Does Having an Abortion Enable Women to Achieve Their Life Plans? Results from the Turnaway Study

Ushma D. Upadhyay, University of California, San Francisco
Antonia Biggs, University of California, San Francisco
Diana G. Foster, University of California, San Francisco

Women commonly report having abortions for reasons related to wanting to achieve personal life goals. However, only a few studies have investigated whether an abortion enables one to achieve such goals. We assessed the impact of having a wanted abortion on achievement of one-year plans. We compare one-year life plans among women who presented for abortion care just under facilities’ gestational age limits (n=452) with those who presented just over, were denied an abortion and carried to term (n=146) at 30 U.S. facilities. One-year goals in the near-limit abortion patient group were significantly more likely to be aspirational than women who were denied an abortion (AOR=0.16, p<0.001). After analyzing 40% of the one-year data, there were no significant differences in achievement of life plans, however less than high-school education and having at least one child at baseline were significantly associated with not achieving one-year aspirational goals (p<0.001 for all comparisons).