Commentary: Pregnancy is risky. Losing access to abortion puts women's lives at stake

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : As scholars doing comparative, international research, we know that the most important predictor of how well women and children do in terms of health and economic outcomes is family planning and access to contraception and abortion.
47% : Such examples fly in the face of Americans' widely shared interest in protecting -- and saving -- pregnant women's lives, including those who ardently oppose abortion but commonly make exceptions in favor of protecting the mother's life.
46% : When drafting laws to restrict abortion, state lawmakers still often build in an exception that allows for terminating a pregnancy to save the life of the mother.
43% : The Supreme Court's decision, a draft of which was leaked last week, will all but eliminate abortion rights in half of the country by returning the decision over abortion to the states.
42% : A 2021 study found that legal abortion "substantially improved maternal health for disadvantaged groups," and that maternal mortality among Black women decreased by 30% to 40% following the legalization of abortion.
41% : As the United States struggles with the imminent demise of Roe v. Wade, politicians and voters need to remember one thing ahead of the midterm elections: Abortion saves women's lives.
41% : The introduction of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol made abortion safer than Tylenol in the first 11 weeks of pregnancy.
41% : Her experience galvanized the Irish people to repeal the 8th Amendment of Ireland's constitution and pass legislation decriminalizing abortion.
40% : Outlawing abortion makes it more risky, not less common.
39% : If the proponents of state laws banning abortion, including in Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky and Mississippi, are motivated by a desire to save women's lives, then the empirical evidence actually suggests an alternative: We can save women's lives by making abortion healthcare widely available to all.
37% : It's access to abortion that has helped reverse such trends.
37% : Equally important, research demonstrates that outlawing abortion does not actually reduce it.
34% : In both low- and high-income countries where abortion is criminalized, women have died when they experienced a medical emergency during a miscarriage.
31% : Abortion turns out to be much less likely than pregnancy and childbirth to put a woman's life at risk.

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