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5 Ways Abortion Rights Protect Women’s Health
The healthcare advances we’d abandon if women lose access to abortion care
It’s only been six years since the Supreme Court struck down one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation at that time. In June 2016, the Court ruled 5–3 in favor of abortion clinics in the case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Yet today, when Texas has outlawed abortion after five to six weeks of pregnancy — before most women know they’re even pregnant — that previous law seems almost quaint. And now with Roe poised to fall altogether, Texas is one of the 13 states with trigger laws that would automatically ban abortion if the Supreme Court violates precedent and overturns the 1973 landmark case.
It seems appropriate, then, to revisit what I wrote in the wake of the Whole Women’s Health decision — that it was a win for women’s health. The rest of this article is a tweaked republication of an article I wrote in 2016, with updated numbers from data that’s become available since then. Sadly, the updated data doesn’t improve the big picture if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Pregnancy and childbirth has become more dangerous while abortion has become safer since I first published the article that begins below.
