In the May issue of Health Affairs, Maeve Wallace of Tulane University and coauthors examine the association between state laws that restrict access to abortion and trends in intimate partner violence–related homicide among women and girls ages 10–44 during the period 2014–20.
The rapidly increasing passage of state legislation has restricted or banned access to abortion care across the US.
Using robust difference-in-differences ecologic modeling, the authors found that enforcement of each additional Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law was associated with a 3.4 percent increase in the rate of intimate partner violence–related homicide in this population.
The researchers determine that an assessment of policies that restrict access to abortion should consider their potential harm to reproductive-age women through the risk for violent death.
For more on this paper's findings, we will be releasing a new episode of A Health Podyssey featuring author Maeve Wallace tomorrow.
