Sleep Disorders Increase After Abortion Says New Study

SPRINGFIELD, IL, January 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new study published in Sleep, the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, has found that women who experienced abortion were more likely to be treated for sleep disorders or disturbances compared to women who gave birth.

The researchers, David Reardon of the Springfield, Ill.-based Elliot Institute and Priscilla Coleman of the University of Bowling Green, examined medical records for 56,284 low-income women in California who gave birth or underwent an abortion in the first six months of 1989. Researchers examined data for medical treatment for these women from July 1988 to June 1994 and excluded women who had been treated for sleep disturbances or disorders in the 12 to 18 months prior to abortion or delivery.

The findings showed that, up to four years following abortion or delivery, women who underwent abortions were more likely to be treated for sleep disorders following an induced abortion compared to a birth. The difference was greatest during the first 180 days after the end of the pregnancy, when aborting women were approximately twice as likely to seek treatment for sleep disorders. Significant differences between aborting and child bearing women persisted for three years.

Numerous studies have shown that trauma victims will often experience sleep difficulties. The authors believe their findings support a growing consensus that some women may have traumatic reactions to abortion.

A recent study published in the Medical Science Monitor in 2004, found that 65% percent of American women studied experienced multiple symptoms of post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which they attributed to their abortions, and over 14 percent reported all the symptoms necessary for a clinical diagnosis of abortion induced PTSD. That study also found that 23% of the women reported sleeping difficulties they attributed to their abortions and 30% reported nightmares.

According to Reardon, a co-author of both studies, the prior study was limited by its reliance on women's self reported symptoms. "This new record- based study examines actual treatment rates for sleep disorders which have been confirmed by the treating physicians and it also has the advantage of employing an appropriate control group."

Reardon pointed out that the new study was limited by the fact that the authors did not have access to data on sleep disorders among women who had not been pregnant. He said more research is needed to see if women who have abortions are more likely to experience specific symptoms of sleep disturbance and whether those symptoms may be markers for PTSD and other psychiatric reactions.

Other recent studies have found that women with a history of abortion are subsequently at increased risk for depression, generalized anxiety disorder, substance abuse, suicidal tendencies, poor bonding with and parenting of later children, and psychiatric hospitalization.

Reardon and Coleman encourage mental health care providers to regularly inquire about prior pregnancy loss. Doing so, Reardon says, will "give women permission" to discus unresolved grief issues and may thereby improve treatment of sleep disorders, anxiety, and other psychiatric problems linked to abortion.

See the referenced studies online:
DC Reardon and PK Coleman, Relative Treatment Rates for Sleep Disorders and Sleep Disturbances Following Abortion and Childbirth: A Prospective Record Based-Study, Sleep 29(1):105-106, 2006. http://www.journalsleep.org/Citation/Sleepdata.asp?citationi...
VM Rue et. al., Induced abortion and traumatic stress: A preliminary comparison of American and Russian women, Medical Science Monitor 10:SR5-16, 2004. http://www.medscimonit.com/medscimonit/modules.php?name=GetP...

do nondepressed, non-anxious, non-suicidal, well-adjusted women have abortions?

Yes, plenty do. But statistically, a disproportionate number of women having abortions would be those with pre-existing head problems, because the pre-existing head problems make them less able to consistently take the steps necessary to avoid unwanted pregnancy. So that would skew the results toward a false implication of abortion as a causative factor.

The other big skew factor that these "researchers" have chosen to ignore, is that the group of women who choose abortion are statistically different in many ways from women who choose to have babies. It is most often women who see no prospect for a stable, financially and personally secure life if they have a baby, who choose to abort. Those women are often accurately assessing their near-term futures, based on factors like lack of education or job skills, lack of stable father or other near relative to share the burden of child care, their own substance abuse problems, etc. The difficulties this group would frequently foresee, are difficulties which often contribute to sleep problems. Many women who have abortions are quite young, and in a transitional stage of their lives (e.g. recently finished high school, or dropped out; recently moved out, or got kicked out of parents' home; recently broken up with a boyfriend or divorced, etc.), and are already headed for changes in their lives that will increase the incidence of sleep problems. And some women who choose to abort are in their late 30s or older and have already had as many children as they want -- that age group is already statistically headed for sleep problems caused by premenopausal changes in hormone levels.

If these "researchers" want to be real researchers, they have to design a study objectively, to find out what the results will show -- not decide what they want to "prove", and then design a study which will almost certainly produce the predetermined result. The referenced study in the footnote, comparing American and Russian women's psychological responses to abortion, is instructive: in a nutshell, if you live in a society where you're constantly hearing how awful and evil and stressful abortion is, you'll likely show PTSD-like symptoms after having one; if you live in a society where abortion is accepted as routine and unremarkable, you're much less likely to have any negative psychological effects. Agenda-driven "researchers" like the ones who did the posted study, are a big part of the cause of post-abortion PTSD.

The other big skew factor that these "researchers" have chosen to ignore, is that the group of women who choose abortion are statistically different in many ways from women who choose to have babies..

You make a very good point here.. the knotiness of these kinds of studies comes from trying to distinguish correlations from causations.

There was a study done years ago about teenage pregnancy that was a little startling - teenage pregnancy wasn't so much a result of teen sex as it was from adult-minor abuse. The tendency of teenage girls to get pregnant was roughly correlated to the age difference between them and their partners. Which is probably correlated to all the points you brought up: lack of education, emotional problems, poverty, etc.

That is the bane of "soft science" research. One possible group to study as a control, would be women who have naturally miscarried - the outcome of an estimated third of all pregnancies. Do they have similar sleep disruptions and anxieties?

The referenced study in the footnote, comparing American and Russian women's psychological responses to abortion, is instructive... if you live in a society where abortion is accepted as routine and unremarkable, you're much less likely to have any negative psychological effects.

Social expections certainly weigh in on person's anxiety level. But there is also the values and beliefs of the individual, and personal expectations. For instance, many women experience geniune grief over the loss of children that never existed, when an much anticipated pregnancy turns out to be a false alarm.

Interesting observations.

Natural miscarriages wouldn't work well as a control group, partly for some of the same reasons that the full term delivery group doesn't work well.

Note that the embarrassingly unscientific article heading this thread, didn't even use mothers who delivered UNWANTED babies as a control, just mothers who delivered period. Well duh, women who wanted something and got it, in most cases with little or no objection from friends and relatives and agenda-driven busybodies, and in many cases with lots of enthusiastic support, are likely to be a happier bunch, than women who got pregnant when they didn't want babies, had to scrounge up money and go through an unpleasant procedure that they wished there wasn't any need for, and have been subjected to cultural messages of disapproval, and often direct harsh criticism from friends and relatives as well.

Natural miscarriages are in many cases a loss of something the woman wanted, and thus would be expected to have some negative psychological impact. So it would be necessary to restrict the control group to women who didn't want to be pregnant, and had the whether-to-abort decision made for them by a miscarriage. A tough group to collect, since many unhappily pregnant women don't tell anyone right away, and early miscarriages often happen at home, producing no trackable medical records.

But even accomplishing that tall order would leave another huge variable. While a majority of miscarriages are caused by chromosomal abnormalities (which recent research has indicated average 50% of embryos even in young healthy women with no particular fertility problems), the rest are caused by either temporary or long-term/permanent hormone-level problems (e.g. many older women do not produce enough progesterone during early pregnancy to maintain the pregnancy, even when the fetus is perfectly normal), or by autoimmune problems. Both those categories of problems tend to be associated with other physical and psychological problems.

Another thing that this study failed to do, was classify or limit controls according to whether the mother kept it, or put it up for adoption. While many anti-abortion activists push the "adoption, not abortion" mantra as if it would solve everything, the fact is that a lot of women who give up a baby for adoption are haunted by that for the rest of lives (including at least one freeper, whose screen name has slipped my mind, who was pressured into giving up a baby for adotpion when she was a teenager). So for all we know, if that factor had been tracked, this same study might have found that giving up a baby for adoption is even more apt to produce later depression or PTSD symptoms than having an abortion.

Yet another hole in this Swiss-cheese like study involves the matter of treatment for sleep disorders, and who elects (or is pushed) to pursue that treatment when experiencing sleep disorders. This study found that the greatest difference in treatment rates occurred within the first 6 months after abortion or delivery. How many mothers who are having trouble sleeping while they have a 6 month old to care for, do you suppose are referred for specific treatment for "sleep disorders"? For their first couple of months, normal infants howl to be fed every 2 hours or so, and for quite a long time after that, infants/toddlers tend to wake up very early in the morning requiring mom to get up too. When new mothers are exhausted, most will write it off as normal, down another cup of coffee or can of Coke (the after-effects of which may impair sleep), and go on. When they can't get to sleep or stay asleep at night, they're likely to pop a Sominex, or something prescription sleep pill that their GP casually and routinely prescribed -- leaving no record of "treatment for sleep disorder". They also are unlikely to have time to be going off to see sleep disorder specialists (whose diagnostic procedures often involve sleeping in a lab overnight, with electrodes attached to your head to record an all-night EEG). On the other hand, the statistically more troubled and substance-abusing group that is more likely to have abortions, is more likely to be in other kinds of treatment (psych, substance abuse, etc.) from which they'll be referred to treatment for sleep disorders (often in hopes of breaking their habit of getting to sleep by getting drunk!).

If I had to do a study on this topic, I'd sign up two groups of paid volunteers, who are carefully matched for age, medical and psych/substance abuse history, educational and financial factors, and number of children, with one group having had abortions in certain time frame (like 2-3 years ago), and the other group having sought an abortion in the same time frame, but been unable to get it to legal, financial or transportation factors, or extreme pressure with threats of consequences from family. Then have them all sleep overnight in a sleep lab a few times, and record all their EEGs. Then we'll know which ones actually HAVE sleep disorders, not who got specific treatments classified as sleep disorder treatment by the researchers, and whether there's any statistical difference between the abortion/no-abortion groups.

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