Some states tell women abortion can increase their risk of suicidal thoughts. Researchers say that’s not true.

Abortion doesn’t increase women’s risk of wanting to commit suicide, a new study released Thursday found, even though many states make doctors tell women seeking abortions that they may want to kill themselves after the procedure.

“There’s been a prevailing view that abortion causes mental health harm and this is really what’s behind some of our mandated counseling laws in certain states,” said Antonia Biggs, the study’s lead author and a social psychologist researcher at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group at the University of California, San Francisco. “What is the impetus behind the work [is to] really to try and improve on the existing body of literature — which was fraught with methodological shortcomings — and get good quality evidence.”

The study, which was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and followed nearly 1,000 women over the course of five years, is the first to examine whether among women who received abortions were more suicidal than women who sought abortions but were denied the opportunity. Both groups, the study discovered, faced similarly low levels of suicidal thoughts.

Previous studies sometimes tried to contrast women who got abortions against women who wanted to give birth and didn’t abort their pregnancies, a comparison that Biggs contends would lead researchers to inaccurate conclusions. While women get abortions for a variety of reasons, they’ve usually decided somehow that their life isn’t ready for a child, she explained.

“So you compare that woman, to a women who is pregnant [and] has decided that her life circumstances are such that she wants to have a baby and carry that baby to term: She’s in a different place in terms of her finances, her partner, her mental health,” Biggs said. “You’re comparing two different groups of women.”

Eight states require that health care providers tell women who want abortions about the negative emotional consequences of the procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Texas, for instance, mandates people who want abortions be handed a booklet entitled “Right to Know.”

“Women report a range of emotions after an abortion,” the booklet reads. “This can include depression or thoughts of suicide. Some women, after their abortion, have also reported feelings of grief, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, regret, sexual dysfunction, avoidance of emotional attachment, flashbacks and substance abuse.”

But past research by the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group undermines that claim, too. The group has found that abortion doesn’t increase women’s risk for anxiety, depression, and several other mental health issues, either in the short term or five years after the procedure.

States, it turns out, often require providers to tell women false information about the risks of abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute, five states mandate the women learn that abortion may be linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. (It isn’t.) Three want women to be told that there’s a way to “reverse” a medication abortion. (There isn’t.)

“I think that this is the best evidence that we have to date on the psychological consequences of having an abortion. And we find that abortion does not increase women’s risk of suicide ideation,” Biggs said of her study. “I would want the education materials to reflect that, to reflect the best quality evidence.”

Cover image: Ilana Panich-Linsman/Reuters