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Unintended pregnancies, whether aborted or carried to term, may impose mental health burdens. To learn more, investigators examined data from the naturalistic, ongoing, 60-year Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which has followed women who graduated from high school in 1957.
In 1975, only 2 years after Roe vs. Wade, they were asked about their pregnancy histories and intentions (mean age, 36); in 1992, they self-reported depressive episodes and completed a depression inventory (mean age, 53). Of 2749 white women with pregnancies, 94% married by 1975, 1218 reported only planned pregnancies, 563 had ≥1 unwanted pregnancy, and 966 had ≥1 mistimed pregnancy.
Analyses excluded women with self-reported prepregnancy depressive episodes and controlled fo…