The Public Health Implications Of Overturning Roe V. Wade

Short Wave

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🗓️ 27 June 2022

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday. We're revisiting an episode that may give us insight into pregnant people's lives in a post-Roe United States.

We talked to Dr. Diana Greene Foster, the lead researcher on the interdisciplinary team behind The Turnaway Study. For over a decade, she and her fellow researchers followed just under a thousand women who sought an abortion across 21 states. These data reveal the outcomes of unwanted pregnancies and compare the physical, mental and financial consequences of having an abortion to those of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, Aaron Scott here. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on Friday.
0:05.9	Today we want to revisit an episode that gives us insight into a post-Roe United States.
0:12.0	We talked to Dr. Diana Green Foster, the author of the Turnaway Study.
0:16.6	It tracked the outcomes of unwanted pregnancies and compared the physical, mental,
0:21.0	and financial consequences of having an abortion to those of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.
0:26.7	You're listening to shortwave from NPR, a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v Wade,
0:37.3	the case that protects the right to an abortion, leaked last week. And as news spread,
0:42.9	a crowd formed outside of the Supreme Court building here in DC, our colleagues at all things
0:47.9	considered went to the steps. The emotions surrounding abortion were and
0:56.4	are high. We at shortwave, well we turned immediately to the research. Specifically the Turnaway Study,
1:08.0	led by Dr. Diana Green Foster. It's the first US study to, quote, rigorously examine the effects
1:14.8	of getting versus being denied a wanted abortion on women and their children. Unlike previous studies,
1:21.0	this focused on women's well-being, not on the children's well-being, although we did collect data
1:26.4	on those outcomes too. And this study happened while abortion access was being actively debated
1:32.0	in the courts. Back in 2007, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for
1:39.1	Gonzales versus Carrhart. In the majority decision, which said, no, you can't do that procedure anymore.
1:45.6	Justice Anthony Kennedy said, quote, well, we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon.
1:51.6	It seems unacceptable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life.
1:57.2	They once created and sustained severe depression and loss of a steam can follow, end quote.
2:03.7	And Dr. Foster's reaction to that, you can't make policy based on assumptions of what seems
2:09.7	reasonable without talking to a representative sample of people who actually wanted an abortion.
2:16.2	And if you think people might be depressed, if they get an abortion, well, then you really need to
	...

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