Concerned Women for America - Whither Women in the Abortion Debate?

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Whither Women in the Abortion Debate? 1/23/2001
By Catherina Hurlburt

On January 18, Concerned Women for America hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill to release new information on how abortion harms women. Dr. David Reardon, biomedical ethicist, researcher and director of the Elliot Institute for Social Sciences and Research, was the keynote speaker. He discussed the importance of focusing on women in the debate, particularly with the available research on its detrimental effects on short-term and long-term physical and mental health.

The goal of the pro-life movement is to bring an end to all abortion, he said. And in the process, we need to make abortion unthinkable. We need to “create a culture that supports all life. The public has this idea that abortion is beneficial to women.” Faced with the choice between the woman and the unborn child, Dr. Reardon noted, the public would side with the woman.

However, divorcing women from their children is a “false dichotomy,” said Dr. Reardon. The pro-life movement must remember they are divinely intertwined. In so doing, we diffuse the debate. When pro-abortion advocates understand we are not attacking women, they are more open to communication.

Focussing on the woman begins conversation on abortion in the public arena. “If you help the mother, you help the baby,” assured Dr. Reardon.

He remarked that women who have had an abortion have a difficult time answering the question, “How many children do you have?” Are they supposed to count those who were aborted? Published research confirms this incredibly difficult experience remains with them years down the road.

Post-abortion syndrome: A study by pro-abortion researcher Dr. Brenda Major found, on average, women reported no benefit from abortion. On all three questions related to harm assessment, 23 percent reported an average of medium to high levels of harm. More than 84 percent reported at least some negative emotions, with 10.3 percent reporting high level average scores for the six negative emotions evaluated; only 15.6 percent reported no negative emotions. Twenty percent of women surveyed experienced clinical depression during the two years following abortion.¹
Substance abuse: Women who underwent abortion were 2.7 times more likely to report a history of substance abuse than women who did not abort. Women with no prior substance abuse who aborted their first pregnancy were five times more likely to report subsequent abuse, compared to women who gave birth. Twenty-two percent reported substance abuse occurred within a year of the abortion, and 67 percent said it occurred within three years.²
Mortality rates: A study of Finland’s records revealed women who had abortion were 252 percent more likely to die within the following year than women who carried to term. Compared to women who gave birth, the odds of dying within a year following an abortion was 1.63 for death from natural causes, 4.24 for death from injuries related to accidents,³ 6.46 for deaths resulting from suicide, and 13.97 for deaths resulting from homicide.⁴
Rape and incest victims: Dr. Reardon touched on a newly released book, Victims and Victors, that presents data from 192 women who became pregnant as a result of rape or incest. The January/February 2001 issue of Family Voice includes an article on the results. Of 50 rape victims who reported feelings about their abortions, 88 percent explicitly stated it was the wrong choice. Forty-three percent of the rape victims surveyed reported having abortions because of pressure from others. More than 90 percent said they would discourage other victims of sexual assault from undergoing abortion.⁵

Dr. Reardon mentioned new research he will discuss at the First World Congress on Women’s Mental Health to be held in Germany in March. In a record-based study in Denmark, negative post-abortion effects, including deaths, increased over the entire eight-year period analyzed. Another study revealed women who abort are twice as likely to have pre-term or post-term deliveries, leading to birth defects.⁶ He announced plans to analyze the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) for data regarding depression in those women who have abortions, noting that children of post-abortive women tend to have more behavior problems. Post-abortive women are generally overly protective or neglectful as parents.

Finally, Dr. Reardon offered policy proposals for legislators as they deliberate abortion-related bills. He said it is high time for a comprehensive record-based, longitudinal study on abortion. Researchers need to objectively study whether women who abort are truly “better off,” as abortion advocates claim. He noted abortion research has a place in civil rights law, in that women have a right to full disclosure of studies on abortion. In addition, abortion clinics’ failure to inform women of all risks must end. This could lead to a standard of care requiring clinics to screen for risk factors before performing abortions.

All of these proposals consider the safety and well being of women. Activists on both sides of abortion should be able to agree on that priority.

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