How patients view mandatory waiting periods for abortion.(Polling Data)(Statistical Data Included)

Summary

In recent years, various legislatures have enacted laws and ordinances mandating a waiting period for women seeking to obtain abortions. Legal challenges to such statutes have been successful, except in one instance (Akron, Ohio), and a federal judge in Tennessee recently struck down a waiting period statute.

As part of the appeal against the Tennessee law, two surveys were made of some 400 women who experienced such a delay to probe their opinions about the benefits and drawbacks of the mandated waiting period. More than seven in 10 women were unable to name a single benefit to be derived from waiting, and six in 10 pointed to one or more problems they had experienced, including extra expense, missed work or school, experiencing some discomfort and entering the second trimester of pregnancy, among others. About $7,600 in extra expenses were incurred by about 200 of the women (with a median of $24 per woman), adding about 48 percent to the costs for the typical low-income woman and 14 percent for the typical higher income woman. The cost of the second visit increased in direct proportion to the distance a woman lived from the family planning clinic and to the number of hours she was employed per week. The typical woman was found to hold a negative view of the statute. Women who were surveyed before and after the waiting period said that they actually realized fewer benefits and experienced more problems from the waiting period than they had anticipated.

Introduction

Laws requiring waiting periods have been overturned or enjoined in Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and Rhode Island. (1) There have been conflicting opinions in Kentucky about the constitutionality of waiting periods. In 1976, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of a 24-hour waiting period imposed by a 1974 Kentucky law. (2) In December 1980, however, a federal district court struck down that law. In doing so, the district court pointed out that unlike the plaintiffs in the case being heard, the plaintiffs in the earlier sixth circuit case did not present any evidence that the waiting period "would, in effect, impose increased health risks or increased financial burdens upon pregnant women seeking an abortion." (3) A waiting period requirement has been upheld in Akron, Ohio, and is being appealed; a similar law had been in effect in Tennessee, (4) but was struck down on March 23 by the federal court in which the case had been pending. (5) The court held that the waiting period imposed an undue burden on the women.

The Tennessee statute, originally adopted in March 1978, required that a woman seeking an abortion, after being examined by her physician and informed of the "benefits and risks... attendant either to continued pregnancy and childbirth or to abortion," (6) must wait at least two days before having an abortion. The penalty for ignoring the waiting period was one to three years' imprisonment of the physician who performed the abortion.

Efforts to challenge the Tennessee law began as soon as it went into effect in September 1979; although the issue has been resolved in that state, the effort to impose mandatory waiting periods may continue in other jurisdictions. One aspect of the Tennessee case is, therefore, of special interest. Attorneys for the plaintiffs, reviewing similar cases elsewhere, noted that no attempt had been made to evaluate systematically and empirically the impact of the law, i.e., to gauge the effect of the mandatory waiting period on women seeking abortion. We were commissioned to assess the law's impact, by conducting two surveys of women who were candidates for abortions at clinics in Memphis and Knoxville from October 1979 through January 1980. (*)