Elliot Institute 2004 Year End Report

Through your support, we have been blessed during the last year to have accomplished the following major activities:

• We developed many materials for our new advertising campaign focused on the theme of unwanted, unsafe, and unfair abortions. The materials include logos, display ads for newspapers and magazines, billboards, radio ads, television ads, and a new web site at www.unfairchoice.info.  Nearly all these materials can be viewed at the website. This is an ongoing project and materials will be updated on the website.
• We supplied briefs and other materials to legal teams and attorneys generals.  In some cases, they were defending new abortion regulations, challenging Roe v Wade, or pressing malpractice suits.  We also provided written testimony and numerous documents to a special task force convened by the legislature of South Dakota to investigate abortion practices.
• We have been working with post-abortion ministries and other interested groups in a number of states that are interested in passing all or portions of our model legislation, which would define as negligence the failure to screen for risk factors of abortion.
• This year, two new studies we co-authored were published in journals of medicine or psychology. Their findings show that:
  • Women who abort are three times more likely to report symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder compared to women with unintended pregnancies who deliver. (Journal of Anxiety Disorders)
  • Women with a history of induced abortion are three times more likely to use illegal drugs during a subsequent pregnancy (British Journal of Health Psychology)
• In addition to the two original studies mentioned above, we have also collaborated in publishing a review article in Psychology and Health summarizing all the literature that has accumulated over the last ten years demonstrating the harmful effects of abortion on women.  It also describes future research needs.
• Another two studies we completed in the last year have been accepted for publication and will publish early in 2006.  One examines the preferences of women for information regarding risks associated with elective procedures, including abortion.  The other examines the association between abortion and sleep disorders. 
• Because of the 22 medical journal articles dealing with abortion complications that Dr. Reardon has authored or co-authored in the last five years, he has been increasingly called upon to be a reviewer of research related to abortion that is being submitted to medical journals by others.  In the last year, he has served as a peer reviewer on four occasions and has thereby been able to improve the quality of articles published by other researchers in this field.
• We have begun the publishing process for Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief after abortion by Melinda Reist Tankard. This book includes the personal accounts of 18 Australian women, and draws on the experiences of over 200 others.
• We’ve distributed hundreds of copies of our books and pamphlets and over 15,000  copies of Hope & Healing, our 12-page newspaper supplement on post-abortion issues.

• We published four issues of The Post-Abortion Review, distributed fifteen issues of our email newsletter, Elliot Institute News, to approximately 16,000 people, and expanded the content of our Internet site at www.afterabortion.org, which has served over two million page requests. 
• We also distributed numerous news releases regarding our studies, other researchers’ studies, or related commentary, participated in print and radio interviews, and answered numerous requests for information from individuals.
• Also, we have secured access to an extremely important data set that will provide the basis for numerous studies that we will complete over the next two years.

   These and other accomplishments were achieved through the efforts of just 360 donating partners, two full-time employees, and one part-time employee. 

   During the last fiscal year, our donating partners contributed an average of $183 per partner, for a total of $65,754.  This accounted for approximately 61% of our total income for the year, $108,227, which was supplemented by sales of books and other educational resources we produce.  With total expenditures of $120,795 for the fiscal year, our expenses exceeded income by $21,370.

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