Comprehensive Study Shows Abortions Are ‘Very Safe’ and Far Less Risky Than Giving Birth

Despite the fact that officials all over the U.S. feel the need to regulate abortion as though it were a pernicious procedure, a study by UC San Francisco researchers shows that complications rarely occur after an abortion.

And yet, if lawmakers continue attempting to restrict women from access to reproductive health care, the real danger could lie in unsafe abortion practices rather than the tried and true medical methods that have been scientifically proven to be safe.

ThinkProgress:

After analyzing data from nearly 55,000 women who received abortion care under California’s Medicaid program, researchers at UC San Francisco concluded that hardly any of them had serious complications within six weeks of their procedure. Just 126 cases necessitated follow-up care for surgery, a blood transfusion, or other conditions that require hospital admission.

Other studies, including data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have also confirmed abortion’s safety. We already had some evidence, for instance, that giving birth is about 14 times riskier than having an abortion. But the new UCSF study goes a bit further than previous research by tracking the complete data on all of the health care used by women who have received abortions. Since many women have to travel long distances to end a pregnancy, the UCSF researchers also examined women’s follow-up care at facilities closer to where they live…

“Abortion is very safe as currently performed, which calls into question the need for additional regulations that purportedly aim to improve safety,” said Ushma Upadhyay, an assistant professor at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a leading research program based at UCSF.

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—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata