Women who choose to have an abortion have 'positive future outlook'

Study comes amid movement by abortion rights activists to remove stigma on the procedure

Report follows data showing that in 2015, US politicians introduced nearly 400 bills to restrict abortion access. (EPA)

Women who choose to have an abortion are more likely to be successful, a survey by US medical professionals has shown.

According to the research and advocacy group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, those who had abortions were six times more likely to have aspirations for the next year - and were 20 per cent more likely to achieve those goals.

Those goals included going to school (21.3 per cent of respondents) and trynig to get work (18.9 per cent), the survey of 800 women found.

Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, the lead author on the report and professor of gynaecology at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine did not respond to a request for further comment from The Independent.

Abortion opponents often argue that women suffer psychological trouble after undergoing the procedure, which they charge terminates a human life and abortion rights proponents say merely removes foetal tissue. Abortion rights advocates, in an attempt to combat what they call the spread of medically inaccurate information and a growing number of restrictions on the procedure imposed by members of state legislatures, have mounted campaigns to remove the social stigma from abortion.

Jex Blackmore, director of the Detroit, Michigan chapter of The Satanic Temple, earlier this month started a blog called Unmother to “publicize” her abortion.

“When there is information, it typically focuses on the woman's decision and whether or not she regrets choosing abortion,” Ms Blackmore said.

The blog followed an ongoing campaign, launched by abortion rights advocates in September, to stop the stigma around the procedure by encouraging women to speak out about about their abortions on social media using the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion.

But stigma isn’t the only problem confronting abortion in America.

Abortion rights advocates say the procedure is a right guaranteed by landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe V. Wade.

But in late 2011, Republican-dominated state legislatures began to impose restrictions on access to abortion that have included a 72-hour waiting period, during which time a woman is required to receive educational materials that abortion rights advocates say are not medically accurate.

Other restrictions include measures that require abortion clinics to have hospital-level facilities, which effectively closed a slew of clinics. Following the closures, women in states like Missouri now travel an average of 120 miles for abortions, according pro-abortion rights Missouri State Representative Stacey Newman has told The Independent.

In 2015, US politicians across the country introduced 400 bills restricting abortion, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), an organisation that advocates for access to abortion said in a report this month. Of those bills, 47 became state law.