{"id":22039,"date":"2021-12-28T12:35:06","date_gmt":"2021-12-28T06:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=22039"},"modified":"2021-12-28T12:44:07","modified_gmt":"2021-12-28T06:59:07","slug":"window-to-access-legal-abortion-may-close-before-many-women-know-they-are-pregnant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/window-to-access-legal-abortion-may-close-before-many-women-know-they-are-pregnant\/","title":{"rendered":"Window to access legal abortion may close before many women know they are pregnant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MADISON \u2014 More than one in five women experience irregular menstrual cycles that could keep them from learning they are pregnant until it may be too late to access an abortion under some state laws in effect or under consideration, a new study shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Researchers from the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison and National Institutes of Health analyzed anonymized data on 1.6 million menstrual cycles provided by more than 267,000 adults to a cycle-tracking app. According to results published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 percent of the people in the study had irregular menstrual cycles that differed in length from one cycle to the next by seven or more days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFor almost everyone, the first symptom of a pregnancy is a missed period,\u201d says UW\u2013Madison sociology Professor Jenna Nobles, coauthor of the study. \u201cBut many people \u2014 a large share of the population \u2014 have long or highly irregular cycles and could not reasonably learn about their pregnancy in time to seek a legal abortion under laws that set limits at detectable fetal cardiac activity or six weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Irregular periods are more likely among those with some relatively common medical conditions like Type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome and thyroid, and other hormone disorders. Hispanic women had greater risk than non-Hispanic white women of experiencing irregular cycles. The age group most like to have cycles of irregular length is 18- to 24-year-olds \u2014 also the ages with the highest abortion rates in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-675x447.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22042\" width=\"841\" height=\"557\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-675x447.jpg 675w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-604x400.jpg 604w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-768x508.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-175x116.jpg 175w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg 876w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 841px) 100vw, 841px\" \/><figcaption>PHOTO: <strong><em>Ignacio Campo<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Experts in reproductive health know that variation in menstrual cycle length is common, according to Nobles, but the new study is remarkable for demonstrating how short the window can be between a missed period and fetal cardiac activity. Most critically, the window may not exist at all for people with highly irregular cycles, putting younger people and people with common health conditions at a particular disadvantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe degree of variability in menstrual cycles is not widely appreciated,\u201d says Nobles, whose work with graduate student Lindsay Cannon and NIH epidemiologist Allen Wilcox, coauthors of the study, is supported by NIH\u2019s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. \u201cWe talk a lot about the 28-day cycle, with ovulation on day 14. As best we know, that characterizes about 1 percent of menstrual cycles. What is \u2018normal\u2019 instead is substantial variability, from person to person and across cycles for individual people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The findings have implications for a recently adopted law in Texas (and similar proposals before other state legislatures) that effectively criminalize abortions conducted after cardiac activity is detected in the fetus via ultrasound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That activity \u2014 electrical pulsing in the \u201cfetal pole,\u201d a thickening of cells in the yolk sac that mark the development of an embryo \u2014 can occur as early as 23 days after conception, the fertilization of an egg. Conception can happen as early as 12 to 14 days after menstruation marks the beginning of a cycle, even for people with irregular cycles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s many weeks before there will be a heart as we think of it, with chambers, ventricles, and muscle tissue,\u201d Nobles says. \u201cBut this electrical activity can be detected 35 to 37 days after the beginning of a menstrual cycle, and that will be before many people with irregular, long cycles even realize they may have missed a period and are able to take a pregnancy test.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This research was supported by grants from NIH and a private foundation through the UW Collaborative for Reproductive Equity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than one in five women experience irregular menstrual cycles that could keep them from learning they are pregnant until it may be too late to access an abortion under some state laws in effect or under consideration, a new study shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",876,580,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-200x200.jpg",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-604x400.jpg",604,400,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-768x508.jpg",750,496,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-675x447.jpg",675,447,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",876,580,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",876,580,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",876,580,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",861,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",600,397,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",600,397,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-760x490.jpg",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-550x360.jpg",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women-95x65.jpg",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",640,424,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pregnent-women.jpg",150,99,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"<a 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