Research shows abortion restrictions harm mental health, with low-income women hit hardest

People who live in states that have passed stricter abortion restrictions as a result of the Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health decision, which returned regulation of abortion access to state legislatures, are more likely to report elevated levels of mental distress. This is especially true for people of lower socioeconomic status.

These are the main conclusions from our July 2024 article published in Scientific progress.

We mined two years of data from the National Household Pulse Survey and analyzed 21 survey waves, each with more than 60,000 respondents. We were able to track how newly enacted pregnancy restrictions and abortion bans affected mental health outcomes like fear, anxiety, disinterest, and depression by state.

The increase in self-reported mental health problems represents a relative increase of about 3% from the pre-Dobbs baseline of 18% to 26% – a disturbing increase any way you look at it.

Why it matters

Two years after the Dobbs ruling, the country is still grappling with the social consequences. Some states have stricter restrictions on abortionwhile others have taken measures to maintain access, resulting in thousands of women travel across state lines every month to obtain these services. From July 2024, 21 states have banned abortion or set stricter pregnancy limits.

The decision to overturn half a century of legal precedents has had profound consequences reproductive care for women and changes the legal landscape that shapes people’s decisions about whether and when to have children. These decisions are often stressful, as they involve navigating complex emotional, social and legal landscapes.

Accordingly, these sudden changes in access to abortion services may have significant mental health consequences. Breaking down our results by demographics, we found consistent effects on birth-assigned sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, and race. However, we also found striking differences by respondents’ income level and education.

Simply put, abortion restrictions had a greater negative impact on the mental health of respondents with fewer economic resources and the less educated. In contrast, those with more wealth and education were largely isolated.

As more states consider imposing their own restrictions, with potential consequences Federal restrictions on abortion not off the tableit’s helpful to have a more holistic view of what that might mean for Americans.

Furthermore, our research underscores the need to consider women’s health across different population subgroups, especially with regard to sex assigned at birth and socioeconomic class.

What is not yet known

We don’t know exactly why socioeconomic class played such a crucial role in our research, but we can speculate.

One possible explanation has to do with anticipatory stress about the financial burden of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, or traveling to another state for an abortion. Financial worries of this kind are likely to have a greater impact on the mental health of Americans who are least able to afford these costs.

An alternative theory is that poorer women make up a disproportionate percentage of the patient base receiving abortion care. According to a 2014 report by the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy group, 75 percent of abortion patients qualified as low income.

What other research is being done?

Our work builds on the findings of the Turnaway study, which significant short-term deterioration in mental health of women who were denied an abortion because their pregnancy was just over the gestational age limit. Our unique contribution lies in assessing the impact of abortion restrictions on mental health more broadly.

It is important to realize that this article is part of a growing body of work highlighting the challenges facing mental health in the post-Dobbs era. Some studies have looked exclusively at women while others have started with compare younger men and women.

Although these studies showed that the effects mainly occurred in women of childbearing age, our results imply that a broader group of people is affected.

This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.