Katie Watson spotted the words on the billboard while driving along a stretch of Interstate 65 in her home state of Indiana: “Many women regret their abortion.”
Watson, a medical ethicist, reproductive health expert and author of a book about abortion, was stunned. “My first reaction was: That’s not true. Research tells us it’s just factually false.”
“Do you mean ‘many’ like over 50 years nationally?” she said, recalling her thoughts as she drove past the sign in 2013. “Maybe they could all fit in a ballroom, and that would be many people. But the implication is the majority of women, and so it felt abusive because it was a false statement intended to make women feel insecure about their own decision-making capacity.”
But for Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, one of the country’s largest antiabortion groups, the billboard’s sentiment reflects her experiences. “I meet people all the time who come up to me, unprompted, and express their abortion regret and tell me their abortion story.”
The five words on that billboard get at the heart of a question that has been long debated and researched: Do women and other abortion patients commonly regret their abortions?
Experts say the idea that people regularly experience regret, negative emotions or mental health effects post-abortion can largely be traced back decades to crisis pregnancy centers. This belief has persisted and continued to wield influence — in Congress and even among Supreme Court justices...
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