COVERUP

The Post Abortion Coverup By Jenny Tyree
[Jenny Tyree is a freelance writer in Colorado Springs, Colorado]

There are some who claim that most women who abort their children do not suffer. Ms. magazine makes such a claim in its September issue saying that post-abortion stress (PAS) is a "made-up term" and a "bogus infliction invented by the religious right." Planned Parenthood liked the article so much that it appeared on the main page of the group's Web site.

To whom are abortion advocates listening?

Not to Carrie Gordon Earll, bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family. "Having an abortion is not like having your tonsils removed," Earll said. "A woman is forever changed by pregnancy regardless of how that pregnancy ends."

Not to Teri Reisser, author of A Solitary Sorrow: Finding Healing and Wholeness After Abortion, and a therapist who, with her husband, has counseled hundreds of post-abortive women.

Not to Julie Parton, manager of Focus on the Family's Crisis Pregnancy ministry. "PAS affects women regardless of cultural setting and religious background," Parton said. "Abortion violates the natural maternal instinct of a mother wanting to protect her offspring."

And not, apparently, to many women who have experienced abortion. Although the Ms.article gives statistics and cites studies to support their theory, the greater evidence says that abortion not only kills an unborn child, but also hurts the women those advocates seek to help.

Abortion advocates point to the fact that neither the American Psychological Association (APA) nor the American Psychiatric Association identify PAS as a diagnosis. They also cite the independent studies of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and the APA in the late 1980s, and the conclusion of both that abortion did not contribute to psychological problems in women.

Another study conducted by Brenda Major at the University of California at Santa Barbara in August 2000 is singled out as further research supporting this theory. The Major study found that only one percent of post-abortive women suffered extreme psychological distress. This study also reported that the greatest emotion women experienced after abortion was relief.

There is, however, information that has been overlooked by the Ms. article and abortion advocates. Reisser said the process by which the American Psychiatric Association adds a diagnosis to the body of disorders is notoriously slow. The process is even slower when an issue is politically charged.

In addition, the reports made by the Surgeon General and the American Psychological Association both acknowledged the fact that most of the studies used to draw their conclusions were flawed scientifically. Furthermore, while many pro-life authorities agree that relief is the strongest emotion experienced immediately following an abortion, Earll said the Major study also found that as time passed the women surveyed had an increased dissatisfaction with their abortion decision, and an increase in negative emotions.

More recent statistics reflect troubling information for abortion advocates who would champion the cause of women's emotional and physical health.

In Finland, researchers identified suicide rates among aborted women were higher (35 percent) than women who gave birth (six percent).

According to research in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, women who abort their first pregnancy are five times more likely to report subsequent substance abuse than women who gave birth, and four times more likely than women whose pregnancies ended through miscarriage or stillbirth.

In the United States, 13 out of 14 studies found more breast cancer among American women who had chosen abortion. The link between the two is so strong that The New England Journal of Medicine listed abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

The Ms. article does relate the testimony of some women, but once again seems to neglect the whole truth. Words such as "sadness," "grief, " "regret," "loss," and "guilt" are listed as emotions experienced by women after abortion, but they are not attributed to the death of a child. Instead, abortion advocates say women are recovering from making the abortion decision, grieving the loss of another relationship, or perhaps suffering from the stress induced by "antiabortion movement" protesters.

"You would think that abortion advocates who claim to be pro-woman would want women who were hurt or injured by abortion to have access to information to help them," Earll said. "With this article, the pro-abortion extremists show their true colors: they're more committed to a political agenda than to women."