Separating the Scientific Wheat From the Chaff: Myths and Facts About Abortion
The Dobbs decision by the United States Supreme Court has thrown reproductive rights into the laps of voters. And voters are being misinformed like never before.
Published in
8 min readJul 6, 2024
I was walking down the street in Denver a few weeks ago when I saw a group of young people with a sign citing several “facts” about abortion. They warned passersby that abortion caused all sorts of adverse outcomes for the pregnant person. Some of those “facts” were the usual suspects:
- Abortion causes depression: It doesn’t. Decades of data on millions of recipients of abortion procedures show no causal link between abortion and mental health issues. You know what causes mental health issues? Lack of access to reproductive care.
- Abortion causes breast cancer: It doesn’t. This one doesn’t even make sense from a biological point of view. How would ending a pregnancy increase the risk of breast cancer? The medications used for chemical abortions have been shown to not be cancer-causing (carcinogenic). And, since up to 30% of pregnancies end in miscarriage (often before the person knows they’re pregnant), wouldn’t breast cancer be rampant?
