Postpartum depression, a psychological illness caused by
hormonal shifts occurring after childbirth that can lead to
reactions ranging from irritability to sadness to despair, is an
issue that’s garnered a lot of media attention of late. Brooke
Shields’ battle with the disease, chronicled in her best-selling
book Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum
Depression, has helped bring about an improved discussion of
this previously taboo phenomenon.
This is a positive development. The feelings of depression and
hopelessness women sometimes experience after the birth of a child
need to be acknowledged, understood, and treated in order for all
child bearers to reach their full potential as mothers and as
women.
Regrettably, though public consciousness of the negative
psychological reactions new mothers may experience is growing,
scant attention is paid to the profound feelings of sadness and
despair that often follow the other life-changing pregnancy
outcome: abortion.
Post-Abortion Syndrome, a variant of Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder, is a subject of considerable controversy.
While Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates generally
assert that the emotional effects of abortion are “largely
positive,” others maintain — backed by mounting evidence — that
the emotional risks to women who abort are profound and wide
reaching.
IT’S BEEN NEARLY 20 YEARS since Surgeon General C. Everett Koop
concluded that research on the psychological effects of abortion
was entirely inadequate for drawing any general conclusions about
either the efficacy or the dangers of abortion.
Since then, important empirical research has been conducted that
points to a significant correlation between a woman’s abortion
experience and subsequent psychological maladjustment.
For example, a Canadian study found that a higher number of
abortions were correlated both with poor long-term health and with
the need to obtain professional help in dealing with the
losses.
Another study in the non-partisan American Journal of Drug
and Alcohol Abuse reported an increase in substance abuse
experienced by post-abortive women. Women who had no history of
substance abuse prior to their first pregnancy were, on average,
twice as likely to abuse alcohol, more than twice as likely to
abuse marijuana, and nearly three times as likely to use cocaine,
as women who did not abort. In fact, there have been dozens of
recent studies confirming the strong association between abortion
and subsequent drug and alcohol abuse, which, in turn, are strongly
correlated with depression.
In another study that accounted for prior mental health
problems, post-abortive women were found to be much more likely to
attempt suicide. Gissler et al. discovered that while the mean
annual suicide rate among Finnish women was 11.3 per 100,000, the
rates associated with women who obtained an abortion (34.7) were
significantly higher than in the population.
What’s more, research indicates that minors who abort may be at
even greater risk than the female population at large. A host of
studies conducted over the past 10 years show girls who abort are
at increased risk of substantial psychological reactions and even
clinical depression. For example, a 2000 study by Reardon and
Cougle found that long-term psychological effects were more common
among women who had an abortion as an adolescent than among those
who had carried an adolescent pregnancy to term.
Finally, in a study I conducted last year (which appears in the
current issue of the Georgetown Public Policy Review), I
compare the long-term psychological consequences of teenage
abortion with those of teenage childbirth.
I found that while at first glance early experiences of abortion
and childbirth were similar as regards to their effects on women’s
long-term psychological health, when additional statistically
significant variables were accounted for, such as pre-disposition
to depression, physical health, and life satisfaction measures,
early childbearing proved not to be a determinate of long-term
depression. On the other hand, even after accounting for a
wide-range of significant variables that affect depression, an
early abortion experience was still associated with a higher level
of adult depression symptoms.
What this means is that if a woman who gave birth as a teen was
depressed years later, it was usually due to dire financial straits
or relationship problems and not to the fact that she bore a child
at an early age. Conversely, if a woman who aborted her first child
as a teen was depressed years later, it was probably not due to
financial difficulties, poor physical health or a negative sense of
efficacy. Instead, her depression could be linked directly to the
abortion experience itself.
Also, I found that on average, all else being equal, a woman who
aborted at or before the age of 20 had a depression score 15
percent higher than a woman who did not become pregnant as a
youth.
These results make sense because while most cultures have slowly
come to consider abortion as a normal and acceptable part of
reproductive women’s health care, the real psychological effects
that aborting one’s child has on a mother can never be completely
avoided.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE PUBLIC IS largely unaware of these important
findings, and, even worse, doctors still rarely inform women
considering abortion about the strong abortion/depression link.
Congressman Joe Pitts from Pennsylvania wants to do something
about this. Last year he introduced House Bill 4543, the
Post-Abortion Depression Research and Care Act, which would have
amended the Public Health Service Act to authorize the Secretary of
Health and Human Services to expand research with respect to
post-abortion depression and post-abortion psychosis.
Some of the authorized activities included research relating to
the causes of negative reactions, the development of improved
diagnostic techniques, and education programs for health care
professionals and the public.
H.R. 4543 would have also provided grants “for projects for the
establishment, operation, and coordination of effective and
cost-efficient systems for the delivery of essential services to
individuals with post-abortion depression or post-abortion
psychosis and their families.”
The legislation’s principle objective, however, was to provide
funding for a comprehensive, non-partisan national research project
to determine the incidence and prevalence of cases of post-abortion
conditions, the severity and duration of such cases, and to
establish whether abortion causes depression.
Regrettably, little action was taken on this bill last year, and
it died while under review in the House of Representatives
subcommittee on Energy and Commerce.
Given what is at stake with this issue — not only the lives of
over one million babies, but also the health and lives of over one
million women and their families — the Post-Abortion Depression
Research and Care Act needs to be re-introduced this year and made
law so that we can give women the information they need to make
truly informed choices.
