Most people who died of COVID in 2020 had something essential in common, study finds


Mark Lennihan/AP

Daniel Chang
Sat, June 4, 2022

Most working-age Americans who died of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic were so-called essential workers in labor, service and retail jobs that required on-site attendance and prolonged contact with others, according to a recently published study led by a University of South Florida epidemiologist.

The study looks back on COVID-19 deaths in 2020 and affirms what many had already known or suspected — that Americans who could not work from home and who labored in low-paying jobs with few or no benefits, such as paid sick leave and health insurance coverage, bore the brunt of deaths during the pandemic’s first year, said Jason Salemi, an associate professor in USF’s College of Public Health and co-author of the study.

Salemi said the finding, while perhaps expected, left him with two takeaways: That essential workers need more protections during an infectious disease pandemic, and that society’s desire to “return to normal” will mean different things for different people — with inequitable consequences.

“If I say I want things to return to normal, I’m in a position of advantage,” Salemi said. “I can work from home most days. I have access to a primary care physician, and paid sick leave. There are people in this study for whom that may not be the case.”

To conduct the study, Salemi and his colleagues analyzed nearly 70,000 death certificates for people ages 25 to 64 years old and who had died of COVID-19 in 2020, nearly all of which occurred before the first vaccine was authorized in December of that year.

But death certificates do not always include a decedent’s occupation, Salemi said. Instead, researchers used education attainment level, which is listed on all death certificates, as a proxy for an individual’s socioeconomic position. No education beyond high school was “low” while some college education was “intermediate” and anyone with at least a bachelor’s degree was “high.”

Researchers then used U.S. Census data on occupations held by adults in 2020 to calculate the possibility of remote work for the different groups, which were further divided by race, ethnicity, gender and age.

READ MORE: New data shows South Florida is at higher risk of COVID transmission

COVID death rates higher for lower-income Hispanic men

The study found:

▪ The death rate of low socioeconomic position adults — those whose education attainment level did not go beyond a high school diploma — was five times higher when compared to high socioeconomic position adults, and the mortality rate of intermediate socioeconomic position adults was two times higher.

▪ White women made up the largest population group considered high socioeconomic position. By comparison, nearly 60% of Hispanic men were in a low socioeconomic position.

▪ The death rate of low socioeconomic position Hispanic men was 27 times higher than high socioeconomic position white women.

Salemi said the finding that stood out for him was that among all 25- to 64-year-old adults in 2020, people in a low socioeconomic position made up about one-third of the working-age population but accounted for two-thirds of COVID-19 deaths for the same age group.

Analyzing the COVID deaths of working-age Americans

Since 2020, nearly 250,000 working-age Americans have died of COVID-19, Salemi said, though he does not know if the same mortality pattern has persisted in 2021 and 2022. Researchers intend to analyze those deaths, too, to help public health officials and lawmakers develop strategies to better protect service and retail workers.

But with new cases surging again, and three in four Florida counties now at a “high” community level of COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Salemi said this research could help motivate federal agencies, such as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, to make recommendations to reduce infectious diseases from spreading among workers.

“We need really strong worksite protections against airborne pathogens,” he said. “It’s got to go beyond, ‘In certain situations, wear a well-fitting mask.’ .... Employers can do a lot to help keep people safe. But even members of the community, and those of us lucky to be working from home, the more we can reduce community spread of the virus the more we can protect people in these positions that are in the line of fire.”

Women in Japan will only be able to get abortion pills with their partner's permission



Rebecca Moon
Thu, June 2, 2022

Japan is expected to approve abortion pills later this year although “spousal consent” will be required to receive a prescription.

Linepharma International, a British pharmaceutical company specializing in women’s sexual and reproductive health, applied for approval of their abortion pill in December 2021. The drug combines two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, and is currently being used in more than 70 other countries.

For surgical abortions, written consent from a woman’s partner is already required under Japan’s 1948 Maternal Protection Law. A senior health ministry official, Hashimoto Yasuhiro, told a parliamentary committee earlier this month that a partner’s consent is necessary, even if the abortion is done by oral medication.

Campaigners in Japan are demanding that health authorities change the rule, arguing that it violates women’s reproductive rights. A founding member of Action for Safe Abortion Japan, Tsukahara Kumi, said that obtaining a written consent from a partner can become an issue when a woman is being forced to give birth against her will by a spouse.

“For women, being forced into a pregnancy they do not want is violence and a form of torture,” Tsukahara said, according to The Guardian.

A lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party, Fukushima Mizuho, raised concerns over the potential price of the pill and is worried it may be more expensive than other countries.

“It is weird to require an approval from a spouse when taking a pill,” Fukushima said during a parliamentary hearing. “Is Japan still living in the middle ages?”

Many campaigners are arguing that Japan’s failure in approving abortion pills, which are already available in more than 70 countries, indicates the country’s lack of priority in women’s health. While oral contraceptives took around 40 years for approval in the country, Viagra, an erectile dysfunction drug, took merely six months to approve.

City of Austin prepares to decriminalize abortion if Roe v. Wade is struck down


Joseph Guzman
Tue, May 31, 2022

Story at a glance

The Supreme Court could soon overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a leaked draft opinion.

Texas — where abortion is currently legal only up to about six weeks of pregnancy — passed a trigger law in 2021 that would ban most abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

In anticipation of the potential ruling, Austin City Council members are backing a resolution to stand in the way of prosecution of so-called abortion crimes.

If the Supreme Court overturns the federal right to an abortion established by Roe v. Wade, which it is likely to do according to a leaked draft opinion, the City of Austin, Texas is standing by ready with a resolution to protect abortion seekers and providers in a state with some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws.

The leak of a draft majority opinion earlier this month revealed the high court is poised to strike down the landmark 1973 decision, effectively eliminating abortion protections at the federal level and handing authority over abortion access to the states. Thirteen states across the country have signaled their eagerness to prohibit abortion by passing trigger laws, which will essentially ban abortions almost immediately upon Roe being overturned.

Texas — where abortion is currently legal only up to about six weeks of pregnancy — passed a trigger law in 2021 that would ban most abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The ban makes an exception to save a pregnant woman from severe injury or death, but makes no exceptions in the case of rape or incest. Abortion providers would face first and second-degree felony charges, steep fines and the possibility of life in prison. The law would go into effect 30 days after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

In anticipation of the potential ruling, Austin City Council Member José “Chito” Vela has proposed a resolution, the Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone Act, or the GRACE Act, to stand in the way of prosecution of so-called abortion crimes.

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The resolution would restrict city funds from being used to investigate any kind of alleged abortion crimes and would instruct the city’s police department to treat abortion as the “lowest priority” for criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation.

“It does not directly halt enforcement, but it severely limits the ability of the city or any staff to collect or provide evidence for prosecutions. It also preemptively bans surveillance of anyone or anything related to suspected abortions outside of some limited exceptions, like coercion or force,” a spokesperson for Vela told Changing America.

Vela plans to introduce the GRACE Act for a vote “as soon as possible” once the Supreme Court publishes its decision. The resolution has three co-sponsors in addition to Vela and would require approval from all relevant city executives. Vela’s spokesperson says the council member has the approval needed to “effectively protect Austin residents.”

“Abortion will still be illegal in Austin, and it would be very difficult for any abortion providers to openly perform abortion. This resolution simply represents a commitment from the city to turning a blind eye to abortions which are not criminal in other ways – for example, coerced or forced abortions,” Vela’s spokesperson said.

Alyssa Milano calls for Biden to do more to protect abortion rights: 'Grow a pair of ovaries and act'

Suzy Byrne

·Editor, Yahoo Entertainment

Tue, May 31, 2022, 

Alyssa Milano is calling on President Biden to do more to protect abortion rights.

The actress and activist wrote an essay for the Daily Beast telling the president to "grow a pair of ovaries and act" ahead of the expected Supreme Court ruling overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. She says the Biden administration could pressure the National Archivist to publish the Equal Rights Amendment.

"Fifty years [after Roe v. Wade], women are just weeks away from losing our most basic protections and our very bodily autonomy because of the cowardice of our government and a decades-long campaign by the extreme right to control and commodify us," the Charmed star, 49, said of the leaked draft opinion. "We can’t let it stand — and the good news is that we don’t have to, if the president will simply grow a pair of ovaries and act."

Milano, who has been speaking out in protest for years as states pass restrictive abortion laws, revisited the history of pregnancy termination in the U.S., pointing out how it was legal until the late 1800s "when elected extremists criminalized our ability to control our bodies. In the decades between this dangerous government overreach and the Roe decision (and in the decades since), women fiercely fought for basic rights of American existence: the right to vote, to work, to earn equal wages, and to decide if, how and when we want to have children — rights which men have always enjoyed and profited from."

Ahead of the expected SCOTUS decision, which she said will set "women back more than 150 years, to those first anti-abortion laws in the 1800s" if Roe falls and states criminalize and further restrict abortions, she called on Biden to immediately enshrine the Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. Constitution to formally protect women's rights.

"The Equal Rights Amendment states that 'Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex," Milano wrote about the ERA, which was introduced in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972 with a deadline that 38 state legislatures had to vote to approve by 1982. Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it in 2020, but it was past the deadline. There is been a debate as to whether it should be formally recognized.

"Is there anything more obviously discriminatory on account of sex than denying access to health care to only one sex?" asked Milano, who has been candid about her own experience with abortion. "Right now, President Biden could pressure the National Archivist to publish the ERA, making it the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. We need to be ensuring women have EQUAL rights enshrined in the Constitution, not reducing or rolling back rights they already have. It is mind-boggling that instead he is following in the footsteps of Donald Trump. Women helped elect President Biden. Now, we’re calling in our investment. He must do everything in his power to enshrine our rights as Americans and to our own bodies in the Constitution. And he has to do it today, before SCOTUS reverses Roe." (While legal opinions on the matter differ, many believe that the ERA could be the "comprehensive fix" to save Roe.)

Milano ended by saying that "the radical right" won't stop at abortion bans. LGBTQ rights and contraception rights could also be at risk, so there's the need to act now.

"Women have always been lesser in this nation," she wrote. "This fact is the antithesis of everything we are taught the United States stands for, and yet it has persisted for centuries. And unless President Biden or Congress fix it, right now, it’s about to get so much worse for us... Gather every bit of patriotism and courage you have, and join me in loudly demanding President Biden protect the women who put him where he is by pushing to enshrine equal rights in our Constitution right this second. Tomorrow might be too late."

Doctors who worked before Roe v. Wade speak out: ‘Many women died'.

Korin Miller
Tue, May 31, 2O22

Women march and carry signs in support of abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment.

 (Photo: Getty Images)

People across the country were shocked when a draft opinion from the Supreme Court written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito leaked in early May, suggesting that the court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade — the historic court case that has made abortion legal in the U.S. for the past 50 years.

In the wake of the leak, many people have spoken out, sharing their concerns about what overturning Roe v. Wade would do to women and women's health care. Among those worried about the consequences of reversing the nationwide legality of abortion? Doctors who practiced when abortion was illegal.

One is Dr. Warren Hern, founder of the Boulder Abortion Clinic. Hern, who graduated from medical school in 1965, tells Yahoo Life that he saw the "tremendous problems" women had before they could legally access abortion care. "Many women died," he says.

Hern shares that he and his fellow residents spent many nights taking care of women who were "desperately sick" from having illegal abortions. "Many were about to die," he says. Hern says he also saw women who planned to give up their babies for adoption suffer extreme and serious complications while giving birth. "One woman started severely hemorrhaging while she was in labor and the baby ended up brain-damaged as a result," he says. "She was going to give it up for adoption."

He also cared for unwanted children who were victims of abuse. "On my pediatric rotation, I wound up taking care of a lot of young children who were abused and battered by parents who didn't want them," he says.

Hern says he had planned to have a career in public health but, after all that he witnessed in the U.S. and while providing medical care abroad, he decided to go into abortion care. "I became the founding medical director of the first medical abortion clinic in Colorado in 1973," he says. "During that time, I decided that performing abortions was the most important thing I could do in medicine. I wanted to help women."

Dr. Susan B. Shurin, the former deputy director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health, tells Yahoo Life that she saw the consequences of "lack of access of reproductive choice" as a medical student. "In my time in training in Baltimore and Boston, I saw children, teens and adult women with unwanted — sometimes abused and neglected — children, major medical complications and death," she says, adding that some suffered "infertility from a botched procedure."

A 2008 New York Times editorial written by the late gynecologist Dr. Waldo L. Fielding described some of the horrors he witnessed before Roe v. Wade. "The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous coat hanger — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth," he wrote. "In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it."

Fielding continued, "The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional."

Multiple medical boards, including the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, spoke out in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial in 2019 over fears that Roe v. Wade would eventually be overturned. "Some of us are old enough to have witnessed firsthand the consequences of illegal abortions performed by unskilled providers under nonsterile conditions; the rest of us have learned those lessons from history," the editorial reads. "Sadly, however, we will not need history as our teacher if Roe is overturned in the Supreme Court because we will again witness deaths and permanent injuries of women desperate to terminate pregnancies."

The editorial also stated that "none of us want to return to a time when desperate women, often of limited means, sought unsafe pregnancy terminations and suffered irreversible harm and sometimes death. The decision to terminate a pregnancy is a deeply personal and difficult one that deserves to remain the prerogative of each woman and her care provider and not to be usurped by the government."

Shurin has concerns that things will go back to the way they were if Roe is overturned. "We know what not to do," she says. "Banning abortion was and will again be like banning alcohol during Prohibition. It will be driven underground, unsafe and unavailable for the poor but not the rich."

She continues: "We know what to do — abortion should be safe, legal and rare. Good sex education and easy access to contraception prevent abortion." Shurin cites Colorado as an example of this: In 2019, state officials announced that they had cut the teen pregnancy and abortion rate in half with a new family planning program.

Hern fears that overturning Roe v. Wade will make things "worse" for women than they were in the past "because now there is this witch hunt for people seeking abortions."

He urges people to view abortion care as part of health care. "It is very important for people to understand that access to a safe abortion is a fundamental part of women's health care," Hern says. "There are no justifications whatsoever for any restrictions on abortion services. It's medical care, and it should be accessible to all."

USA

Most people support abortion staying legal, but that may not matter in making law

Tarah Williams, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Allegheny College
Tue, May 31, 2022

The Supreme Court is set to soon rule on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case, nearly one month after a leaked draft majority opinion showed the court might uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Ruling to uphold this ban could undo women’s constitutional right to abortion, guaranteed by Roe v. Wade in 1973, and throw the decision back to states.

Most Americans do not support overturning Roe v. Wade, and have held this opinion for some time.

About 61% of Americans think that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, while 37% think it should be illegal in all or most circumstances, according to a March 2022 Pew Research poll.


But national public opinion does not often influence the Supreme Court’s decisions.

As a professor of political science who studies gender and public opinion, I believe that while general national opinion polling on abortion is important, too much emphasis on it can be misleading. When it comes to how public opinion may shape the debate, it’s essential to pay attention to opinions in the various states, and among particular interest groups.

Public opinion on abortion

Polling since 1995 has consistently shown that most Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

But beyond these general trends, people’s specific backgrounds and characteristics tend to guide their opinions on this controversial topic.

It may surprise some to know that research consistently shows that gender does not broadly influence people’s opinions on abortion. Women are shown to be slightly more supportive of keeping abortion legal, but the gap between how women and men feel about this is small.

But other characteristics matter a lot. Currently, the biggest dividing line on abortion beliefs is partisanship.

An overwhelming 80% of Democrats support legal abortion in all or most cases, while only 38% of Republicans do, according to a 2022 Pew Research poll. The opinion gap between Democrats and Republicans on this issue has widened over the past few decades.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Republicans and Democrats supported the right to get an abortion at fairly similar rates. Research finds that the partisan gap on abortion “went from 1 point in the 1972 to 1986 time period to almost 29 points in the 2014 to 2017 period.”

Religion also continues to play an important role in abortion support. White evangelical Christians are particularly in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, but most other people who identify as religious are ambivalent, or remain supportive of the precedent.

Young people and those with more years of education are more likely to say that abortion should be legal, while Latino people are more likely to oppose abortion.

Most consequentially, abortion support varies dramatically across states, ranging from 34% in Louisiana to 72% in Vermont, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2018 survey of the 50 states.

So, when West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, blocked a bill in February 2022 that would have protected the federal right to abortion, he was consistent with his constituents’ opinions. In West Virginia, only 40% support legal abortion in all or most cases.

The history of abortion attitudes

Even after the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion was not as partisan of an issue as it is today. It was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that politicians tried to use abortion views as a way to gain votes.

But as religious conservative political movements grew in the U.S., abortion became more politicized over the next few decades.

In the 1970s, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress were internally divided on abortion. The Republican National Committee, for example, was co-chaired by Mary Dent Crisp, who supported abortion rights. By the 1980s, conservative activists pushed Crisp out of her position.

George H.W. Bush also ran as a moderate on abortion in the 1980 Republican presidential primary. But when Bush lost the primary bid and became Ronald Reagan’s running mate that year, his position shifted. Bush opposed abortion by the time he ran for president in 1988.

This shift speaks to the rising importance of the Christian right in Republican electoral politics around this time.

President Joe Biden made a similar change in his support for abortion over time. Biden opposed using federal funds for abortion early in his congressional career, but has taken a more liberal position in recent years and now sees abortion as an essential element of health care.

Whose opinions matter?

Even though the overall nationwide public support for abortion has remained relatively high since the 1990s, this masks how subsets of people, like those on the Christian right who feel strongly about abortion, can reshape politics.

State-level public opinion matters, too. Abortion attitudes vary greatly across states – and state-level policy has polarized over time, creating bigger policy differences in conservative and liberal states.

This matters because states have an outsize influence in abortion politics. Because so much of the federal debate revolves around Roe, the Senate has been an important gatekeeper for Supreme Court justices, who will determine whether they should overturn Roe.

This difference poses a fundamental challenge for people who want a single nationwide policy on abortion – whether they support the ability for someone to get an abortion in all or most cases, or do not.

Varied opinions on abortion also offer a reminder about what kind of public opinion matters most in democratic politics. It is not the version of public opinion that emerges from nationally representative surveys of the American people. Instead, the most influential kind of opinion is the organized political activity that can pressure government and shape electoral choices and legislative options.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Tarah Williams, Allegheny College.

Read more:

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, there’s no guarantee that people can get abortions in liberal states, either

Protestants and the pill: How US Christians helped make birth control mainstream

Tarah Williams receives funding from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) as a Public Fellow.

What’s the lasting effect of having an abortion, or being turned away? Here's what research tells us.

Devi Shastri, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Fri, June 3, 2022,

Women and men of all ages march in the streets after the rally for abortion rights May 4 at Red Arrow Park in downtown Milwaukee. They marched to Planned Parenthood.

In 2007, Diana Greene Foster, a demographer at the University of California, San Francisco, set out to answer a pivotal question: Does abortion hurt women?

Inspiration came to the professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Gonzales v. Carhart case that year.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the opinion to uphold a federal partial-birth abortion ban, speculated on how having an abortion can impact women's mental health.

The court found "no reliable data to measure the phenomenon," Kennedy said. But it seemed impossible to not reach the conclusion that "some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained."

"Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow," he said.

Indeed, there was no reliable data — so Foster set out to find some.

She reached out to abortion clinics across the country, talking to women who were able to get an abortion and those who were turned away because they were past their state's legal limit to receive one.

The study is held up by experts today as a first-of-its-kind effort to understand the lasting effects of ending an unwanted pregnancy versus carrying it out to term. And, as the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade, the study gives a valuable measure of how curtailed access to abortion procedures could impact millions of women in Wisconsin and beyond.

Over five years, Foster and her research team conducted 8,000 interviews with nearly 1,000 women. They followed the women over the years, measuring the impact having or not having an abortion had on their mental, physical, financial and familial well-being.

In the years since, they have used the data to dive deeper into those issues and more, authoring more than 50 scientific articles in peer-reviewed research journals.

The work has shed light on a subject long mired in stigma and lacking representation in the scientific literature, moving beyond political and religious arguments to measure the various factors that influence a woman's choice to have a child.

How did being denied a wanted abortion change women's ability to care for all of their children? How did it influence their quality of life and mental health? Whether or not they stayed with an abusive partner? Their family's socioeconomic status?

The research remains highly regarded by reproductive health experts.

"The Turnaway Study is brilliant," said Jenny Higgins, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "It's an incredibly strong source of evidence and the study design is so fantastic."

Here's what to know about the study and what researchers found.

Who was part of the Turnaway Study?

By 2016, when the study concluded, the team of 11 researchers had conducted 8,000 interviews on a group of nearly 1,000 women over a span of five years. They recruited from 30 clinics across the country, in addition to having a comparison group of women who sought an abortion in the first trimester of their pregnancy.

Most people — 92.7% — seek abortions in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to 2019 data from the US. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But there are women who seek them later for various reasons, and Roe v. Wade states that while women can legally seek an abortion in their second trimester, states can impose limitations that are reasonably related to maternal health. After the point of "fetal viability," which is generally around 23 or 24 weeks, a state can regulate abortions or prohibit them entirely, so long as the laws contain exceptions for cases when abortion is necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

Why do women seek abortions?

In the interviews, women listed many reasons for seeking an abortion. The most common were: not being able to afford a child, the pregnancy coming at the wrong time in their lives, and/or the man involved not being a suitable parent.

Most women who seek abortions have already had one or more children.

What delays the timing of requests?

The women in the study had been turned away due to legal limitations. Study participants said they were seeking an abortion past their state's limit because they didn't realize they were pregnant and/or because of logistical issues that slowed down their ability to access one.

The researchers found young women and women who have never had a child before were at a higher risk of not recognizing pregnancy in the first trimester.

More: More than 1 in 5 women have irregular menstrual cycles. What does that mean for abortion access?

Women in their 20s made up the majority of those who got abortions in 2019, at 56.9% according to CDC data.

Do abortions hurt mental health?

The Turnaway Study looked at how getting or being denied an abortion impacted women's mental health and well-being over the years.

Researchers looked at rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and suicidal thoughts and also surveyed participants on their self-esteem, life satisfaction, stress and social support.

They found the women who had an abortion had no evidence of negative impact on their mental health or well-being, despite anti-abortion claims that this could be the case.

Those who were denied an abortion had elevated levels of anxiety and stress and lower levels of self-esteem soon after they were denied an abortion. Over time, though, their outcomes improved.

By six months to one year after seeking the abortion, those who got the abortion and those who were turned away had similar levels of mental health and well-being.

The researchers also found that while women felt a mix of positive and negative emotions after getting an abortion, the most common emotion reported was relief. Nearly all participants — 95% — said that the abortion was the right decision for them five years after receiving it.

Can denials threaten financial stability?

The women in the study who were turned away and went on to give birth were more likely to experience an increase in household poverty lasting at least four years after being denied.

The researchers looked at the participants' credit scores, levels of debt and public records on the number of bankruptcies and evictions they had. All were negatively impacted.

Those who were turned away also were more likely to report not having enough money for basic living expenses such as food, housing and transportation. They were three times more likely to be underemployed.

Children born to the women who were turned away were more likely to live below the federal poverty line than the children of those participants who got the abortion they were seeking and subsequently had a child.

What can denials mean for women?

The researchers found instances of physical violence from the man involved in the pregnancy decreased for women who were able to obtain an abortion, but not for those who were unable to obtain one.

Five years out, women who were denied an abortion were more likely to be raising their children alone, without the support of family members or male partners.
What is the impact on children?

The researchers looked at the development of each of the women's children. The older children of those who were turned away — those born before the unwanted pregnancy — showed worse development than those of mothers who could get an abortion.

This shows the multigenerational impact of a woman being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, Foster noted in an editorial published this month in the prestigious journal Science.

They also found that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term was associated with poorer bonding between the mother and newborn compared with the bond between those mothers who had a baby after getting the abortion they were seeking.
What are the comparative health risks?

Major complications from abortion requiring hospitalization are rare, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which also maintains abortions are "an essential component of women's health care."

On the other hand, pregnancy complications can pose major risks to women's health.

More: If Roe is overturned, Wisconsin law would allow abortion only 'to save the life of the mother.' Doctors say it's not always so clear-cut.

These risks bore out in the Turnaway Study as well.

Women who were turned away reported more life-threatening complications like eclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage. They also reported more chronic headaches or migraines, joint pain and gestational hypertension. Two of the study's participants died after delivery due to pregnancy-related causes.

Women are 14 times more likely to die from giving birth than they are from an abortion, Foster noted.

Are there criticisms about this study?

Critics have argued the findings are overblown because of what they see as a low participation rate among those who were asked to join it and also because of potential selection bias — the idea that women who chose to participate in the study represent a particular type of perspective.

These are challenges that most studies of this type face, said Kate Dielentheis, a Froedtert Hospital obstetrician and gynecologist who is also associate program director for the OB/GYN residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Abortion is a sensitive topic, making interviewing people about it a particularly tough task. Considering that, she said, the participation rate of 30% is not absurdly low.

Unlike other types of medical studies, where researchers can, for example, randomly select who gets a new medication and who gets a placebo pill, researchers cannot randomly select who does or does not get an abortion.

Overall, Dielentheis said the number of studies the team has since published in reputable research journals is one indication of the study's reliability. So are the academic pedigrees of the researchers who made up the team and the overall prestige of UC-San Francisco's OB/GYN training program, she said.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What to know about the landmark Turnaway Study on abortion access

USA

57 percent in new poll say a woman should be able to get abortion for any reason



Olafimihan Oshin
Thu, June 2, 2022, 

More than half of Americans believe a woman should be able to get an abortion for any reason, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll.

The Journal noted that the 41 percent of respondents who oppose women being legally able to get an abortion was the lowest on record.

The new poll, published Thursday, found that 57 percent of respondents said that women should be allowed to obtain a legal abortion if she wants to.

The poll comes amid the fierce backlash to Politico publishing a draft opinion last month that signaled the majority of Supreme Court justices favor overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed said that they do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, effectively ending the federal right to abortion, while 30 percent of respondents said they do support the move.

The draft opinion would leave abortion laws largely up to states, where political battles are also brewing in anticipation of the decision. More than 20 GOP-led states have so-called “trigger laws” that would ban or severely restrict abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Many Democratic-led states have moved to further protect the right to abortion, and ensure that the procedure is available to residents of states where the procedure is banned.

The Mississippi law under consideration by the Supreme Court would ban pregnancy after 15 weeks, well before the current standard of fetal viability, which is approximately 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Asked about banning abortion after at least 15 weeks, 34 percent of respondents to the WSJ poll supported the move, while 43 percent of respondents opposed it and 21 percent were undecided.

Asked if they support a proposed ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy — such as in Texas’s abortion law — 30 percent were in favor, while 49 percent opposed it.

Forty-four percent of respondents said that the Supreme Court should set the nation’s abortion laws, while 20 percent of those surveyed said state legislatures and governors should be responsible and 17 percent wanted Congress should handle the matter.

Eighty-six percent of those surveyed said they support abortions if a woman is suffering from serious health issues, while 84 percent supported access to the procedure if the woman’s pregnancy was a result of rape and incest, and 76 percent supported abortions if there is a strong chance of a serious birth defect.

The Wall Street Journal poll was conducted along with the nonpartisan research organization NORC at the University of Chicago from May 9 to 17, with a total of 1,071 respondents. The margin of error for the poll is four percentage points.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

U.S. Supreme Court leak stirs abortion passions in Africa





Tue, May 31, 2022
By Andrew Cawthorne

(Reuters) - When a desperate and bleeding 17-year-old girl walked into his rural health centre, Kenyan medic Ismail Mohammed Salim thought he was doing the right thing by helping her conclude an unwanted and dangerous pregnancy.

Days later, both were in jail.

"I gave an evacuation service to save a patient's life as the government trained me to do. Then I'm prosecuted," said Salim, who was accused of performing an illegal abortion and detained in Kilifi town, where he had to sleep 20-to-a-cell.

"I was in despair."

After a week in custody and a two-year legal process, the clinical officer and girl were vindicated in March by the High Court, which reaffirmed Kenya's constitutional provision for abortion services in emergency or life-threatening situations.

Such cases have given cheer in recent years to abortion rights activists around Africa, where cultural and religious traditions clash with the reality of widespread underage and unwanted pregnancies, sometimes by rape or incest.

Now, however, those activists are looking nervously to the United States, where a leaked Supreme Court ruling would, if confirmed, overturn the landmark Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion there.

"It is a major threat to abortion rights globally," said Evelyne Opondo, senior regional director for Africa of the Center for Reproductive Rights, covering Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zambia.



"A lot of us have looked up to the U.S. for a lot of things really, and perhaps believed too much in their system."

U.S. President Joe Biden eliminated his predecessor Donald Trump's so-called "global gag" rule banning funds for aid groups that discuss abortion, and has promised counter-measures should the U.S. Supreme Court confirm the draft ruling reported by news outlet Politico.

Experts say an overturning of Roe v Wade would have an inevitable major knock-on effect in Africa, emboldening anti-abortionists and boosting their funding, much of which comes from American pockets.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are around 73 million abortions globally per year, 45% in unsafe conditions. Poor nations bear the brunt, with 220 women dying for every 100,000 unsafe abortions.

In Africa, 75% of terminations are unsafe, the WHO says. They occur in homes or backstreet clinics, sometimes by inserting knitting needles or bicycle spokes, or drinking bleach.

'WORSE THAN DOGS'

Around the world's poorest continent, a strong anti-abortion lobby has helped stall some liberalising reproduction bills, including in the East African bloc's parliament.

Those campaigners say it is a practice akin to murder being imposed on Africa by Westerners when attention would be better spent on basics such as schools and clean water.

Kathy Kageni-Oganga, a pastor at Kenya's Sozo Church of God, said she was praying that Roe v Wade is overturned but would still be surprised if it happened.

"It would be such a miracle," she said.

Most U.S. experts believe that the U.S. court, with a 6-3 conservative majority including three justices appointed by Trump, will act to end or cut back abortion rights.

"They kill these babies worse than dogs. Nobody has the right to decide who lives and who dies, only God," added Kageni-Oganga. "Abortion is actually very foreign and it's actually taboo. But people in Africa have been made to believe that it's posh, it's cool."

The former human resources director, who made headlines in 2019 when anti-abortion billboards she had placed in the Kenyan capital were ordered to be taken down, said self-control was the answer to unwanted pregnancies. "People are behaving as though you'd be cooking in the kitchen and you suddenly find yourself pregnant," she said.

Her church had cared for 20 teenagers with crisis pregnancies in recent years, all of whom kept their babies despite being offered adoption, Kageni-Oganga added.

Given such religious precepts, social stigma and a mishmash of laws that in most African nations only allow abortions in extreme situations, backstreet operations remain rife.

Abortion rights campaigners fear that will worsen if Roe v Wade were struck down.

"My case was a very big win for me and for the whole medical fraternity and for the girls who need help," said Salim, the Kenyan medic. "If there is a setback in America, then it will be a very big negative for us."

(Reporting by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Katharine Houreld and Alex Richardson)

Mexican President's 'Mayan Train' multi-billion dollar project dealt new legal blow


FILE PHOTO - Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends news conference at a military base, in Apodaca


Mon, May 30, 202

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican Court ruling that indefinitely suspended construction of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's flagship "Mayan Train" rail project over environmental concerns was welcomed by activists on Monday.

The 1,470-km (910-mile) railway project, which has been trumpeted by Lopez Obrador as a cornerstone of his plans to develop the country's poorer southern states, aims to link tourist hot spots and spur development on the Yucatan Peninsula.

The court ruling states that Mexico's National Tourism Promotion Fund's (Fonatur) plans for the railway do "not comply with the proceedings of the environmental impact evaluation," according to a statement from Defending the Right to a Safe Environment (DMAS), an environmentalist group who argue the project is causing deforestation and wildlife disruption.

The legal dispute is centered on the 121-km (75-mile) "section 5" of the project, connecting the resort cities of Cancun and Tulum in Quintana Roo state, where construction was initially suspended in April over a lack of environmental permits.

Fonatur said in a statement on Monday that it was confident it could "overcome" the indefinite suspension, noting the Environment Ministry was currently reviewing its environmental application for the multi-billion dollar railway.

The court's ban on further construction stands "only until the project's Environmental Impact Statement...is fully resolved," said Fonatur.

Nonetheless, the ruling is a setback for Lopez Obrador, who has pledged to complete the railway by the end of 2023 and says the railway has created 105,000 jobs.

The government recently also clashed with environmentalists over a failed electricity reform bill, which would have increased investment in fossil fuels. [L1N2UK1I0]

(Reporting by Adriana Barrera and Isabel Woodford; Editing by Anthony Esposito and Diane Craft)