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A study of hundreds of pregnant women over a decade found that 72 percent of those who were denied care ended up living in poverty.
For the better part of a decade, Diana Greene Foster followed 1,000 women who were seeking an abortion. One group received the care, and the other was denied it: The pregnancies were too far along. As Foster watched Texas become the first state to have a six-week abortion ban go into effect last week, she thought of what she now knows are the myriad repercussions of that decision.
Foster’s study, one of the most comprehensive on the real-life consequences of denied abortion access, showed that beyond the mental and physical health outcomes, economic wellbeing also plummets when people can’t access abortion care.
“I think the people who passed this law did not consider the harm they are doing to women and their families,” Foster said. “It is just such a massive intrusion into people’s lives and it has real consequences.”