Opinion: When women are denied an abortion, their children fare worse than peers

What will happen if Americans lose the constitutional right to abortion? Not all women who need an abortion would find a way to get one. Many would carry the unwanted pregnancy to term and give birth.

The discourse around abortion tends to focus on women and generally fails to consider how being denied an abortion affects the children a pregnant woman already has and those she may have in the future. The research is clear: Restricting access to abortion doesn’t just harm women — it harms their children as well.

For the past decade, at the University of California, San Francisco. My colleagues and I have followed more than 200 women who were denied abortions because they showed up at abortion facilities too late in pregnancy. More than two-thirds of these women carried the unwanted pregnancy to term and gave birth. Our study shows that denying a woman a wanted abortion has a negative impact on her life and the lives of her children.