Limiting access to abortion increases the risk of suicide among women of reproductive age. such a result published scientists in an article in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
The debate about the impact of the abortion ban has gained prominence in the West, especially in recent years. In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. He ruled in the Jackson case. Prior to this, numerous protests were held in Poland against the abortion ban in the country since 2020.
In this context, Ran Barzilai of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues decided to find out how women were affected by stress because of this ban. Stress is considered the main cause of suicide. During the study, the authors analyzed the history of abortion legislation in several US states from 1974 to 2016. They produced a conditional index of the availability of abortion, which changed with the adoption of new laws and regulations. It turns out that the complication of access to surgery has led to an increase in the number of suicides among women of reproductive age.
For the purity of the experiment, the scientists did the same study on women whose age was not considered childbearing – between 45 and 64 years old. It turned out that legislative changes regarding abortion did not affect the frequency of suicide among them. Similarly, the state’s death rate from all other causes remained unchanged.