Women Who Abort Experience More Anxiety
Women Who Abort Experience More Anxiety
New Elliot Institute Study Compares Women With Unintended First Pregnancies
Women who abort unintended pregnancies are more likely to experience subsequent problems with anxiety compared to women who deliver their unintended pregnancies, according to a new Elliot Institute study published in the latest edition of the prestigious Journal of Anxiety Disorders.
Using data collected from the federally-funded National Survey of Family Growth, researchers examined a nationally representative sample of 10,847 women aged 15-34 who had experienced an unintended first pregnancy and had no prior history of anxiety.
After controlling for race and age at the time of the survey, researchers found that compared to women who carried the unintended pregnancy to term, women who aborted were 30 percent more likely to subsequently report all the symptoms associated with a diagnosis for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
If the excess cases of GAD were projected onto the entire population of women having abortions, there may be as many as 40,000 or more cases of GAD per year attributable to abortion.
“Our study suggests that clinicians treating women with anxiety problems may find it useful to inquire about their clients’ reproductive histories,” said Jesse Cougle, M.Sc., the lead author of the study. “Women struggling with unresolved issues related to a past abortion may benefit significantly from counseling that addresses this problem.”
In their examination of data, Cougle and his colleagues considered women as being at risk for GAD if they reported feeling worried and anxious for a period of at least six months about things that were not serious or were not likely to happen. They also had to experience other symptoms required for a diagnosis of GAD, such as irritability, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, a pounding or racing heart, or feelings of unreality.
Researchers excluded women who reported having experienced a period of prolonged anxiety prior to or at the same time as their first pregnancy. Women who aborted a pregnancy after delivering their first pregnancy were also excluded from the study.
There were also greater differences in rates of generalized anxiety between aborting and delivering women who were under the age of 20 than there were for women who were older at the time of the pregnancy. This may be explained, researchers said, by other studies that show that older women are more likely to conceal past abortions in surveys and that abortion is a more stressful experience for younger women.
“Some studies have found that younger women are more likely to experience emotional distress following abortion than are older women,” Cougle said. “Younger women may feel less control over their decision and may abort under pressure from their parents or partner.”
Abortion advocates have frequently asserted that carrying an unintended pregnancy to term is more emotionally harmful to women than abortion. Not only does the anxiety study look at women whose pregnancies were unintended, but another Elliot Institute study comparing women with unintended pregnancies also found higher depression rates among women who had abortions.
Elliot Institute director Dr. David Reardon, who was an author on both studies, said the new findings show that abortion is risky for women regardless of whether or not they intended to become pregnant.
“Abortion is not a matter of simply turning back the clock, as some abortion advocates have claimed,” Reardon said. “This is not a choice between having a baby and not having a baby, but a choice between having a baby and having what for many women is a traumatic procedure.”
The new study linking abortion to general anxiety disorder also has been preceded by nearly a dozen other studies published in the last three years linking abortion to increased risk of depression, substance abuse, suicidal behavior, and death from heart disease.
Because of increasing concern about the mental health effects of abortion on women, legislation has been introduced in
Congress to expand funding for research on abortion risks and to provide treatment for women struggling with post-abortion trauma.
“The evidence that abortion harms women is piling up, ” Reardon said [see “Survey: Most Americans Think Abortion Hurts Women, p. 4]. “Americans are truly waking up to the fact that most abortions are unwanted, unsafe, and unfair.”
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Source
Jesse R. Cougle, David C. Reardon, Priscilla K. Coleman. “Generalized Anxiety Following Unintended Pregnancies Resolved Through Childbirth and Abortion: A Cohort Study of the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth,” Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2005, 19:137-142.
Originally published in The Post-Abortion Review 12(4) Oct.-Dec. 2004. Copyright 2004 Elliot Institute.
