Story from Fairfax Media. (H/T Beretta Blog)
Excerpt:
New Zealand researchers who examined the medical history of more than 500 women have concluded abortion “leads to significant distress in some”.
Women reporting adverse reactions were up to 80 percent more likely than women not exposed to abortion to have mental health problems, the Otago University study found.
That finding has raised questions about justifying abortions on the basis of mental health.
The study, reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found the risk of mental illness was “proportional to the degree of distress” associated with the abortion.
[...]More than 85 percent of women reported a least one negative emotional reaction, including sorrow, sadness, guilt, regret, grief and disappointment.
[...]The study found that women who reported at least one negative reaction had rates of mental health problems “approximately 1.4 to 1.8 times higher than women not exposed to abortion”.
The report concluded: “This evidence raises important questions about the practice of justifying termination of pregnancy on the grounds that this procedure will reduce risks of mental health problems in women having unwanted pregnancy.
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This doesn’t surprise me. Though I haven’t conducted a formal study, all the women I’ve known who had abortions have deep feelings of anguish because of it. This is especially true if they later give birth to children.
However, there is no way to tell if their mental anguish would have been worse if they carried the baby to term.