This Is How Having An Abortion As A Teen Affects Your Health, Study Says

So, how does having an abortion before you are 18 affect your well-being, according to a new study?

It doesn't. But having a kid does.

The Finnish study found, as Reuters Health puts it,

Girls who have an abortion before age 18 have no negative effects that carry into early adulthood.

In fact, women who had an abortion while in their teens were shown to end up being better educated, more financially stable and physically and mentally healthier than those who went through with their pregnancies.

I'm very glad about these results because there is a lot of misinformation about abortion.

The subject pool of the Finnish study included 29,000 women born in 1987 and tracked them to 2012. By this point, 394 had given birth and 1,041 had undergone abortion procedures before they turned 18.

By studying these two groups, along with women who never became pregnant at all during this period, the researchers were able to discern the risks of financial, physical and mental instability shot up in women who had given birth before they turned 18.

The co-author of the study, Oskari Heikinheimo, told Reuters Health, "I'm very glad about these results because there is a lot of misinformation about abortion," and added this was particularly a problem in America.

The study explains for pregnancies in women between 15 and 19 in the United States, 30 percent will end in abortion. This is compared to 43 percent in the UK, 77 percent in Sweden and 59 percent in Finland.

Oskari Heikinheimo said,

It would be very important that even for young women who choose to have a child that society do its best to guarantee they have a chance to continue schooling... Family planning services should be available for those who need them.

Teenagers (between 15 and 19) gave birth to a staggering 240,000 children in the US in the year 2014 alone, according to the CDC.

Citations: Reuters