Biology Newsfeed

Revisiting the Psychological Toll of Abortion

Scientific American - Posted: December 5th, 2008, 12:00am EST

pAbout half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and 40 percent of these are terminated by abortion. Those ideologically opposed to abortion often argue that the experience is psychologically harmful to women, citing reports of a link between abortion and later mental health problems such as depression. Now, after an exhaustive review of the literature, experts conclude that the best scientific evidence indicates that having a single abortion does not increase a womanrsquo;s risk of emotional problems./ppIn 2006 the American Psychological Association (APA) assembled a task force of researchers with wide-ranging expertise to evaluate all peer-reviewed studies published in English since 1989 (when the last such review was conducted) that compared the mental health of women who had an abortion with that of other women. It is clear that after an abortion some women experience sadness and grief and, in some cases, clinically significant disorders such as depression or anxiety. But the task force concluded in August that ldquo;among women who have a single, legal, first-trimester abortion of an unplanned pregnancy for nontherapeutic reasons, the relative risks of mental health problems are no greater than the risks among women who deliver an unplanned pregnancy.rdquo; The evidence for the risk associated with multiple abortions is more equivocal./p a href=http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=revisiting-the-psychological-toll[More]/a

Read more

Return to the Newsfeed