Abortion Bans May Be Making Second-Trimester Abortions More Likely
The fraction of people who got an abortion in their second trimester more than doubled in states that enforced near-total abortion bans after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, new research has found.
The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health on Thursday, found that the proportion of abortions that took place at or after 13 weeks of pregnancy jumped from 8% before a ban was enforced to 17% afterward. The average point in pregnancy when the people who participated in the study were able to obtain an abortion also rose, from 7.7 weeks gestation pre-ban to 8.8 weeks gestation post-ban.
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The overwhelming majority of abortions take place during the first trimester: In 2022, nearly 93% of abortions occurred before or at 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diana Greene Foster, the senior author of the study published on Thursday and a professor at the University of California, San Fra..