Hey folks,
Just one week ago, I posted this. Abortion Has Negative Effects On Mental Wellness. I received the following from Steve Ertelt, Founder and Editor of LifeNews.com and Right to Life of Wyoming President, who said...The JHU review failed to include three new studies all showing abortion leads to significant mental health problems for women.
Last week, Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University, and her colleagues published a study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research showing the link exists. http://www.lifenews.com/nat4617.html
The research team found induced abortions result in increased risks for a myriad of mental health problems ranging from anxiety to depression to substance abuse disorders.
The number of cases of mental health issues rose by as much as 17 percent in women having abortions compared to those who didn't have one and the risks of each particular mental health problem rose as much as 145% for post-abortive women.
For 12 out of 15 of the mental health outcomes examined, a decision to have an abortion resulted in an elevated risk for women.
"What is most notable in this study is that abortion contributed significant independent effects to numerous mental health problems above and beyond a variety of other traumatizing and stressful life experiences," they concluded.
Earlier this week, researchers at Otago University in New Zealand reported their findings in the British Journal of Psychiatry and found that women who have abortions have an increased risk of developing mental health problems. http://www.lifenews.com/int1008.html
The study found that women who had abortions had rates of mental health problems about 30% higher than other women. The conditions most associated with abortion included anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders.
Abortions increased the risk of severe depression and anxiety by one-third and as many as 5.5 percent of all mental health disorders seen in New Zealand result from women having abortions.
A third study, from a team at the University of Queensland and published in the December issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, found women who have an abortion are three times more likely to experience a drug or alcohol problem during their lifetime. http://www.lifenews.com/int1012.html
The study showed that women who had experienced an abortion were at increased risk of illicit drug and alcohol use compared with women who had never been pregnant or who gave birth.
I found these other studies very interesting also, so I thanked him of course and posted this over at EThepeople.org. Now folks, as a side note, ETP is a great place to go if you want interesting people and interesting conversations. Yeah, there are some Liberals there. Yes, some of my more Conservative friends will most likely see things there that will make their heads shake in amazement, but for the most part, there are some great people there. Really interesting conversations. You should check it out.
Some there left some GREAT comments. I did not receive permission to posts some of them here in time so if you want to see them go HERE. However, this is the kind of thing I got there. This was also a comment left last week here. It is from kwix who said...
Thanks for the studies, Peter. I looked them over and neither one seems to be the sort of conservative faux "studies" we so often see. Whatever their motivations or funding, they both seem to be real objective scientific attempts to discover some truth.
I should note that one study showed only what it terms a "mild" (or perhaps "slight"; I don't have the text in front of me) correlation. But I should also note that these studies only show correlation -- not causation. In other words, we have no proof that abortion causes these mental wellness defects -- only that they tend to exist at a higher level in people who have abortions. It could of course well be that mental wellness defects lead one to have unwanted pregnancies that then lead to abortions.
Of course, it seems to me highly likely that abortion DOES adversely affect one's emotional health. We know that spontaneous abortion -- e.g., losing a child involuntarily -- has huge emotional consequences; surely doing so intentionally would ahve consequences at least as significant. In other words, these studies represent (like so many studies!) a sort of "DUH" idea. It's the sort of thing most of us would assume. So it's hard to know why you are crowing about this so much, or claiming that "I have seen Doctors come out and say that there is no effect on the Woman at all." What "doctors" and when, Peter? I think you would have to search very hard to find such a thing; I personally have never encountered it out in the world.
In other words, it seems like you set up a straw man here, pretending that this is some big issue when really it just confirms what everybody pretty much already assumed.
After all, it's not like this has any bearing on whether abortion should be legal or not. Lots of things that have negative emotional effects are legal. Indeed, lots of things that are immoral are legal. The issue is whether or not the heavy hand of the state should decide for each of us what is right and what is wrong, or whether we should be free to apply the teachings of our own moral and religious authorities in determining such things for ourselves. I personally see a lot more spiritual and moral growth in grappling with such issues than I do in simply having everything decided for us by the government.
This is why I am pro-choice but anti-abortion. Indeed, most Americans probably are. I would never advise someone to get an abortion, and indeed would try to persuade her otherwise. But I also don't feel that my own personal opinion on the subject needs to be enforced by the heavy hand of the state. There are deeply held, moral, principled beliefs on both sides of the issue; there is no reason for the government to decide it for us.
The sad irony is that if the more extreme anti-abortion people had put even half the energy they put into trying to criminalize abortion into, instead, working together with others to actually prevent abortions -- whether by public education campgains, or support groups for girls and young women, or working to change a culture of poverty and despair in which young women see sex as the only thing they have to contribute to the world -- they would have saved far, far more of what they perceive to be human lives than they do by all their ranting and fulminating and attempts to divide us all.
Some of the comments at ETP were similar, some more understanding of my position, some less. But I did want to set some things straight. First, YES. I do see Abortion as the murder of an innocent life. Yes, I do believe that this Child should be protected. But I also DO understand that there may come a time when a choice has to be made between that child and the life of the Mother. I understand and accept if there are complication to the unborn, sometimes it may be more humane to end the pregnancy.
Now some think that I may be coming at this via a religious point of view. It would be impossible for me not to have some sort of guidance on this and any issue, from the Bible. From my faith. But I really am not talking about anything to do with HOW or WHY the Women got pregnant. What caused their decision to abort. Just the after effects of said decision.
I am also NOT against contraceptives. I would rather there NOT be a need to have an abortion in the first place. It is THIS type of dialog we need more of in this country. We need BETTER education. We need BETTER prevention. We need to teach people just exactly WHAT and WHO we are talking about. Both sides can learn a lot from each other. Instead of constant back and forth attacks, we need more dialog.
I just thought you may enjoy the conversations as much as I. Perhaps, like I, you may even learn something.
Peter
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