, according to a consensus study report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
Six private foundations commissioned a comprehensive report from the National Academies, which focused on eight questions related to the safety and quality of U.S. abortion care. The resulting Committee on Reproductive Health Services limited itself to these questions and did not make specific policy or clinical recommendations, though they did note that “state regulations have created barriers to optimizing each dimension of quality care.” The report was released on March 16.
The committee focused on the four legal abortion methods in the United States – medication, aspiration, dilation and evacuation (D&E), and induction – and concluded that all four are safe, but that induction is so rare that there is a lack of quality research on the procedure’s risks in women with prior cesarean deliveries. D&E, though less painful, costly, and time consuming than induction, is banned in Mississippi and West Virginia (with exceptions for emergencies) and limited elsewhere in the country by a lack of physicians trained to perform the procedure.
In attempting to assess the physical and mental health risks of abortion procedures, the committee found that “much of the published literature on these topics does not meet scientific standards for rigorous, unbiased research.” Surveying research that they considered high quality, the committee concluded that there is no increased risk of secondary infertility, pregnancy-related hypertensive disorders, abnormal placentation, preterm birth, breast cancer, or mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder associated with a woman having an abortion.