Legal abortion is one of the safest procedures in modern medicine, and access to it produces measurable benefits for women’s physical health, financial stability, and safety. The evidence for these outcomes comes from decades of public health data and, most notably, from a landmark U.S. study that tracked what actually happened to women who received abortions compared to those who were denied them. Here’s what the research shows.
It Is Far Safer Than Childbirth
The most straightforward argument for legal abortion is medical safety. Between 2018 and 2021, the pregnancy-related mortality rate in the United States was 32.3 deaths per 100,000 births. The abortion-related mortality rate during the same period was 0.46 per 100,000 procedures. That makes childbirth roughly 70 times more dangerous than legal abortion. Even after excluding COVID-related deaths and other less direct causes, childbirth was still about 44 times riskier. These figures, published in JAMA Network Open, draw on nearly 15 million births and 3.7 million abortions.
The global picture reinforces this. According to the World Health Organization, deaths from safe, legal abortion are negligible (fewer than 1 per 100,000). In regions where abortion is restricted and unsafe procedures are common, the death rate jumps above 200 per 100,000. Restricting access does not reduce the number of abortions. It shifts them from safe clinical settings to dangerous ones.
It Prevents Poverty
The Turnaway Study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, followed nearly 1,000 women over five years. Some received a wanted abortion. Others arrived at clinics just past the gestational limit and were turned away. Comparing these two groups revealed the economic consequences of being denied an abortion in sharp detail.
Six months after being turned away, women who carried the pregnancy to term had nearly four times the odds of living below the federal poverty line compared to women who received the abortion. They were also far less likely to be working full time: only 30% held full-time jobs at the six-month mark, versus a significantly higher share of women who obtained the procedure. These differences in poverty and employment persisted for four years.
The reliance on public assistance was striking. Women denied abortions had six times the odds of receiving cash welfare benefits at six months. They were more than twice as likely to need food assistance, a gap that remained statistically significant across all five years of the study. At six months, 50% of women denied abortions were receiving WIC benefits, compared to 8% of those who had the procedure. Throughout the study period, women denied abortions consistently reported not having enough money to cover basic living expenses like food, housing, and transportation.
It Helps People Leave Dangerous Relationships
Partner violence and unwanted pregnancy are closely linked. People with unwanted or unplanned pregnancies are four times more likely to experience intimate partner violence, and people who have experienced such violence are three times more likely to seek an abortion during their lifetime. Partner conflict is frequently a factor in the decision to end a pregnancy.
The Turnaway Study found that women who were unable to obtain a wanted abortion were slower to leave a violent relationship and more likely to continue experiencing violence compared to those who received care. A forced continuation of pregnancy can bind someone to an abusive partner through shared parenthood, financial dependence, or both.
State-level data supports this pattern. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Reproductive Health found that people who recently gave birth in states with restrictive abortion laws had 36% higher odds of reporting intimate partner violence during pregnancy. The disparity was even larger among Black women, who had 75% higher odds of reporting violence in restrictive states compared to less restrictive ones. White women in restrictive states had 50% higher odds.
It Protects Existing Children
Most people who seek abortions already have children. When a parent is denied an abortion and falls into poverty as a result, the financial strain affects the entire household. The Turnaway Study data showed sustained increases in food insecurity and reliance on public assistance that lasted years. Those are resources stretched thinner across more children, with less money for housing, nutrition, and other basics.
The cost of raising a child through age 17 for a middle-income family is estimated at roughly $234,000, or about $285,000 adjusted for inflation, according to the most recent USDA figures. For someone already struggling financially, an additional child without adequate resources can destabilize an entire family’s economic footing. The ability to time and space pregnancies allows parents to invest more in the children they already have.
Restrictions Don’t Reduce Abortions
One of the most consistent findings in global health research is that restricting abortion access does not lower abortion rates. The World Health Organization’s data shows that abortions happen at similar rates whether they are legal or not. What changes is safety. In countries with highly restrictive laws, the proportion of unsafe abortions is significantly higher than in countries with fewer restrictions. The result is preventable deaths, hospitalizations, and long-term health complications, all without actually reducing the number of procedures.
This means the practical effect of abortion bans is not fewer abortions but more dangerous ones. Legal access channels the procedure into regulated clinical settings where the mortality risk is near zero, rather than into unregulated and often life-threatening alternatives.