Zoe (a pseudonym) always had irregular periods marked by longer cycles. So when she found out during a routine doctor’s appointment that she was eight weeks pregnant, it was a surprise. Single and at the start of her career as a teacher in the New Orleans’ public school system, she was not ready to have a baby. But the state of Louisiana, which banned abortion after a detectable fetal heartbeat in 2019, was going to make that decision hard for her.
The nurse handed her the ultrasound picture and told her she could wrap it up as a Christmas present for her husband, Zoe recounts. Because she couldn’t initially take time off work to travel to a state where she could more easily get an abortion, she had to wait it out. “I basically had to have these four miserable weeks,” she says now. She eventually traveled to a clinic in California and terminated her pregnancy at 12 weeks. “If you’ve ever been pregnant, you might understand that a month is an eternity. I was sick every day, having to think through my decision. From a mental health perspective, it was awful.” Unlike many, Zoe could afford to leave the state, and underwent a successful and healthy abortion. But it still had a lasting and palpable impact on her mental health.
As a result of the Dobbs decision in 2022, 25 million women of childbearing years now live in a state where access to abortion is restricted or banned. In Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, and South Dakota, you can be criminally prosecuted for having an abortion. Of the 14 states with near-total bans, only five allow exceptions for rape. In 2021, Texas passed SB 8, which banned most abortions after six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant. Just this week, Florida followed suit, instituting a six-week ban.
We know that denying access to abortion has dire short-term physical health consequences, including an increase in pregnancy-related complications and deaths. Studies have also found that in the long term, women who were denied abortions experienced overall poorer health five years later, compared to those who did receive abortions. But what about the unseen and often ignored harm: the damage that interfering with reproductive care has on our mental health?