Study: Doctors don’t screen for abortion coercion — and it hurts women

A recent study found that women who are pressured to undergo unwanted abortions are at highest risk of negative outcomes and harm from abortion.

The study , published in the Journal of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (JAHM), found that physicians rarely screen for coercion and pressure to abort, even though it is the highest predictive risk factor for negative outcomes.

The authors, David C. Reardon, Dr. Martha W. Shuping, and Dr. Patricia K. Giebink, called the failure to screen for this “medical negligence.”

“Women considering abortions should be evaluated for risk factors predictive of negative outcomes,” the study read. “The failure to screen for these risk factors is medical negligence. Screening and informing women of their personal risk factors as required by ethical and legal standards may lead to consideration of alternatives to abortion by women who consider the risks unacceptable.”

Michael New, a senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life group that does abortion-related research, said it was a “methodologically strong study,” noting that 1,000 women were surveyed, 226 of whom had an abortion in the past.

“Pro-lifers and the…