Study: Nearly All US Women Say Abortion Was the Right Decision

Over 95 percent of the women in a landmark University of California, San Francisco study said abortion the right decision for them, following them from a week after their abortions until five years post-procedure.

After three years, 99% of these women said having an abortion was the right decision while after five years, 95% said the strongest emotion they felt was a relief. This was an emotion used to describe how they felt each time they were asked about it.

The strongest emotion almost all women feel is not regret, but relief, even if they struggled beforehand or worried about stigma.

This was the first investigation about how women feel years after their abortions. Also, this is a negative response to many of the claims that fuel state-level laws restricting abortion access in America.

Initially, the women who struggled with the decision or felt stigmatized by it were more likely to report feeling guilt, anger or sadness immediately after the abortion, but over time, these feelings were lessened dramatically, sometimes even one year after the abortion.

Researchers at the UCSF sought to track the emotions of these women in the weeks, months and years after they have an abortion in a wide-ranging study of 667 women from 30 spots around the US, published in Social Science and Medicine.

The researchers asked the women more about their feelings beginning one week after their abortion and then twice a year for the next five years, finding that regardless of how they initially felt -- positive or negative -- those emotions were reduced to a more neutral level over time.

According to the findings by the Social Science & Medicine last Sunday, many states are requiring waiting periods and counseling for women seeking abortions based on the assumption that they may regret having them; 29 states have enacted legislation that restricts access to abortion in the US, while other states are embroiled in legal battles over similar laws, such as 'heartbeat bills.'

Published on January 12, the findings debunk the assumption that women regret terminating their pregnancies -- a notion that's been used by anti-choice activists to lobby for mandatory waiting periods and abortion counseling in many states.

The Guttmacher Institute said that abortion rates in the US have been consistently falling for the last several years, with an estimated 862,320 performed in 2017.

Researchers at the UCSF Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) found no evidence that women began to regret their decisions as years passed.

According to Corinne Rocca, Ph.D., MPH, associate professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, even if they had difficulty making the decision initially, of were scared of feedback from peers, their research shows that the overwhelming majority of women who obtain abortions continue to believe it was the right decision.

In contrary to the pro-life notion that life begins at conception, many lawmakers also claim that their pushing for abortion legislation to protect women's health.

Thus, three states have enacted laws that require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital near their clinics.