The weeks after Kanya Harris found out she was pregnant were some of the hardest of her life.
Final exams were approaching for third-year university students. Her doctors told her she had an ovarian cyst and that she was at high risk for an ectopic pregnancy.of waiting time That’s because the abortion clinic near where she lives in Bethesda, Maryland, seemed incredibly long. And she wasn’t able to see her family in Kentucky. state abortion ban.
Harris regularly had panic attacks. She felt like everything was too much, she said.
“My mental health is the worst it has ever been in my life,” said Harris, who had an abortion last May.
What advocates are looking for this year: Efforts for voting measures Although aimed at protecting abortion rights, important differences emerge in the wording of the proposed measures. Among them are Mental health exception.
Missouri proposal Lawmakers would be able to restrict subsequent abortions. Fetus is considered viableHowever, this excludes cases where the abortion is necessary “to protect the life, physical, or mental health of the pregnant person.”Similar measures have been proposed arizona. In 2022, michigan Voters passed an abortion rights amendment with a mental health exception for viability.
Meanwhile, the language of the proposed ballot measure is arkansas Only “physical health” is listed, with the exception of mental health. Suggestions for abortion rights initiatives in other states. floridaMontana and Nebraska do not explicitly mention mental health.
“It breaks my heart to hear about policies that ignore mental health,” said Harris, now 21. “Abortion can save someone’s life, even if they are experiencing a mental health emergency.” Ta.
Most states that ban abortion include exceptions for life-threatening emergencies, but also for “serious mental illness” that could lead to the death of the mother or fetus. Only in Alabama. Lawmakers added the provision after pressure from state medical associations concerned about the high risk of suicide among women.
lawThe law, passed in 2019, was one of the strictest abortion regulations in the country at the time. Exceptions were made in cases of rape and incest, and abortion was considered a serious crime. Alabama began enforcing the ban in 2022 following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Roe v. Wade Ace Attorneywhich once granted the federal government the right to abortion.
Abortion bans in at least 10 states – Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming – explicitly exclude mental health conditions as a possible exception. Others are more vague, allowing exemptions for women’s “life and health” without defining whether mental health is included.
Medical experts say even states that allow mental health exceptions require patients to jump through hoops that may be inaccessible to some people, especially low-income people. . Alabama, for example, requires a state-licensed psychiatrist with at least three years of clinical experience to qualify a mental health condition as an emergency.
On some days, Harris said, she would come home from class and “be overwhelmed and collapse on the floor. I cried every day for two months. But I was facing an abortion ban in my home state.” she said. Harris said she felt reluctant to talk about her experiences with mental health professionals because of the stigma from her doctors.
“People shouldn’t have to jump through hoops and prove their pain to get the care they need,” she says.
From 2017 to 2019, mental health conditions were the leading underlying cause of pregnancy-related deaths, with approximately 23% of pregnancy-related deaths caused by mental health conditions, including suicide and overdose due to substance use disorders. It has been with. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Approximately 1 in 8 women experience postpartum depression. According to the CDC. However, mental health issues during pregnancy, particularly the psychological trauma experienced by those forced into unwanted pregnancies, are not well researched, says Santa Clara University Law Professor Michelle, who studies the impact of abortion regulations.・Mr. Overman says.
“These statistics and the stories of women’s suffering really haunt me,” Overman said. “As a society, we don’t have a great track record of treating mental health in the same way as physical health.”
Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, said policies that discount mental health as less important than physical health are putting lives at risk.he said that too growing evidence Being refused an abortion would cause significant emotional distress. This suffering was revealed by Recent stories The number of women forced to flee the state or continue their pregnancies despite serious risks to their health.
“I am extremely concerned about the exclusion of mental health exceptions in these ballot measures,” said Appelbaum, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. “This is completely cruel and will result in pregnant women suffering and dying in these states.”
Jamie Trevino, a Missouri obstetrician-gynecologist and fellow of the Society of Reproductive Health Physicians, has learned how being denied abortion care impacts a patient’s well-being, including their mental health. He said he had seen it firsthand.
“For my patients, this is a devastating, everyday reality,” she said, adding that she appreciated the mental health exemption in the language of the state’s proposed ballot measure.
Mallory Schwartz, spokeswoman for the Missouri Constitution Freedom Group, said the initiative’s language was “written to ensure that doctors, not politicians, can decide what’s best for patients. ” he said.
Conversely, the Arkansas initiative includes only exemptions “to protect the life of a pregnant woman, or to protect a pregnant woman from disability, physical disease, or physical injury.”
Jenny Diaz, executive director of For AR People, said an earlier version of the proposal included broader exceptions. Initially, she said, “We wanted to make the language of the constitutional amendment as broad as possible, preferably with language that took into account things like mental health.”
But when presented with a proposal that included an exception to “protect the life and health” of the mother, the state attorney general, a Republican, rejected the language, saying “health” needed to be defined.
“That was a signal to us that we had to make a choice,” Diaz said. “And another unfortunate factor is that the majority of voters in Arkansas are less likely to support mental health as a reason for abortion after a certain period of time. We felt that the version mentioned was unlikely to pass.”
Diaz said advocates in Arkansas were concerned that the opponent’s campaign would target mental health exceptions.
The National Right to Life Commission’s model state law on abortion bans explicitly excludes mental health exceptions. These exceptions allow pregnant women to “abort a viable child’s pregnancy while sort of circumventing these laws,” said Ingrid Duran, NRLC’s state legislative director.
“We specifically exclude the mental health exemption because it creates loopholes in the law and allows the unborn child to suffer due to sometimes treatable, sometimes temporary conditions that the mother may be experiencing. “I saw it put me at risk of death,” she said.
Asked if targeting mental health exceptions would be part of the campaign’s strategy to oppose abortion ballot measures in 2024, she said, “I can’t necessarily say it’s part of the strategy. ” he said. Still, Duran said, “It’s heartbreaking to see mental health exceptions like this.”
Oberman, of Santa Clara University, said he hopes the anti-abortion movement will “employ strategies that minimize and ignore the mental health consequences of forced pregnancies.”
“Mental health issues in pregnant women are still very much in the shadows and highly stigmatized,” she says. “That clouds our judgment about what a medical emergency is during pregnancy.”
campaign action
