New Study: Queer people are nearly twice as likely to terminate pregnancy.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people may have more abortions than their heterosexual counterparts, according to a peer-reviewed Harvard study published in JAMA Network Open, a Journal of the American Medical Association publication, last week.
Researchers looked at more than 235,000 pregnancies in nurses, their offspring, and nursing students over a 65-year period. The primary author of the study, Dr. Payalchakraborty said that they used nursing datasets because they offered national and longitudinal data and detailed information on participants’ sexuality and pregnancy history. Sexual minority was defined as heterosexuals with some experience or attraction to the same-sex, mainly heterosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians, or gays. Because data on gender wasn’t available for all participants, the research only evaluated sexual orientation, Chakraborty said.
Chakraborty is an epidemiologist and postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is a fellow of the university’s LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence. She explained her team’s findings–and their high-stakes, real-world consequences–in an interview with Rewire News Group.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the top takeaway of this study?
Our research found that participants of all
groups were more likely to use abortion compared to their heterosexual peers. It is a surprising finding for many reasons. One of the most striking is that there are almost no data available about the abortion needs of LGBTQ+ individuals. This is because sexual orientation and gender data are not often included in reproductive health data. So what we show in this paper is that abortion is an LGBTQ+ issue, as these populations can and do seek abortions, and that restricting and banning abortion disproportionately harms LGBTQ+ populations.[sexual minority]What do you think explains that finding?
We know that sexual minority people are more likely to experience discrimination in employment, in housing. The sexual minority people are more likely to be poor, which means they have less access, in general, to reproductive health care including contraception. Sexual minorities are more susceptible to sexual assault. We know that
has less access to sex-education because curricula often do not include LGBTQ+. The providers often do not take a complete sexual history, and they conflate sexual encounters with identity, making heteronormative assumption about the pregnancy risks of their patients. Sexual minorities who have access to contraceptive services may receive poor-quality care. Sexual minority people may be more likely to need abortion care in the event of a pregnancy complication. This is because they experience disparities in adverse pregnancy outcomes. For wanted pregnancies, there’s a growing literature showing that sexual minority folks experience disparities in adverse pregnancy outcomes, so they may be more likely to need life-saving abortion care in the event of a pregnancy complication.[sexual minority groups]What are the real-world consequences of your findings?
There’s a lot of research showing that being denied a wanted abortion has really profound negative, financial, social, and health-related consequences for the pregnant person, such as being more likely to experience financial insecurity, being less able to care for existing children, having higher exposure to intimate partner violence, and having poor mental and physical health. The Turnaway Study
highlights these issues. These restrictions are likely to exacerbate, entrench and compound the social and reproductive health inequities that sexual minorities already face. What is a question you feel has not been answered that would make a good area of research? Health care, and especially reproductive health care, can be stigmatizing to [a landmark study that measured the impact of unwanted pregnancies on pregnant people] people. But we need to know more about unmet abortion care needs [v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization], so this study is like the tip of the iceberg, in that sense. This study is a good start, but we need to learn more about the unmet need for abortion care. This creates a web that hinders people from exercising their reproductive autonomy or accessing reproductive health care. LGBTQ+ people are also facing a lot of social and health barriers, so when abortion is not available, it can have a negative impact on their health. LGBTQ+ rights are also currently under attack, so this, in combination with abortion restrictions and bans, are likely to have really compounding negative effects on the health of LGBTQ+ people and communities, and particularly people in this population who can get pregnant.
EDITOR’S NOTE May 25, 2025: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the populations studied.
