The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having―or Being Denied―an Abortion

This book is brilliant. It's highly readable and at times even funny (yes, funny!). I think that no matter your politics on abortion that you will find something valuable in this book. In our time of great suffering, division and lies, this book which is grounded in facts, is a source of light.

Finally, some well designed scientific data about the effects of abortion. This is a report on a variety of measures from a study comparing the effects on women and their children on being able to get an abortion with a similar group who wanted an abortion but were unable to access it to better delineate what effects the abortion had compared to other factors associated with being in the situation of wanting to have an abortion. This is an improvement over comparing a general group of women giving birth to those who got an abortion because the groups are different to begin with. In this study the groups were very similar at the beginning. I used to review articles for scientific journals and I could see no evidence of bias. The portion on mental health effects is consistent with my clinical experience as a psychiatrist for 40 years. I hope people can read about a study without preconceived ideas that abortion must be harmful when the study does not support that.The book is well written and alternates between a discussion of the data on each topic with interviews with women talking about their abortion or having to have the child, which gives a human face to the study. The findings were reasonable easy to follow, although a few of the figures were confusing.I hope people who are curious about the physical, mental, and economic effects of abortion on women and their children vs. being denied, as well as those curious about the reasons the women want an abortion and why they waited so long, will read this book.I highly recommend it.

This was a fascinating read, which taught me more about pregnancy than I expected to learn. I better understand how women can’t detect their own pregnancies for a couple months or longer. And how easy it is for birth control to fail, making any one of us susceptible to an unwanted pregnancy, despite all precautions taken. She had some interesting and more hopeful hypotheses than I would have had if it were me doing the study. Most notably, she hypothesized women who do not get the abortion might end up happier bc they feel the joy of having a child. I never would have thought that. Turns out women who are denied abortion are not as depressed as I hypothesized, but they certainly aren’t happier, either.

Should be required reading for ALL Americans, especially for Christians and men. Grow up, America. And stay OUT of our personal lives.

There are so many assumptions about abortion, pro or con--so many attitudes. This book details a years-long study, covering many women who had, or were denied, abortions, following them at regular intervals for years. Besides the statistical reports there are several narratives of the complicated lives of women who had abortions, or were turned away, and how that affected the rest of their lives. A rich and complex study that replaces our "Oh, it must be" assumptions with the facts of actual life. Highly recommend.Stan Washburn

Everyone needs to read this book. I'm on page 51 after receiving it today and I'm leaving my house to buy a new highlighter. Well written smart book about the realities people face around abortion. Gut wrenching to hear what happens when women are denied the right to choose what happens to their bodies.

A very well written first of its kind study. Very accessible and thought-provoking. No matter where you stand on reproductive justice, this book provides ground truth about many of the arguments that are tossed around without evidence. Very much worth the read.

This book, and politicized hype around the Turnaway Study, is deceptive and biased. The findings are simply not representative of the typical abortion patient.In brief, only 31% of a non-random sample of women participated in the first interview. And of those, half dropped out before the final interview, with dropout rates highest among those reporting the least relief at the first interview.Now some details from an expert in the field and the author of the most recent comprehensive review of the medical literature: <i>The abortion and mental health controversy: A comprehensive literature review of common ground agreements, disagreements, actionable recommendations, and research opportunities.</i>The Turnaway Study is funded by a prominent abortion advocacy group, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSRH). The admitted goal it to produce data to promote abortion rights and dismiss concerns about how abortion complications.What is never reported in any ANSRH news release, and is only revealed in the fine print of a handful of their many studies, is the fact that they had only a 31% participation rate. The vast majority of women did not want to talk about their abortions. Clinic staff invited 3,045 women invited to participate, only 1,132 women did. This ultra-low participation rate is especially startling since women were offered $50 for every interview.In addition, even the 3,045 invited were not a random sample. Clinic staff were given wide latitude in determining which women to invite. Plus, the study protocol required exclusion of women who are known to be at higher risk of mental distress after abortion, such as women aborting due to a diagnosis of fetal anomaly.The non-representative nature of the sample is further underscored by evidence from other studies showing that women who, prior to their abortions, anticipate having more emotional problems are the least likely to agree to post-procedure interviews. They simply don't to stir up unsettled issues. In fact, even in the Turnaway Study, fully 15 percent dropped who agreed to participated actually dropped out before the first interview. And of the remaining remnant, half dropped over the next five years.Confirmation of this sample bias is actually reported in one of the Turnaway Study's own published papers, in which the authors reported that women with the lowest levels of relief eight days after their abortion were significantly more likely to drop out later (Rocca et al. 2015).In short, the Turnaway Study is not science; it is theater. Many top journals will not even publish survey data with less than a 60% participation rate, much less 30%.Yet because it has been promoted by a prominent abortion advocacy group with a big PR budget, it is being milked for every bit of propaganda value in a way that consistency the undeniable fact that data is drawn from a non-random sample of women, of whom over 70% refused to participate and over 85% did not complete. In short, none of the results shed light on the general population of women.In short, you simply can't claim to know what the majority of women feel about an experience when only 15-30% of a non-random sample are willing to answer your questions.Also omitted from the discussion is the fact that ANSRH has refused to publish their complete survey tools or allow access to their data for the purpose of reanalysis and verification, or disputation, of their results. That refusal violates the data sharing requirements of professional organizations like the American Psychological Association and many of the most prestigious medical journals. (See the above mentioned review article for details.)Despite these many flaws, one of the few Turnaway Studies that does look at emotional stress admitted that: "Approximately 14% of women at risk, or 7% of the full sample, pointed to the index pregnancy as the source of their PTSS, with no significant differences by study group." But this finding that abortion is associated with post-traumatic stress is never discussed elsewhere, much less in headline or news release.Rather than the Turnaway Study offering convincing evidence that women are all happy with and helped by their abortions, the Turnaway Study is principally evidence of how the social sciences can be exploited to advance a political agenda and to cover-up unfashionable truths.