Dear editor:
In the February 14th Cowboy State Daily, columnist Rev. Jonathan Lange wrote to support Wyoming House Bill 117. He said:
“HB 117 cites the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and a 2023 study by David C. Reardon, both of which demonstrate that, “Many women are coerced into having abortions.” ”
I’ve read both studies. Neither demonstrates that many women are coerced into having abortions.
The Journal study surveyed 987 women who had contacted faith-based, pro-life crisis pregnancy centers after having abortions. The study’s authors warn that the nature of their survey group means “...the results cannot be generalized to the average woman seeking an abortion in the U.S.”
Women in this study were not asked specific questions, such as, “Were you coerced or pressured into having an abortion?” Instead, they responded to the open-ended question, “What are the most significant negatives if any that have come from your decision to abort?” In their responses, nearly 74% of women mentioned feeling at least subtle pressure from others to abort. But from this study, we have no idea how serious that pressure was or what form it took - that is, how often it came close to being coercion.
The Reardon study surveyed 226 women from a group randomly selected by a research survey company. Each woman rated the amount of pressure she’d felt to abort from each of 5 sources. 61% reported a high level of pressure of at least one type. Where did this pressure come from?
41% of women felt high pressure due to Other Circumstances in their lives,
30% due to Financial Concerns,
19% from Family Members,
15% from Male Partners, and
11% from Other Persons.
Reardon and colleagues caution against drawing any conclusions regarding the actual frequency of women feeling pressured to abort in the general population.
No woman should be pressured into having an abortion, so the results of these two studies are disturbing. But they do not support the assertion that “many women are coerced into having an abortion.”
I urge Rev. Lange, and the sponsors of HB 117, to re-read both studies, and especially the Journal study through to its end. There the authors quote from an earlier study of the emotions that women feel after having an abortion. The author of that earlier study used the term “consented but unwanted” abortion. And she observed:
“Women who agree to a consented but unwanted abortion might choose differently if circumstances were other than what they are—if they had a healthy fetus, more economic resources, greater flexibility with employment or education, or stronger social supports to make parenthood a workable option.”
She went on to say:
“Abortion has a number of ugly truths. One of them is that many abortions are prompted by social conditions, social scripts, and social pressures that have removed a robust safety net of formal and informal supports that should exist and, in fact, do exist in other, primarily European, countries.”
Sincerely,
George Jones, Laramie
