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Senate Republicans won a majority vote to cut Planned Parenthood from federal coffers Dec. 3.
President Obama has vowed to veto the bill, which would stop the organization from receiving any federal money.
Still, the debate over whether the government should defund the organization has been broiling for months.
While abortions currently make up just 3% of Planned Parenthood's services and only about 10% of its clientele receive them, Planned Parenthood is one of the last remaining places where young, low-income, and uninsured couples can go to affordably receive the legal procedure.
One big stumbling block with the debate is the lack of reliable scientific data on what happens to women after they seek medical and surgical abortion services — especially in comparing those who are able to get one with those who cannot.
This could be because she's too far along in her pregnancy, can't afford the procedure, or has health issues that might complicate the procedure, such as obesity.
A team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have been working for years on a potentially game-changing study called the Turnaway Study, which has enrolled nearly 1,000 women aged 15 years and older from 2008 to 2010 at 30 US facilities across 21 states.
They then recruited three groups of women from this study pool — those who received an abortion within the first trimester of their pregnancy, those who received one in later stages, and those who wanted an abortion but were turned away.
They have been interviewing these women, chatting every six months by phone since 2010 until the end of 2015.
Here's what the team has found so far.
They suffer anxiety immediately after being denied the procedure.
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Some abortion opponents argue that the procedure causes emotional trauma, especially when it's performed late in the pregnancy. But this link has been highly debated and never confirmed.
To close this gap, researchers analyzed interview results from the first two years of the Turnaway Study.
They found that those who wanted an abortion but couldn't get one had significantly more anxiety during the first week after their experience than those who were able to get one.
These symptoms tapered off after one year, however.
Overall, women who received an abortion enjoyed the same if not less anxiety and depression following the procedure than those turned away.
Surprisingly, the team found no differences in the mental health of those who had early versus late stage abortions.
The study, with the caveat that self surveys of mental health are historically not as reliable as a psychologists' assessment, demonstrates that abortion — at any stage — does not increase the risk of mental health problems in women.
And at least initially, being denied an abortion can actually increase anxiety.
They endure a birth, which can be much more dangerous than an abortion.
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Giving birth is associated with more common and more severe physical health complications than abortion, the team reports in a paper published November 2015.
In fact, the risk of dying from childbirth in the US is estimated to be about 14 times higher than the risk of death from receiving an abortion.
About 40% of the nearly 150 women who gave birth during the study were physically unable to perform normal activities — such as walking, climbing stairs, or doing errands — for about 10 days following the delivery.
Some also endured severe complications such as "seizure, fractured pelvis, infection, and hemorrhage."
One woman in the study even died of complications due to childbirth after being denied an abortion, Diana Foster, one of the principal investigators of the study and a professor at UC San Francisco, told Tech Insider. "This is not what you'd expect statistically ... but there it was."
Alternatively, only about 25% of the 700 women who had abortions experienced a hit to their mobility after their abortion. And when they did, the weakness only lasted about three days.
Other than commonly reported pain, nausea, and cramping, none of the study participants had severe complications following their abortion.
They experience emotional and physical abuse following the pregnancy.
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A handful of studies report that between 6% and 22% of women who seek an abortion report some kind of physical or emotional violence from their partner.
Some women who seek out abortions do so because they want to leave an abusive partner, or because they worry that the child will be raised in a dangerous environment.
One study, published in October 2014, sampled Turnaway Study survey results from women in each of the three groups who were interviewed by phone the moment they sought an abortion, one week later, and then twice a year for two and a half years.
The team first assessed whether these women had experienced emotional or physical violence from the man involved in the pregnancy in the six months before seeking an abortion. Then they asked if partner violence continued for the remainder of the two-and-a-half year study period following their abortion experience.
They defined physical violence as being "pushed, hit, slapped, kicked, choked, or physically hurt in any way by another person." Psychological violence included women who were "frightened for [their] safety as a result of anger or threats made by another person."
The team found that those who had become pregnant due to rape or who did not know the father were excluded from the analysis.
Women who had abortions suffered significantly less physical violence in the years following the abortion than those who carried the baby to term.
"Terminating an unwanted pregnancy may allow women to avoid physical violence from the man involved in the pregnancy," the researchers said in the paper, "while having a baby from an unwanted pregnancy appears to result in sustained physical violence over time."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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