Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Some abortion supporters truly dislike any mention of any possibility of post-abortion syndrome

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an editorial on how "post-abortion syndrome doesn't exist" by Sarah Prager. What are Prager's qualifications for writing this editorial?

Prager isn't a psychologist. She isn't someone who has actually done research on abortion and mental health. She's an ob/gyn. She's an ob/gyn who is a member of National Abortion Federation, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Medical Students for Choice. I'm assuming this means she provides abortions or at least has at some point in the past. Those associations are for some reason not noted in the editorial.

Prager's evidence that post-abortion syndrome doesn't exist is noting a single review article which reviewed various papers dealing with abortion and emotional health. She notes that according to her source, "76 percent of women report feeling relief after abortion while only 17 percent report feelings of guilt."

I believe the article Prager is referring to one review study from 1990 entitled "Psychological responses after abortion" from Science whose lead author was Nancy Adler. I'm not certain because Prager doesn't say - I'm also wondering if she's ever read the article. I haven't read the full article either so I'm not sure how long on average after the abortion these women were interviewed about their feelings but according to this NY Times article from 1990 about the Adler paper:
"One study (in Adler's review of studies) showed that 76 percent of women reported feeling relief two weeks after an abortion, and only 17 percent reported feeling guilt."
Notice any resemblance to Prager's quote from above? Minus the "two weeks," of course.

UPDATE: I should have linked to this older post from Annie at After Abortion where she links to and summarizes a variety of studies dealing with both physical and emotional effects of abortion.

I should have also linked to research by New Zealand's David Fergusson who found that for women in New Zealand:
By the age of 25, the study found, 42 per cent of those who had had an abortion had also experienced major depression during the previous four years.

This was nearly double the rate of those who had never been pregnant and 35 per cent higher than those who had chosen to continue a pregnancy.

No comments:

Post a Comment