Category: Women and Abortion Regret

“When an adolescent elects abortion without parental consultation, she must inevitably return to her family context. However, she returns with a secret that shames and emotionally strains her coping abilities. She must employ increased deception to protect her secret and to protect herself from her perceived fears of being found out and condemned by her parents and siblings.”

Rue V. Postabortion Trauma (Lewisville, Texas: Life Dynamics, 1994; 28

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Tonya, a former clinic worker who is not, to my knowledge, pro-life, said the following in a book she wrote:

 “You have some women who really don’t think about what they are doing when they make a decision like this. It really isn’t a walk through the park because this can bother you mentally. Just like a woman who has had a miscarriage, you can get very emotional.”

Tonya P From behind Closed Doors: “Abortions” (Xlibris, 2013) 22

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Often, when women feel grief or guilt after an abortion and want to mourn their unborn child, their grief is not understood or recognized by those close to them. For example, a book on post-abortion women and their testimonies said this:

“Julie, from Melbourne, said a friend told her not to be so ridiculous when she told of her plans to have a little burial service for the aborted baby in her backyard. “What you  about? It was your choice,” the friend admonished her.”

Melinda Tankard Reist Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief after Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2007) 24

Comments like this only add to the pain and alienation women feel when they are coming to terms with their abortions. Sadly, this is a trauma that society, for the most part, does not recognize.

Read more about women and abortion grief here

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Melinda Tankard Reist, who compiled a book full of testimonies from women who regretted their abortions, said:

“… In early 2006, a group of researchers in New Zealand published a paper in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, an international peer-reviewed journal, detailing the findings of an ongoing survey of some 500 women who had been tracked from birth to approximately 25 years of age. The data was drawn from one of the most long-running and valuable longitudinal studies in the world, and the research team had previously published other well-received papers about the findings from their survey.

This study from Australia’s next-door neighbor created an international stir. The researchers had found that the young women in the study who had undergone an abortion were significantly more likely than their peers to experience major depression (nearly double the rate of women who had never been pregnant and 35% higher than those who had carried to term), substance abuse, anxiety disorder, and suicidal behavior.”

The study was:

David M Ferguson, et.al., “Abortion in young women and subsequent mental health,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47 (1): 16 – 24, 2006.

Professor David M Ferguson, leader of the research team:

“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.”

Nick Grimm, “Higher Risk of Mental Health Problems after Abortion Report,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, January 3, 2006

From

 Melinda Tankard Reist Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief after Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2007)  XI-XII

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From author Melinda Tankard Reist, who interviewed many postabortion women:

“Women often spoke of being unable to get satisfactory help for their grief from clinics or organizations connected with abortion. Karleen said that when she sought help at a women’s counseling clinic in Sydney she was told it was wrong of her to speak badly of her abortion experience. Kara, from Queensland, told of posting her personal abortion story on an Internet discussion of abortion. She was told to “get lost” – her story wasn’t welcome….If a woman is depressed after an abortion, she is made to feel it’s her own inability to deal with sadness which is the problem. The onus is all on the woman.”

 Melinda Tankard Reist Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief after Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2007) 24 – 25

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Although many proabortion leaders still maintain that abortion does not cause emotional harm to women, some pro-choicers have been forced to acknowledge that women sometimes do suffer after their abortions.

Pro-choice therapists Candace DePuy, PhD and Dana Dovitch, PhD, authors of The Healing Choice: Your Guide to Emotional Recovery After an Abortion said:

“The idea for this book arose out of our clinical relationships with female clients whose lives have been touched by abortion. As mental health professionals, we were concerned to find how few had discussed the life-changing decision they had made. When they began to share their stories, nearly all were surprised by the depth of emotion they still felt.”

Quoted in Kerri-Ann Kiniorski “The Aftermath of Abortion” The American Feminist vol. 5 no. 1, Spring 1998 6 – 7

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Until very recently, there were very few places that women could go if they suffered grief and guilt after their abortions that were not affiliated with the pro-life movement. There still are not many. Pro-choicers tend to cling to the belief that abortion is beneficial to women even to the point of ostracizing women who regret their abortions. You often hear pro-choicers claim that any woman who has emotional problems after her abortion was mentally ill before her abortion. In this way they blame women for their own problems caused by their abortions.

A woman who shared her abortion pain in a story in The Age in 1992 described trying to get help from a pro-choice organization:

They said the reason (that you are hurting) is that you’ve got stuff in your background that you need to resolve. But I don’t think I’ve got unfinished business.

Jane Cafarella, “The heartache of abortion,” The Age, Aug. 28, 1992, p.14.

This is an old reference, but many pro-abortion groups still hold to this belief.

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Pro-choicers often argue that postabortion syndrome (PAS) is a myth,   and that women are happy and relieved after their abortions. Contradicting this, however, is the extremely high number of women involved in postabortion ministries and outreaches. An author said the following in 1987. Since then, the number of women seeking postabortion help and joining postabortion support groups has increased exponentially:

“Little evidence can be found to support abortion as psychologically therapeutic, whereas much evidence shows it can be harmful. How else does one account for the rapid rise of an organization such as Women Exploited by Abortion (WEBA)? In the first 10 months of its existence, this organization grew from 2 members to 10,000 members who had previously had abortions, but now are strongly pro-life.”

Paul B Fowler Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1987) 172

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