Posted on 12/12/2005 6:04:38 AM PST by indcons
An abortion can cause five years of mental anguish, anxiety, guilt and even shame, a BMC Medicine study suggests.
University of Oslo researchers compared 40 women who had had a miscarriage with 80 who chose to have an abortion.
Miscarriage was associated with more mental distress in the six months after the loss of a baby - but abortion had a much longer lasting negative effect.
Pro-choice campaigners said there was no evidence abortion directly caused psychological trauma.
The researchers said their work underlined the importance of giving women information about the psychological effects of losing a baby - either through miscarriage or abortion.
The Oslo team found that, after 10 days, 47.5% of women who had miscarried suffered from some degree of mental distress compared with 30% of the abortion group.
The proportion of women who had a miscarriage suffering distress decreased during the study period, to 22.5% at six months and to just 2.6% at two years and five years.
But among the abortion group 25.7% were still experiencing distress after six months, and 20% at five years.
The researchers also said that women who had an abortion had to make an effort to avoid thinking about the event.
Complex response
The researchers, led by Anne Nordal Broen, said the responses of the women in the miscarriage group were similar to those expected after a traumatic life event.
However, the abortion group had more complex responses.
Richard Warren, from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: "It has always been considered, and this study also shows, that the decision to terminate may bring with it long-standing feelings of anxiety and guilt.
"While most women are able to manage and cope with these feelings, when necessary, the need for ongoing support and counselling should be recognised and appropriate help given."
Anna Pringle, from the anti-abortion charity Life, said: "This confirms years of experience with women who come to us for counselling after abortion.
"The emotional suffering can be massive."
Thoughtful decision
However, a spokeswoman for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service - the UK's leading provider of abortion services - said most women weighed up the consequences fully before opting for an abortion.
"We don't see that many women for post-abortion counselling.
"We offer that service but women very rarely come back because they are able to cope with it by themselves."
A spokeswoman for the Family Planning Association, said: "There is no evidence to suggest that abortion directly causes psychological trauma.
"Women can experience mixed feelings after an abortion such as relief or sadness.
"These are natural reactions and few women experience long-term problems."
This can't be true because it's just a blob of tissue similar to a cancer tumor. Right? </extreme sarcasm>
Well, of course not. Would you go to the killer for consolation?
From the article: However, a spokeswoman for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service - the UK's leading provider of abortion services - said most women weighed up the consequences fully before opting for an abortion.
"We don't see that many women for post-abortion counselling.
"We offer that service but women very rarely come back because they are able to cope with it by themselves."
They don't want their revenue to reduce one bit. Tht's the reason they don't conduct either pre- or post-abortion counselling.
Of course the pro-choice people will just claim that the anguish is due to the scorn heaped on them from the religious right, and if only pro-life people would go away, then the shame will go away.
later read/ping.
Of course, you have to ask if the group who had a miscarriage and the group who had an abortion have the same characteristics. For instance, the miscarrying groups includes all type of pregnancies, planned and unplanned and from marriage as well as casual sexual relationship, whereas pregnancies that are aborted tend to be unplanned and from causal fornication. A good study would be to measure women who have crisis pregnancies, comparing the mental health of those who abort, give up their child for adoption, or who raise the baby themselves.
I know that when I was doing case management for the severely mentally ill, most of my female clients did not start having mental health issues until after they had an abortion. None of them could handle the guilt of what they had done.
Interesting observation BUMP
I've often wondered about the guilt and anguish that would kick in once someone who's had an abortion has a planned child or keeps a child. Unless she's an uncaring sociopath, every time she looks at or holds her child, she'd have to wonder what the child she aborted would have been like....
"Pro-choice campaigners said there was no evidence abortion directly caused psychological trauma."
Well first you have to have something mentally wrong to want to kill a baby.
No society that has condoned killing babies has survived. look at history.
And they think the troubled women would come to the abortionist's office for counseling? Wouldn't that be like Oliver Twist getting counseling from Fagin?
It's not always just a matter of persistent feelings, though feelings are always worth looking into. After awhile, for many women, I think it becomes a matter of settled judgment: an intellectual and moral conviction that the abortion was seriously against the law of Nature, of Nature's God, and their own moral code: an irrevocable wrong.
This may or may not be accompanied by "feelings" of guilt, grief, loss, emptiness, pain, futility.
The judgment in the minds of the post-abortion women themselves, brings a noticeable number of them into the prolife movement in some capacity.
Because any rational being knows, both in heart and in mind, that destroying your offspring is an unjust and a defiling act.
The decision to terminate what? Why would anyone feel guilty about "terminating" nothing?
Bump
You beat me to it. They will blame society, just as they do for the higher rates of depression, drug abuse, and suicides among homosexuals. Tolerance isnt enough, we will be forced to 'celebrate' it.
A good resource I've found:
http://www.afterabortion.info/news/
I also subscribe to their (free) news letter.
"An abortion can cause five years of mental anguish, anxiety, guilt and even shame"
Hmmm. This needs fixing...
An abortion causes the barbaric death of an unborn innocent. God gives five years of mental anguish, anxiety, guilt and even shame to those who indulge.
Much more accurate, dontcha think?
R3
Oh and that is if there were no lasting side affects after the abortion such as sterlity. Can you imagine how much guilt and anguish a woman would suffer if she found that the abortion caused her to never be able to have another child?
When women choose to kill their baby because having the babe would inconvienance or embarrass them - the guilt is much much higher.
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