Choice: Abortion and the impact on women's health

Two echo opinion letters published in The New York Times:

Diana Greene Foster
Oakland, Calif.
The writer is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

Contraception use prevents unwanted pregnancies!

People who carried unwanted pregnancies to term suffered worse physical health for years to come; in fact, two died from childbirth. Women denied abortions were more likely to live in poverty, along with their children, and to have a hard time covering even basic expenses like food and housing, compared with those able to get their abortions. Not being able to access abortion services curtailed people’s other life goals such as getting a higher education, finding a high-quality romantic relationship and even having intended children later under better circumstances.

Mr. Douthat diminishes the substantial harm done to women’s lives and to the well-being of their existing and future children on the basis of the finding that women are emotionally resilient. The callous argument seems to be that it is OK for the government to force someone to sacrifice their body, their family’s security and their life goals so long as it doesn’t also break their spirit.

And this....

Essentially, the only abortion debate we should be having is whether or not women get to have autonomy over their own bodies, or whether they must be forced to concede control to complete strangers and/or the government.

Nobody I know is pro-abortion. The vital question is about choice.

Nobody should get to choose what a woman does with her body, other than that woman — ideally (but not necessarily) with the support and input from her doctors and intimate people in her life. The idea that a woman should be told what she can and cannot do — by strangers and/or the government — is misogynistic and demeaning.  From Nancy S. Cohen, New York

P.S. Maine Writer:  "The best available evidence suggests that improvements in contraceptive use are responsible for a decline in abortion rates," Rachel K. Jones, PhD, principal research scientist at Guttmacher Institute, tells BuzzFeed Health.