** Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?**
By EMILY BAZELON
Published: January 21, 2007
Early on a a windy Saturday morning in November, Rhonda Arias drove her Dodge Caravan past a Wal-Mart at the end of her block and onto the Interstate. She was beginning the 50-mile drive from her house in southwest Houston to Plane State Jail, where she is, as she puts it, an “abortion-recovery counselor.” To Arias, that means helping women at the prison who have had abortions to understand how that procedure has stained them, and how it explains what has gone wrong in their lives. The prisoners’ abortions, she told me, “have a great deal to do with their pain.”
Needless to say the NY Times takes a doubtful view about post-abortion syndrome but the fact that it’s on the cover of the magazine section must mean something for our side.Arias, who is 53, often wears silver hoop earrings and low black boots, and she has a weakness for edgy zingers. She started doing post-abortion counseling 15 years ago. After what she describes as a revelation from God, she decided that her own pain and unhappiness were rooted in the abortion she had in 1973, when she was 19. “It was the year Roe v. Wade was decided, and I remember saying, ‘No guy in Washington is going to tell me what to do with my body!’ ” Arias said with a sharp laugh as we were driving. But after the procedure, she says, strange feelings washed over her. “I remember having evil thoughts, about hurting children,” she said. “It was like I’d done the worst thing I could possibly do. A piece of evil had entered me.”
Why compare women who get abortions with women who carry to term? Wouldn’t it make better sense to see if women who have had abortions are more likely to suffer more depression then women in general?Read the paper again. The research shows that post-partum women and post-abortive women suffer the same statistical percentage of depression.
Dr. Coleman “doctored” her research to reflect her personal views. When the data was sorted out, the results clearly showed that post-abortive women were no more likely to suffer depression than women who went to term.
This is absolutely the wrong way to challenge abortion. If a researcher can’t demonstrate the validity of their data, then the research is meaningless.
Dr. Coleman has done a lot more harm than good by making her personal opinion the focus of her research.
The study is comparing women who have undergone the same physiological condition - i.e. pregnancy - and its outcome.Why compare women who get abortions with women who carry to term? Wouldn’t it make better sense to see if women who have had abortions are more likely to suffer more depression then women in general?
I would imagine that women who abort have the same type of depression as women who miscarry. The only difference is that women who abort aren’t expecting to grieve and so are not offered any help.
I’ve known several women who had abortions and very few did not express either regrets or saddness-even the ones who were still prochoice.
I didn’t read the article due to its length, but scanning a few pages it did not appear to be an editorial. Can you point out where the author makes her assertions?this article is an editorial piece. The author gives no facts one can check. She makes the assertion that regretting an abortion is a way to “fix” your life because you can’t rue depression, only get past certain actions. She has conducted no study, but is only giving you her opinion of how this pro-life woman is only a superstitious but well-meaning nut.
So what should we do wth the large number of women who show up at our CPC claiming to have sever emotional distress over a past abortion? Shoul we turn them away like planned Parenthood does?? If you want t find out the truth of Post abortion Syndrome spend a little more time at your local CPC and little less time criticizing those who have documentd its existence.The study is comparing women who have undergone the same physiological condition - i.e. pregnancy - and its outcome.
Depression is a physiological phenomenon usually triggered by increased/decreased hormone levels after the termination of pregnancy - whether by abortion or full term. Depression can also be triggered by feelings of regret and guilt.
I can understand that people on this board are not objective concerning the issue - that makes sense. But a scientist MUST be objective in order to achieve truthful results. Dr. Coleman has skewed her data to produce the desired results. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was asked to retract or correct her data by the journal where she published.
I think we’ve got to see abortion as one of the troughs in a generally unsatisfactory life. Happily married women who are financially and socially secure don’t normally present for abortion, although there are exceptions. Women are not going to do themselves any good by admitting that they are too poor to carry a baby to term, which as Mother Theresa said is the real reason for every abortion, but we don’t necessarily have to regard post-abortion syndrome as something discrete and special in a medical sense.tinyurl.com/2eut8t
Needless to say the NY Times takes a doubtful view about post-abortion syndrome but the fact that it’s on the cover of the magazine section must mean something for our side.
A condemned pregnant woman could not be executed until after her child was delivered.Did you know, as barbaric as the pagan Roman’s were, if a woman was condemned to death and it transpired that she was pregnant, her life was spared on account of the fact her unborn child was deemed ‘innocent of all crimes’, therefor to kill a pregnant woman was considered so serious that the only ‘logical’ solution was a pardon for the sake of her unborn child.
Sorry can’t quote the source now. Something I read a long time ago
As for Felicity, she too received this grace of the Lord. For because she was now gone eight months (being indeed with child when she was taken) she was very sorrowful as the day of the games drew near, fearing lest for this cause
she should be kept back (for it is not lawful for women that are with child to be brought forth for torment) and lest she should shed her holy and innocent blood after the rest, among strangers and malefactors.
Also her fellow martyrs were much afflicted lest they should leave behind them so good a friend and as it were their fellow-traveller on the road of the same hope. Wherefore with joint and united groaning they poured out their prayer to the Lord, three days before the games. Incontinently after their prayer her pains came upon her. And when by reason of the natural difficulty of the eighth month she was oppressed with her travail and made complaint, there said to her one of the servants of the keepers of the door: You that thus make complaint now, what wilt you do when you are thrown to the beasts, which you didst contemn when you would not sacrifice? And she answered, “I myself now suffer that which I suffer, but there another shall be in me who shall suffer for me, because I am to suffer for him.”
So she was delivered of a daughter, whom a sister reared up to be her own daughter.
I would think comparing women who have had miscarriages to women who have had abortions would be more appropriate. Women who have had miscarriages had their pregnancies terminated naturally, while women who abort have their pregnancies ended by medical means.The study is comparing women who have undergone the same physiological condition - i.e. pregnancy - and its outcome.
Depression is a physiological phenomenon usually triggered by increased/decreased hormone levels after the termination of pregnancy - whether by abortion or full term. Depression can also be triggered by feelings of regret and guilt.
I can understand that people on this board are not objective concerning the issue - that makes sense. But a scientist MUST be objective in order to achieve truthful results. Dr. Coleman has skewed her data to produce the desired results. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was asked to retract or correct her data by the journal where she published.
lifeissues.net/writers/rea/rea_05abormental.htmlThe data persistently pointed toward the politically unwelcome conclusion that abortion may itself be the cause of subsequent mental health problems. So Fergusson presented his results to New Zealand’s Abortion Supervisory Committee, which is charged with ensuring that abortions in that country are conducted in accordance with all the legal requirements. According to The New Zealand Herald, the committee told Fergusson that it would be “undesirable to publish the results in their ‘unclarified’ state.”
Despite his own pro-choice political beliefs, Fergusson responded to the committee with a letter stating that it would be "scientifically irresponsible" to suppress the findings simply because they touched on an explosive political issue.
In an interview about the findings with an Australian radio host, Fergusson stated: "I remain pro-choice. I am not religious. I am an atheist and a rationalist. The findings did surprise me, but the results appear to be very robust because they persist across a series of disorders and a series of ages. . . . Abortion is a traumatic life event; that is, it involves loss, it involves grief, it involves difficulties. And the trauma may, in fact, predispose people to having mental illness."