The Longest Wait: Examining the Impact of Utah's 72-Hour Waiting Period for Abortion

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the impact of Utah's 2012 law increasing the mandatory abortion waiting period from 24 to 72 hours.

Methods: This paper includes two assessments of this change: (1) Comparison of the proportion of women returning for an abortion after counseling before and after the introduction of the 72-hour law and (2) self-reported wait times between abortion and procedure, distance traveled, financial expenditures, and perceived impact of the law in a subset of women who were surveyed.

Main findings: Aggregate counseling and procedural data were available at three Utah clinics; 2,793 of 3,618 women (77%) returned for abortion procedures under the 72-hour law, compared with 2,513 of 3,130 (80%) in the previous year (p < .05). Among 307 women surveyed, 63% reported more than 7 days between signing the consent form and their procedure, and women frequently had to travel further to get their procedure than they did for the counseling. Close to two-thirds (62%) reported the 72-hour wait affected them negatively in some way, including the lost wages of needing to take extra time off work (47%), increased transportation cost (30%), lost wages by family or friend(s) (27%), and having to disclose their abortion to someone they would not had told without the waiting period (33%).

Conclusion: Utah's extended waiting period showed a small reduction in the proportion of counseled women who returned for their abortion procedure statewide. Women who had abortions after the law was enacted reported several burdensome aspects of the law.