Study on post-abortion mental health

There's a lot of things I like about science. The search for truth and reason, the struggle to avoid personal bias, and the attention to detail in methodology. And the mind-bogglingly awesome things that are figured out through science. I mean, I really love science.

Of course, science is really hard to do well, because you have to set your cultural values aside and have a thorough understanding of what your personal biases could be, and the excellent skills to keep them from affecting your study. That isn't so hard when you are studying something like... whether or not the 11-aminoacid long Tarsal-less peptides trigger a cell signal in Drosophila leg development (they do, FYI).

But it is a little trickier when you are studying something socially charged- like women's mental health after abortion. But the fact that it is hard means we need good science even more. There is so much crap out there, and a huge misinformation campaign by the prolife movement.

I wanted to share some information from a recent study by the American Psychological Association.

This was a review of several studies in the last 20 years. They found:

"A critical evaluation of the published literature revealed that the majority of studies suffered from methodological problems, often severe in nature."

In other words, the prolife movement has produced a lot of pseudo-science to back up their beliefs, but close examination shows extensive problems with their methods. No shocker there, but the prolifers will use those studies to try and refute this thorough review which found:

“The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion than if they deliver that pregnancy.”

“The few published studies that examined women’s responses following an induced abortion due to fetal abnormality suggest that terminating a wanted pregnancy late in pregnancy due to fetal abnormality appears to be associated with negative psychological reactions equivalent to those experienced by women who miscarry a wanted pregnancy or who experience a stillbirth or death of a newborn, but less than those who deliver a child with life-threatening abnormalities.”

“This review identified several factors that are predictive of more negative psychological responses following first-trimester abortion among women in the United States. Those factors included perceptions of stigma, need for secrecy, and low or anticipated social support for the abortion decision; a prior history of mental health problems; personality factors such as low self-esteem and use of avoidance and denial coping strategies; and characteristics of the particular pregnancy, including the extent to which the woman wanted and felt committed to it. Across studies, prior mental health emerged as the strongest predictor of post-abortion mental health. Many of these same factors also predict negative psychological reactions to other types of stressful life events, including childbirth, and, hence, are not uniquely predictive of psychological responses following abortion.”


There is so much fascinating stuff in this report, and I encourage you to peruse. I haven't read the whole thing yet (it's pretty darn long) but am going to keep looking through it.

As for my mental health, I'm pretty much in the same place I was before the abortion. I'm still insecure about the things I'm insecure about, but overall I'm generally happy with myself, and doing a-ok. I attribute the fact that I am not having post-abortion anxiety or depression to the fact that I am loved and supported by my community, and that I don't buy the prolife hype.