of motherhood. Collectively such factors
may conspire to force many of these women to consider an option that
goes totally against their nurturing natures and pit the needs of one or
more of their children against another.
If we believe the survey, most of the women seeking to abort here did
so, not because they were triumphantly exercising their “power to
choose,” but because they felt like–given the circumstances–they had no
other realistic choice. Abortion forces on them a cruel, violent,
destructive option that does little to solve their basic social or
economic problems, problems, which may, in part, themselves be a
consequence of Roe’s forced cultural transformation.
Those women would find better options and more respect for their rights
and responsibilities as women and mothers with abortion off the table.
