My maternal grandmother was married in June 1910 and pregnant by December. She would be pregnant, on and off, for the next 24 years; her twelfth and last child, my uncle Jim, was born in 1934 when she was 47. My grandfather died in 1938, leaving her with six minor children still at home; she died in 1949 at 63, when my mother was 21. She had high blood pressure, hyper-tension and diabetes, dying of a cerebral hemorrhage while lying down to nurse another pounding headache.
Her health challenges were exacerbated by her many pregnancies, as they are in all pregnant women, when any existing kidney, heart, liver, lung, etc. issues often go into hyperdrive. These conditions may also appear for the first-time during pregnancy (e.g. gestational diabetes), as can back pain, foot pain, migraines, varicose veins — you name it. Pregnancy puts a lot of pressure on women’s bodies.
Many women have easy pregnancies, with few or no negative side effects, yet others face a constellation of ills including hyperemesis gravidarum, or a form of depression — post-partum — specific to new moms. I have a friend who struggled with it; she had a good marriage, with a supportive husband, family and friends, a nice house, money in the bank, and really wanted her first born when, wham! It hit her like a ton of bricks.
Yet what if your mom didn’t want you? Like really didn’t. That happens, even though we prefer to pretend it doesn’t. A 2001 study by John Donohue and Steven Levitt determined that the first five states (including New York) that legalized abortion in 1970 experienced a significant drop in crime in the early 1990s, a drop that was also seen in all other U.S. states 20 years after Roe was made federal law in ‘73. Unwanted children, the study suggested, whose mothers didn’t have a choice, had, as adults, been filling our jails for decades.
Here are a few other reality checks on pregnancy, abortion and more, for while many Americans are persuaded by women’s personal stories, facts do matter, especially when making policy decisions or writing legislation that will profoundly affect women’s lives.
There are about 5 million pregnancies in the U.S. annually; one in five end in miscarriage, many of which require follow-up abortion care, more commonly known as a D&C. Eight percent of all pregnancies are high-risk to the pregnant person; one in four abortions in the U.S are accessed by self-identified Catholics; 63% of all Catholics are pro-choice. Just under 400,000 children are currently in foster care in the U.S.
Since the Supreme Court case known as Dobbs ended Roe, the number of abortions in the U.S. has increased by 10%. Girls who give birth during adolescence, i.e. children having children, are more likely to live in poverty and to die before the age of 31; their children are also 30% more likely to be developmentally delayed. Mississippi, where Dobbs originated, has the highest maternal death rate in the U.S, and is ranked 48th in the nation for child wellbeing; 18.7% of Mississippians lived below the poverty line in 2023, and 46% of all children in Mississippi live in single parent households. Mississippi also incarcerates a higher percentage of its citizens than any other state in the U.S., or country on the planet.
There are 46,000 women in the U.S. Armed Forces based in states where they are unable to access abortion care; during fiscal year 2023, the U.S. Air Force missed its recruitment goals by more than 40,000.
C-sections are the most common and one of the most expensive surgical interventions in the U.S. and are linked to worse maternal and neonatal outcomes. Pregnancy is also dangerous, says the American Association of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, due to one in six women experiencing their first instance of abuse by their partners during that time; more than 300,000 women report abuse during pregnancy annually in the U.S.
Homicide, 81% of the time carried out with a firearm, is the leading cause of death for pregnant women and women who have recently given birth. The U.S. is tied with Malaysia, Grenada, Lebanon and Antigua at 120th of 186 countries for maternal mortality rates. The most dangerous places for giving birth are war zones, and countries with the worst record on women’s rights: Sudan, Chad, Nigeria and the Central African Republic.
In 2022, the UN reported that, worldwide, a woman dies every two minutes during pregnancy or childbirth; most of these deaths were preventable, due to factors that were, in order of frequency: severe bleeding (most after childbirth); infections (ditto); high blood pressure during pregnancy (pre-eclampsia, eclampsia); complications from delivery and, finally, unsafe abortions in countries where it is illegal.
Bodily autonomy is a fundamental right. We must make the protections of Roe federal law once more.