Abortion Access Tied to Suicide Rates Among Young Women

Michael DePeau-Wilson

MedPage Today

Originally posted 28 DEC 22

Restrictions on access to reproductive care were associated with suicide rates among women of reproductive age, researchers found.

In a longitudinal ecologic study using state-based data from 1974 to 2016, enforcement of Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws was associated with higher suicide rates among reproductive-age women (β=0.17, 95% CI 0.03-0.32, P=0.02) but not among women of post-reproductive age, according to Ran Barzilay, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues.

Nor was enforcement of TRAP laws associated with deaths due to motor vehicle crashes, they reported in JAMA Psychiatry in a new tab or window.

Additionally, enforcement of a TRAP law was associated with a 5.81% higher annual rate of suicide than in pre-enforcement years, the researchers found.

"Taken together, the results suggest that the association between restricting access to abortion and suicide rates is specific to the women who are most affected by this restriction, which are young women," Barzilay told MedPage Today.

Barzilay said their study "can inform, number one, clinicians working with young women to be aware that this is a macro-level suicide risk factor in this population. And number two, that it informs policymakers as they allocate resources for suicide prevention. And number three, that it informs the ethical, divisive debate regarding access to abortion."

In an accompanying editorial, Tyler VanderWeele, PhD, of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, wrote that while analyses of this type are always subject to the possibility of changes in trends being attributable to some third factor, Barzilay and colleagues did "control for a number of reasonable candidates and conducted sensitivity analyses indicating that these associations were observed for reproductive-aged women but not for a control group of older women of post-reproductive age."

VanderWeele wrote the findings do suggest that a "not inconsiderable" number of women might be dying by suicide in part because of a lack of access to abortion services, and that "the increase is cause for clinical concern."

But while more research "might contribute more to our understanding," VanderWeele wrote, its role in the legal debates around abortion "seems less clear. Regardless of whether one is looking at potential adverse effects of access restrictions or of abortion, the abortion and mental health research literature will not resolve the more fundamental and disputed moral questions."

"Debates over abortion access are likely to remain contentious in this country and others," he wrote. "However, further steps can nevertheless be taken in finding common ground to promote women's mental health and healthcare."

For their "difference-in-differences" analysis, Barzilay and co-authors relied on data from the TRAP laws index to measure abortion access, and assessed suicide data from CDC's WONDER database in a new tab or window database.

The info is here.

Freezing Eggs and Creating Patients: Moral Risks of Commercialized Fertility

Elizabeth Reis and Samuel Reis-Dennis
The Hastings Center Report
First published: 24 November 2017

Abstract

There's no doubt that reproductive technologies can transform lives for the better. Infertile couples and single, lesbian, gay, intersex, and transgender people have the potential to form families in ways that would have been inconceivable years ago. Yet we are concerned about the widespread commercialization of certain egg-freezing programs, the messages they propagate about motherhood, the way they blur the line between care and experimentation, and the manipulative and exaggerated marketing that stretches the truth and inspires false hope in women of various ages. We argue that although reproductive technology, and egg freezing in particular, promise to improve women's care by offering more choices to achieve pregnancy and childbearing, they actually have the potential to be disempowering. First, commercial motives in the fertility industry distort women's medical deliberations, thereby restricting their autonomy; second, having the option to freeze their eggs can change the meaning of women's reproductive choices in a way that is limiting rather than liberating.

The information is here.

Stunner On Birth Control: Trump’s Moral Exemption Is Geared To Just 2 Groups

Julie Rovner
Kaiser Health News
Originally posted October 16, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

So what’s the difference between religious beliefs and moral convictions?

“Theoretically, it would be someone who says ‘I don’t have a belief in God,’ but ‘I oppose contraception for reasons that have nothing to do with religion or God,’ ” said Mark Rienzi, a senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented many of the organizations that sued the Obama administration over the contraceptive mandate.

Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said it would apply to “an organization that has strong moral convictions but does not associate itself with any particular religion.”

What kind of an organization would that be? It turns out not to be such a mystery, Rienzi and Bagley agreed.

Among the hundreds of organizations that sued over the mandate, two — the Washington, D.C.-based March for Life and the Pennsylvania-based Real Alternatives — are anti-abortion groups that do not qualify for religious exemptions. While their employees may be religious, the groups themselves are not.

The article is here.

Artificial wombs could soon be a reality. What will this mean for women?

Helen Sedgwick
The Guardian
Originally posted Monday 4 September 2017

Here is an excerpt:

There is a danger that whoever pays for the technology behind ectogenesis would have the power to decide how, when and for whose benefit it is used. It could be the state or private insurance companies trying to avoid the unpredictable costs of traditional childbirth. Or, it could become yet another advantage available only to the privileged, with traditional pregnancies becoming associated with poverty, or with a particular class or race. Would babies gestated externally have advantages over those born via the human body? Or, if artificial gestation turns out to be cheaper than ordinary pregnancy, could it become an economic necessity forced on some?

But an external womb could also lead to a new equality in parenthood and consequently change the structure of our working and private lives. Given time, it could dismantle the gender hierarchies within our society. Given more time, it could eliminate the differences between the sexes in our biology. Once parental roles are equal, there will be no excuse for male-dominated boardrooms or political parties, or much of the other blatant inequality we see today.

Women’s rights are never more emotive than when it comes to a woman’s right to choose. While pregnancy occurs inside a woman’s body, women have some control over it, at least. But what happens when a foetus can survive entirely outside the body? How will our legislation stand up when viability begins at conception? There are fundamental questions about what rights we give to embryos outside the body (think of the potential for harvesting “spare parts” from unwanted foetuses). There is also the possibility of pro-life activists welcoming this process as an alternative to abortion – with, in the worst case, women being forced to have their foetuses extracted and gestated outside their bodies.

The article is here.

Does religion deserve a place in secular medicine?

By Brian D. Earp
BMJ Blogs
Originally posted February 26, 2015

The latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is out, and in it, Professor Nigel Biggar—an Oxford theologian—argues that “religion” should have a place in secular medicine.

Some people will feel a shiver go down their spines—and not only the non-religious. After all, different religions require different things, and sometimes they come to opposite conclusions. So whose religion, exactly, does Professor Biggar have in mind, and what kind of “place” is he trying to make a case for?

The entire article is here.

Left Out in the Cold: Seven Reasons Not to Freeze Your Eggs

By Françoise Baylis
Impact Ethics
Originally posted October 16, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

These professional cautions are of no consequence to Facebook or Apple, however. Both of these companies have decided to include egg freezing in their employee benefit package. As an alternative, they could have decided to improve the health benefits offered to all employees. Or, to stay focused on the issue of reproduction, they could have included a full year of family leave in the benefit package. Instead, they chose to pay up to $20,000 for egg freezing. Now call me crazy, but I think this choice just might have to do with their corporate priorities – which include keeping talented workers in their 20s to early 30s in the workplace, not at home caring for babies.

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Second, contrary to popular belief, egg freezing does not set back a woman’s biological clock. While it is certainly true that eggs from a younger woman are more likely to generate a healthy embryo and a healthy pregnancy than eggs from an older woman, it very much matters that the body into which the embryos will be transferred is the body of an older woman. From a purely biological perspective, it is in the interest of women to have their children while they are younger.

The entire story is here.

Va. health commissioner quits, citing abortion regulations

By Olympia Meola
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Originally published October 19, 2012

Virginia's health commissioner, Dr. Karen Remley, resigned Thursday, saying the environment in the wake of new abortion clinic regulations compromised her ability to fulfill her duties.

Remley steered the massive state health agency during two gubernatorial administrations and recently as the Virginia Board of Health dealt with controversial abortion clinic regulations.

"Unfortunately, how specific sections of the Virginia Code pertaining to the development and enforcement of these regulations have been, and continue to be, interpreted has created an environment in which my ability to fulfill my duties is compromised, and in good faith I can no longer serve in my role," she wrote in a letter to Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Remley's resignation, effective Thursday, is the latest twist in a long and highly charged process surrounding the state's abortion clinic regulations.

The Board of Health voted Sept. 14 to adopt regulations that require existing abortion clinics in Virginia to be regulated like new hospitals.

The regulations, hailed by anti-abortion advocates, were approved over the angry objections of abortion-rights advocates, who said the new rules were a thinly veiled attempt to curtail access to abortion services by imposing construction costs on clinics that would force many to close.

The entire story is here.