Responding to Pro-Abortion Researchers

To counteract the push toward greater protections for women, pro-abortion researchers have begun a new push to publish skewed studies “proving” that abortion is “safe.” The most recent example of this effort appeared in the form of a lengthy commentary by Nada Stotland, M.D., in the October 21st issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) which emphatically declared that “there is no evidence” that post-abortion trauma exists and, indeed, it “does not exist” except as an anti-abortion myth. (This is one of the many emergency projects on which I was diverted to spend a few days gathering together notes for a response to this commentary on behalf of a pair of pro-life psychiatrists.)

Ironically, Stotland presents as proof of her argument a study which showed that “only” eleven percent of women were evaluated as having suffered significant worsening of psychological welfare at a followup interview six months after their abortion. Her implication is that if the majority of women do not suffer problems (and quickly too!) then obviously post-abortion trauma “does not exist,” or at least is too insignificant to talk about. An eleven percent complication rate is to be considered acceptable!

Another highly publicized piece was an analysis of portions of the data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth by pro-abortion activist Nancy Filipe Russo of Arizona State University. In her many interviews with the press she has made some contradictory statements claiming on one hand that there is no post-abortion problem, on the other hand, what problems do occur are caused by pro-life activists “forcing” women to feel guilty. One wonders, if there are no post-abortion problems, how can pro-life activists be causing problems that don’t exist?

Perhaps Russo’s most outlandish statement is that pro-lifers “should learn a lesson from Brazil, where packs of unwanted children run the streets and merchants hire squads of security forces to shoot them down. This is one example of what can happen when families are not able to control their childbearing.” Marauding “packs of unwanted children” are being gunned down in Brazil?! I’m afraid I missed that issue of The National Enquirer. Are these children wearing “I was unwanted” tee-shirts? And exactly who is pointing her finger at? A Brazilian government oblivious to mass shootings of unwanted children in their streets? Irrationally copulating people “not able to control their childbearing?” Or is she blaming the pro-lifers who stand in the way of aborting these “packs of unwanted children” before they can begin to terrorize local merchants?

Russo obviously has an amusing gift for hyperbole. Unfortunately, she is unable to keep her exaggerations out of her research. Her assessment of one criteria, self-esteem measurements, becomes the launching pad for sweeping generalizations about the safety and benefits of abortion. And even with this criteria, her analysis avoids asking (or at least reporting on) the questions which appear most interesting. While the NLSY data set is flawed, since there the number of women admitting having had abortions is only 50 to 60 percent of what would have been expected in a sample of this size, we have looked at this extensive survey’s outline and believe that it may hold some very interesting findings. Because we will be looking to prosecute abortion, not defend it, we will be investigating the data from a different angle than Russo did. We have ordered the raw data from the NLSY team and will be looking at it in 1993. In the long run, I believe we will be thanking Dr. Russo for bringing this publicly available data set to our attention.

The examples of Stotland and Russo remind us that pro-abortion researchers are not only well financed, they have the support of the their professional community, easy access to professional publications, and are frequently given wide coverage by mass media. Pro-life researchers need to do twice as much work to get half the attention. This is not a complaint. This is simply an explanation about how much of an uphill battle we face. We can’t let up, however, just because the opposition is doing everything they can to bury us. Their exaggerated denials of the existence of post-abortion problems demonstrate that they are truly afraid of this issue. Their only defense is to do everything they can to paint us as liars before we even get the chance to bring our evidence forward. Our job is to simply keep moving forward and trust that in the end the truth will prevail.

Originally published in The Post-Abortion Review 1(1) Winter 1993. Copyright 1993 Elliot Institute

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