The Immediate Negative Mental Health Consequences for Women Denied an Abortion Can Last Up to a Year, says Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies’ President, Laura Seligman.

New York, NY, May 07, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Science has long known that anxiety increases and satisfaction and self-esteem plummet when women are prohibited from obtaining abortions. 

We know that legislating restrictions on abortions do not have the desired effects; instead, they cause pain, misery, and death without actually reducing abortion rates.

Laws restricting access to safe, legal abortions are most likely to affect low-income women, women of color, and sexual and gender minorities and those in rural communities.

Adding barriers to accessing abortion services, as the anticipated SCOTUS decision likely will do, often increases stress, anxiety and depression. For those who still choose to get an abortion, there’s often further stress, and a drain on financial resources. 

President Seligman added that “Research from the days before Roe v Wade protected a women’s or a girl’s right to control her own body showed long-term mental health effects for women. The women studied were those with resources. This ruling will disproportionally affect poor women of color, so we can expect the long-term mental health repercussions, including anxiety and depression, of forced pregnancies for these women to be even worse.”

ABCT members have a long tradition of researching and developing treatments addressing anxiety, depression, anger, domestic violence, and pain. We have a number of fact sheets that address these issues that are available to the public on our website (https://www.abct.org/fact-sheets/).

For more resources and information, visit our website, www.abct.org, or contact David Teisler, Director of Communications, [email protected]