Dr. Coleman Responds to Abortion Research Controversy

By Dr. Priscilla Coleman

Over the past few days there has been a great deal of press concerning a peer-reviewed article I published in 2009 with co-authors Dr. Catherine Coyle, Dr. Vincent Rue, and Dr. Martha Shuping in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

The analyses in this paper employed data from the National Comorbidity Survey with a large number of significant associations detected between abortion and various mood, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders.

A problem with the sampling weight applied to conduct the original analyses was detected in 2011. When this issue was brought to our attention, we promptly re-analyzed the data with the correct weight applied and the overall pattern of results did not change remarkably.  We wrote a corrigendum that was subsequently published by the Journal of Psychiatric Research, and corrected values were incorporated into the meta-analysis on abortion and mental health published by the British Journal of Psychiatry in September 2011. The 2009 paper was one of 22 studies included in the meta-analysis.

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