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When Women Can't Access Abortion, They're More Likely to Die by Suicide [1]

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Date: 2023-02-16  

A new paper published in JAMA Psychiatry emphasizes the risk of pregnant people’s mental health, as well as the well-being of their developing fetuses, when abortion is not accessible. Previous research has found that people seeking abortions are three times more likely to have a mental illness.

According to the paper, people with unwanted pregnancies already face myriad pressures that undermine their mental health. Without access to abortion, their mental health could decline even further. Poor mental health in the mother is an important predictor of negative birth outcomes and neurodevelopmental issues when the baby is born.

Other countries have already witnessed the catastrophic effects of abortion bans on women’s mental health. When El Salvador banned abortion, suicide became a leading cause of death among pregnant women and girls. Data from the Turnaway Study has shown that abortion access improves mental health

The U. S. is in the midst of a suicide epidemic. And American motherhood has long presented a bleak reality:

The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the wealthy world, and more than 50,000 mothers suffer life-altering injuries giving birth each year. New mothers recover from birth in a society without paid parental leave, in which a quarter of women return to work within 2 weeks of giving birth. Without federally guaranteed access to quality childcare, many do so while worrying that their babies may be unsafe.

American women overwhelmingly live with partners who demand endless labor, who do not help their spouses recover from birth, and whose primary reaction to watching the woman they love bring life into the world is to demand more favors and insist that a person who has just given birth doesn’t really need sleep, support, help with domestic labor, or to be treated like a human being.

Study after study demonstrates that modifiable social problems—financial insecurity, partner abuse, unsupportive marriages, lack of community—are the main risk factors for postpartum depression.

Suicide is the leading cause of postpartum death. Homicide, almost always at the hands of a male partner, is the leading cause of death during pregnancy. Both facts persist because we don’t care at all about life, and we certainly don’t care about the people who create it.

And now, it will all get so much worse. At this point, it should come as no surprise that no one on the right cares. They’ve sat idly by as the maternal mortality rate skyrockets, as women suffer and potentially die of miscarriages because they can no longer get access to medical care. They don’t care that every measure of child and family well-being declines when abortion is inaccessible. Instead, they’re proud of the suffering. After all, if a woman can’t keep her legs closed (or can’t stop a man from forcing them open), then she—and potentially endless generations of children after her—deserve anything and everything that could possibly happen to her. Even if it’s a wanted baby. Even if she’s married.

It might as well be our national motto at this point. Perhaps instead of a Pledge of Allegiance, we should teach children the secret American mantra: Women must suffer.

Until the men on the left become as radicalized as the men on the right, until we demand a pro-choice litmus test from each and every candidate, until middle of the road Democrats display something other than cowardice, a million news stories outlining women’s suffering will continue not to matter.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/16/2153200/-When-Women-Can-t-Access-Abortion-They-re-More-Likely-to-Die-by-Suicide

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