I haven't seen this diaried here, but read it in my paper yesterday.
There's been a ridiculous meme among people on the anti-abortion bandwagon, claiming that abortion is harmful to many woman's mental health.
They use a few anecdotal cases from women who regret having an abortion as "proof". Of course, that's not proof at all. Many women who have babies later regret getting pregnant in the first place and/or choosing to remain pregant and/or keeping a child and/or putting that child up for adoption! Other women are perfectly happy with having had an abortion. Other women are perfectly happy having had a baby that the put up for adoption.
Well, a pretty definitive study was recently released that stated that women who have abortions aren't, in fact, more at risk for mental health issues after having that abortion.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine but done by Danish researchers, established that there is no significant increased likelihood of significant mental difficulties ("psychiatric episodes" is the phrase that the researchers used, meaning hospitalization required after problems with depression, anxiety, or other issues) for women who have an abortion, but for women who have a baby, there is an increased risk.
They studied more than 350,000 teens and adult women over a 12 year period from 1995 until 2007.
Less than one-quarter of the women (84,000) had first trimester abortions. 280,000 took the pregnancy to term. They didn't look at the issue of late-term abortions, because those are illegal in Denmark. In fact, abortion is illegal in Denmark after 12 weeks.
And what were the findings?
Within a year after first-time mothers gave birth, seven per 1,000 women were treated for mental-health issues, in comparison to four per 1,000 before baby.
And among women who had abortions?
1% of women who had first trimester abortions had sought psychiatric help nine months before the abortion while 1.5% did so afterwards.
So, those who were able to end a problem pregnancy by choice within the first trimester were less likely to have an increased chance of psychiatric disorders than those who chose to not have an abortion and carried the baby to term.
Now, there are a couple of pretty understandable reasons for that. Having a child is difficult - lack of sleep, financial and emotional stresses in families due to another member of the family, etc. In addition, hormonal changes in a woman after she has an abortion are much milder than those after carrying to term - the hormones in a woman who has a baby really are affected by labor, childbirth, and nursing.
The Time Magazine article makes this point.
That should hardly come as a surprise since the most common complication of pregnancy is post-partum depression. An unrelated study of British parents published in September in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that more than one-third of mothers and about one-fifth of fathers appear to have battled depression sometime between becoming parents and their children's 12th birthday, with the most episodes occurring in the first year after birth.
The
American Psychological Association completed a study in 2008 that came to a similar conclusion.
There is no credible evidence that a single elective abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in and of itself causes mental health problems for adult women, according to a draft report released Tuesday by a task force of the American Psychological Association.
The APA Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion reached its conclusions after evaluating all of the empirical studies published in English in peer-reviewed journals since 1989 that compared the mental health of women who had an induced abortion to comparison groups of women, or that examined factors that predict mental health among women who have had an elective abortion in the United States. The task force, formed in 2006, was charged with collecting, examining and summarizing the scientific research addressing mental health factors associated with abortion, including the psychological responses following abortion.
As MSN tells us
"Most well-made studies in the field of abortion and mental health show that having an abortion is not associated with an increased risk of having a psychiatric episode," she said.
A small study published in the December issue of the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health reported similar findings: Teenagers who have an abortion aren't more likely to be depressed or have low self-esteem than other pregnant teens.
and
Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said, "The findings show that motherhood and parenting are decisions with lifelong implications and that individual women are in the best positions to decide when and if they are ready to give birth."
The Washington Post says that
Having an abortion does not increase the risk of mental health problems, but having a baby does, one of the largest studies to compare the aftermath of both decisions suggests.
The research by Danish scientists further debunks the notion that terminating a pregnancy can trigger mental illness and shows postpartum depression to be much more of a factor.
Researchers compared the rate of mental health treatment among women before and after a first abortion. Within the first year after an abortion, 15 per 1,000 women needed psychiatric counseling - similar to the rate seeking help nine months before an abortion.
Researchers say women who seek abortions come from a demographic group more likely to have emotional problems to begin with. Statistics show that a large percentage struggle economically and they have above-average rates of unintended pregnancies.
While first-time mothers had a lower rate of mental problems overall, the proportion of those seeking help after giving birth was dramatically higher. About 7 per 1,000 women got mental health help within a year of giving birth compared with 4 per 1,000 women pre-delivery.
Anyone knows that having a baby has long-term stressors. That baby doesn't instanteously become a non-burden. The physical, emotional and mental demands of that child are ongoing. But when one has an abortion, while concern about having done the right thing can be ongoing, the terminated pregnancy ends that problem pregnancy!
That seems to be the biggest difference between these two groups of women. Those who have an abortion can return to their lives before they became pregnant. Those who have a child have that ongoing burden that doesn't go away. Of course, they have an ongoing joy. And that's one of the reasons why, for most women who have a baby, they don't have ongoing mental health issues - the joy and enjoyment greatly outweighs the difficulties.
For me, personally, except for around the tenth day, at around 4 AM, after not having slept well for days, I was tempted to throw the crying, needy baby out the window, I would say that I didn't suffer any mental health issues as a result of having been pregnant multiple times. And that's the same for most women who have babies.
But it's even more likely for women who have abortions. And that's an important weapon in the arsenal to use when debating someone who is arguing against abortion and they try to use the argument that women who have abortions often regret that decision significantly.
They use a similar argument at times - they try to claim that abortions are dangerous physically. Of course, the reality is that carrying a pregnancy to term is much more dangerous, especially in countries where pregnancy is still a significant health threat to women, but even in developed nations. Women are less likely to suffer from fertility issues, other relatively minor side effects, and either life-threatening conditions and even death after a full-term pregnancy and birth than from a first or second trimester abortion.
What does one such group say?
"If there's no mental health risk after abortion, then why do Care Net centers have tens of thousands of people knocking on their doors every year seeking help dealing with a past abortion?" says Care Net President Melinda Delahoyde.
But the study never said that there's no risk of mental health issues after an abortion. It's a strawman argument. If someone tried to claim that there's no mental health risk after abortion, I'd tell them that they were wrong too - but the study didn't say that, or anything close to that! They simply have told us that abortion doesn't significantly increase the risk of issues. "No increased risk" is entirely different from "no risk".
She also said
"This is the latest example of how research on abortion risks has become so politicized that it's difficult for women to make a truly informed pregnancy decision."
No, it's not an example of that at all! It's you guys who push partisan nonsense that makes it hard for people to make truly informed decisions. The risk of carrying to term is greater, both physically and emotionally, than choosing to have an abortion!