Abortion policy and science: can controversy and evidence co-exist?

Abortion policies should be based on evidence. Over the past four decades in the United States, we have accumulated more data about the practice of legal abortion than any other surgical procedure. This evidence has documented the public health impact of increased access to safer abortion. In recent years, state laws to restrict abortion access have gained momentum. An accompanying article in this issue of JPHP uses extant data to examine whether two restrictive policies have had a measurable effect on abortion morbidity. The analysis found an unexpected result – states which imposed restrictions had lower levels of abortion complications than those who did not. Various explanations exist for these findings. Caution is needed to interpret observational findings, especially with polarizing issuess like abortion.