Rates of anxiety, depression increased in antiabortion states after Roe fell
Johns Hopkins researchers sent questionnaires to women and men asking how they were affected by Supreme Court decision
A new study from the Journal of American Medical Association confirms what most of us suspected–that depression and anxiety for birthing-aged women went up after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Researchers from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University estimated changes in states with trigger bans on abortion as compared to those that continued to have abortion access. Benjamin Thornburg, Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, Joanne D. Rosen, and Matthew D. Eisenberg wrote the paper.
The authors used a questionnaire to find out how prospective patients felt.
According to the paper, women aged 18 through 45 years, an age cutoff selected for consistency with measures of the lifetime incidence of abortion, faced more significant worsening of anxiety and depression symptoms in trigger versus non-trigger states. In contrast, men of a similar age experienced minimal or negligible changes.
“This finding could be related to many factors, including fear about the imminent risk of abortion denial; uncertainty around future limitations on abortion and other related rights, such as contraception; worry over the ability to receive lifesaving medical care during pregnancy; and a general sense of violation and powerlessness related to loss of the right to reproductive autonomy,” the authors wrote in the paper.
Thornburg answered a series of questions about his research on the school’s website.