Inspired by research into what happens when women are denied access to abortion, “The Turnaway Play,” draws on the words and experiences of women who sought abortion care.
Annabel Sheinberg, director of the Turnaway Project, said the effort aims to share findings from the Turnaway Study, while challenging the claim that abortion harms women.
“This landmark study was done over a 10-year period. A thousand women were followed for five years after seeking a wanted abortion. It was done well before Roe fell,” Sheinberg said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Oct. 28.
The study found that women denied a wanted abortion experienced great economic hardship that persisted for years.
“Years after, women were still more likely to not have enough money to cover basic living expenses like food, housing, transportation,” she said. “They had lower credit scores, more debt, bankruptcies and evictions. So, it had profound economic impact. And so, children's financial wellbeing is negatively impacted as well. Their child development, kind of where they were on developmental milestones, was behind if their mother was denied an abortion versus the moms who received one.”
For now, abortion remains legal in Utah through 18 weeks of pregnancy while a court injunction blocks enforcements of the state’s near-total abortion ban approved by state lawmakers after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Planned Parenthood of Utah CEO Shireen Ghorbani said the state protects a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and family.
“We've been in court basically since the day of the Dobbs decision and working through the judicial process that we have that allows us to really say that the state needs to look at our constitution,” Ghorbani said. “Utah has a very strong and interesting constitution, and it suggests that we have a right to make decisions about our body, about the size and shape of our family. That we have a right to make our own medical decisions, and so we're fighting it out in court.”
Ghorbani said the legislature has responded to the ongoing legal disputes by creating a new three-judge panel that was specifically designed by the legislature to pull court cases into a unique process.
“We're challenging that. We believe that that is unconstitutional, and frankly, it's the legislature's continued efforts to really meddle in every element of your life and to decide sort of which cases go where to get the outcomes that they want,” she said.
“The Turnaway Play” has been produced about 60 times across the county. The production comes to Park City, Monday, Nov. 2, at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 and all proceeds support Planned Parenthood of Utah.
