In its first abortion case in five years, the Supreme Court
ruled last Wednesday that a lower court was wrong to strike down a
state law requiring parental notification for adolescent abortions.
The court unanimously decided that the lower court went too far in
permanently blocking a New Hampshire statute that requires that at
least one parent be told before a minor daughter ends her
pregnancy. An appeals court must now reconsider the law.
When it does, it may want to consider a crucial medical question
that, if conclusively answered, would illuminate the entire legal
debate over teenage abortion: How does abortion affect teenage
girls’ health, most notably their emotional and psychological
well-being?
Last May, in a case that illustrates just how fundamental this
question is, Circuit Court Judge Ronald Alvarez ruled that a
13-year-old Florida girl would be granted the abortion she had
requested after running away from her foster home and getting
pregnant.
The Florida Department of Children and Families argued against
permitting the procedure, but, after delaying a decision in order
to have a psychologist assess her “competency,” Judge Alvarez
concluded that the teen was in good mental health and that she
“would not be physically or psychologically harmed by the
procedure.” The girl aborted the following day.
Unfortunately, the judge’s conclusion about the girl’s mental
health discounted the most significant factor concerning the
relationship between abortion and psychological health: the
abortion effect. Research increasingly shows that women, especially
adolescents, who obtain an abortion are at higher risk of a variety
of negative psychological effects than those who give birth.
Moreover, those negative effects can often be linked directly to
the abortion experience itself.
In other words, it is not just “at risk” or emotionally unstable
women who suffer adversely from abortion, but “healthy” women,
too.
Of course, attempting to determine the precise relationship
between abortion and psychological health can be difficult. Simply
finding a link between two or more variables might be suggestive,
but unless causality can be established, it is rarely compelling.
To do so one must account for enough other factors that are
associated with depression. While it may be tempting to say that a
depressed woman’s psychological problems were caused by a prior
abortion, if she was depressed before the abortion, one could not
infer that the abortion itself caused the depression. The key is to
ask: “Have I accounted for enough other factors that are associated
with depression?” When attempting to determine the psychological
effects of abortion, other factors include a predisposition to
depression, relationship measures, socioeconomic status, physical
health, religiosity and a host of other variables.
By holding these significant variables constant, a researcher
can begin to isolate the direct effect of abortion on psychological
health.
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 dangers of abortion. Today, while Planned
Parenthood and other abortion advocates maintain that the emotional
effects of abortion are “largely positive,” the experiences of an
increasing number of women refute the refrain that having an
abortion is as simple as having your tonsils removed.
There have been at least a dozen studies in peer-reviewed
journals that point to a significant link between abortion and
depression. Most recently, a study of the entire population of
Finland published in December’s European Journal of Public
Health found that the suicide rate among women who had
abortions was six times higher than that of women who had given
birth in the previous year.
Further, in a brand new longitudinal study of New Zealand youth
appearing in this month’s Journal of Child Psychiatry and
Psychology, researchers found that having an abortion as a
young woman increased the risk of a variety of mental health
problems, including depression and suicidal tendencies, by 35
percent compared to those young women who continued with their
pregnancies.
Though there is a consensus within the research community that
some women experience clinical levels of depression post-abortion,
there certainly is no agreement on whether abortion, in fact,
causes depression. Indeed, there have been major studies showing no
statistically significant link. An October article in the
British Medical Journal found no important difference in
the depressions of the scores of women who aborted their first
pregnancies and those who carried their first pregnancies to
term.
These differing conclusions highlight the need for a nonpartisan
longitudinal study on the psychological effects of abortion. In
2004, Rep. Joe Pitts introduced the Post-Abortion Depression
Research and Care Act, which provides the National Institutes of
Health $15 million to study the emotional impact of abortion on
women. It would have also created a program to fund the development
of treatment programs for women who suffer emotionally after an
abortion. While the bill enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress, it
died at the end of the last legislative session.
Though it is still unclear whether or not the courts will rule
that a parental notification law constitutes an undue burden on a
woman’s right to choose, what has become crystal clear is the need
for Congress to pass the Post-Abortion Depression Research and Care
Act so that we may begin to determine whether the real undue burden
isn’t being placed on the increasing number of women who experience
depression after abortion.
