International Women’s Year: Reproductive Care Under Attack

As we enter the second year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, it’s become evident that the impact of this decision is a direct attack on the both the health and autonomy of women’s bodies. Women’s physical and mental well-being is negatively impacted when forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy. According to The Turnaway Study, denying someone an abortion results in worse financial, health, and family outcomes. There is an inherently higher risk of complications from childbirth than from abortion (Scientific American, ANSIRH). Women are more likely to develop gestational issues like eclampsia, migraines, and post-partum hemorrhaging, and almost twice as likely to experience psychological distress after giving birth. In 2017, a U.K. study found that women faced with unplanned motherhood were nearly 2x more likely to experience psychological distress as women with planned pregnancies (BioMed Central).

Compounding this already grim outcome, women who give birth to an unwanted child are far more likely to experience homelessness and financial hardship, which their children ultimately experience as well. Being denied an abortion lowers a woman’s credit score, increases their debt, and increases the number of negative public financial records, such as bankruptcies and evictions (Turnaway Study Fact Sheet).

Power to Decide is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring all people have the power to decide if, when and under what circumstances to conceive and have a child. Since their founding in 1996, they’ve leveraged partnerships with media companies like MTV and Marie Claire to share information on sexual health, relationships and birth control and created online birth control support network for young people to better understand contraception. In addition to information, they continue to help people overcome barriers to accessing contraception with their Contraceptive Access Fund which offsets associated costs. Power to Decide also offers an AbortionFinder, providing the latest guidance on access by state.

The burden of navigating reproductive care should not fall on patients’ shoulders. In addition to equitable access to information, services and support, Power to Decide upskills providers on having conversations with patients about their pregnancy desires. Learn more about their impact over the past 27 years here.

Continue the conversation with ?What If!’s thought leaders on Women’s Health Equity: Tina Ripperger, Meredith Carleton, Revi Nersesyan; designed by David Reyes