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Welcome to Impact Factor, your weekly commentary on a breakthrough medical study. I am Dr. F. Perry Wilson.
This week we are not going to put an end to the abortion debate in the United States, but we are going to put an end to an argument that has never been well supported by data. The argument is that abortion poses significant risks to the health of the mother.
According to the most rigorous study[1] the long-term physical effects of abortion in relation to childbirth, included in the Annals of Internal Medicinethis particular argumentation should be removed from the wider national dialogue.
We will take a look.
The design of the Turnaway study has something special.[1] Rather than comparing aborted women to all other women, as do many observational studies, he compared women who sought and obtained an abortion to those who were denied abortions, usually because of their gestational age later.
For example, if a clinic had a gestational age limit of 22 weeks, the study would compare women in the clinic who underwent an abortion a little less than this limit (20-22 weeks) with women who had just exceeded this limit (22-23 weeks). ) and were therefore denied an abortion. This control group is not perfect, but it is the best we can hope for, and the basic characteristics of women in these two groups were quite similar.
The women were followed for 5 years to allow researchers, led by Dr. Lauren Ralph of the University of California at San Francisco, to evaluate their long-term results on their physical health. Why focus on physical health? This is Dr. Ralph:
His team is therefore examining the evidence. According to each criterion, women who have had an abortion have similar physical health outcomes to those who have been denied one. For some relevant findings, such as self-rated health, women who have had an abortion have had better results.
Previous cohort studies of short-term physical outcomes and short-term and long-term mental health have shown a similar pattern. Women who have had an abortion have achieved the same result, if not more, than those who have been deprived of it.
In other words, abortion is a medical procedure that, like all procedures, involves risks, but childbirth appears to present greater risks.
In fact, one surprising finding in this study is that two of the 163 women who have been denied abortions have died from complications of pregnancy or childbirth.
Will this study advance the national debate? Here is Dr. Ralph again:
As I said at the outset, we have never obtained any reliable data to support the argument that abortion causes long-term physical harm to women. women. And while this has never been the main argument against abortion, we now have good quality data to suggest that such damage does not exist.
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