Abortion Restrictions Hurt Women ’ s Mental Health

Abortion restrictions affect women’s health in more ways than one. According to a new study published in JAMA, simply living in a state that limits access to abortion is linked to worsened symptoms of anxiety and depression in women of childbearing age. To find this pattern, a team at Johns Hopkins University analyzed responses from more than 700,000 people to the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey between Dec. 2021 and Jan. 2023. The survey asked people to rank their anxiety and depression symptoms on a scale of 0 to 4, allowing the research team to assign averages to various groups across the three time periods they looked at.  [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] They were primarily interested in what happened to the mental health of women ages 18 to 45—a window they defined as childbearing age—after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion in June 2022. They zoomed in on women who lived in 13 states with so-called “trigger laws,” or preemptive abortion bans designed to snap into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned. From June 2022 through the end of the year, these women had larger increases in depression and anxiety symptoms than those in the 37 other states. “The pattern is abundantly clear,” says Jennifer Payne, professor and vice chair of research in the University of Virginia’s department of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences, who was not involved wit...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news