Three recent studies have shown that abortion has adverse effects on the would-be mothers' mental and spiritual health, to such an extent that some are advocating giving up this way of solving the problem of unwanted pregnancy, while others, not wanting to give up their right to choose, are advocating more counseling.
A recent five-year study released from the University of Oslo shows that the negative psychological effects following abortions last much longer than those who had miscarriages.
The study included 80 women who had abortions and 40 women who had miscarriages. All the women were given questionnaires 10 days, six months, two years and five years after the event. The tests were Impact of Event Scale (IES), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and one on their feelings about pregnancy termination.
Forty-eight percent of the women who had miscarriages suffered distress at the ten-day period versus 30 percent of those who aborted. However, the ones who had miscarriages dropped to 23 percent after six months and to 2.6 percent after five years.
Of the women who had abortions 26 percent were still suffering grief, guilt, depression, shame and denial at six months. After five years 20 percent were still distressed.
Anne Nordel Broen, who conducted the Oslo study, said that possibly those who have abortions are more anxious to begin with. Others feel that taking a life has psychological effects. The study was published in the December issue of BMC Medicine .
The Christchurch Health and Development Study tracked 1,265 children born in the 1970s in New Zealand, which included 500 girls. Of them, 205 became pregnant and 90 had abortions. Forty-two percent of the women who had abortions had experienced major depression at some time in the previous four years—almost double the rate of the other women. The ones who had abortions also experienced twice the anxiety disorders, double the alcohol abuse, triple illegal drug dependency and a higher risk of suicide.
Dr. David Fergusson conducted the Christchurch study to settle the dispute over whether women who have abortions already have psychological problems or they come as a result of having abortions.
According to Dr. Fergusson, the large number of women studied over 25 years takes into account differences in socio-economic backgrounds and family history. He said: "…it does show as with…any procedure of any form, that there are risks and benefits that need to be taken into account and to be weighed very carefully." His study was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry .
A 1997 Study in Finland by the STAKES statistical analysis unit of Finland's National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health, in which researchers pulled death certificates and reproductive health records of women who died within a year of a birth, miscarriage or abortion included 9,192 maternal post-abortion deaths of women aged 15–49 from 1987 to 1994. They found the risk of death within a year by suicide, homicide, accident or natural causes was four times greater in women who had abortions than in other women.
Dr. Wanda Franz, the president of National Right to Life applauded the study, "Their approach to looking at short-term and long-term effects is very important, because one of the things that we've noticed when we've looked at data in the past is that there do appear to be long term effects. These… are very rarely addressed by our own abortion advocates in this country."
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