In my previous post I mentioned the recent 8th Circuit Court ruling requiring ridiculous changes to South Dakota’s already ridiculous “informed consent.” Doctors are now forced to – among other things – tell women that by having an abortion they are increasing their risks of depression and suicide.
The other side has always clung to the “abortion hurts women” argument. But, just recently, we have proof that this is just not the case. Last week, the American Psychological Association released a task force report examining the relationship between women’s mental health and abortion. The task force evaluated all empirical studies published in English-language peer-reviewed journals since 1989 comparing the mental health of women ho had an induced abortion to the mental healthy of comparison groups of women. It also included studies that examined factors that predict mental health among women who have had an elective abortion.
What the task force found is that women who have an unplanned pregnancy have NO GREATER RISK of mental health problems from a single first-trimester abortion than from delivering that pregnancy.
This proves what we have known all along. An unintended pregnancy is a stressful life situation for any woman, no matter what the outcome of that pregnancy. These women are faced with a profoundly difficult decision. They spend much time soul-searching and weighing their information and their options. That’s why it’s so critical they have ACCURATE and FULL information. Only then can she and her family make the best decision possible.
And, the only ones who should be involved in that complex personal decision is the woman, her family, her doctor and God. This is not a place for inaccurate information. This is not a place for Big Government Intrusion.
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where is the posessive on “God”?
This is huge. Do you have a link for it?
Shameless plug of my PP affiliate’s blog, but here’s one link. It’s in a whole ton of news sources though.
I hate to be nitpicky, but the 8th Cir. doesn’t ruling doesn’t require the changes to SD informed consent laws. The ruling says that the required language doesn’t violate doctors’ free speech rights and is allowable as passed by the SD legislature. For the record, I agree with the dissent rather than the majority (the required language gives me the creeps), but I just wanted to make sure it was clear that it was the SD legislature that made the changes. The 8th Cir. just said that those changes were constitutional.
I’m also going to just nitpick on the ‘god’ thing. Well all have different stances and beliefs here and including ‘God’ as someone/thing that -should- in everyone’s personal descisions is not very inclusive.
On one of the blogs mentioned above, the topic of a possible ‘post abortion syndrome’ is dismissed completely. Fair enough, whether this exists or not, shouldn’t weigh in on the choice debate, but how do women know that it doesn’t exist? When a woman is pregnant, her hormonal levels are altered, and we are all aware that the substantial hormonal post pregnancy changes after childbirth can lead to post natal depression, so why is post abortion syndrome dismissed? I think that choice and post operative procedures (the reactions that may occur) are separate issues. On the subject of post abortion syndrome, or any emotional/physical manifestation of stress, it’s quite valid. Post traumatic stress wasn’t even considered as a definite syndrome less than a century ago, so to dismiss post abortion syndrome is pure folly or call it a ‘phony concept’ as the Sex/Justice blog does, is incredible to me.
I’ve had an abortion and let me tell you, I had to work through the after-effect for a year afterward, and I find it insulting when bloggers say that ‘post abortion syndrome’ is something that is created by anti-choice people. I’m pro choice but I do believe that a post abortion response occurs in some women and although it isn’t like post natal depression, it is a form of depression.
The thing that is often ignored is that these laws apply no matter the circumstances of the abortion. I had a late missed miscarriage. The baby was dead. I would have had to listen to all sorts of nonsense not related to my actual health care if such a law existed in my state. (It has its own evil laws – like forcing women to deliver dead fetuses if past 24 weeks. You usually need a D&E / D&C no matter what after 16 weeks.)
No, these are just bad laws. Keep government out of ALL reproductive health care decisions other than making sure information is available to women about their options, their real risks, and their real benefits.
Are there health care risks associated with abortion? Yes, all medical procedures have risk – that is not really a valid part of the debate. Most are miniscule in places where it is legal and widely available. Those risks are astronomical in places where abortion is illegal. The “funniest” part of their arguments are that they use risk information from when abortions were backstreet alleys rather than in medical facilities.
Keep government out of ALL reproductive choice.
anastasia: Fair enough, whether this exists or not, shouldn’t weigh in on the choice debate, but how do women know that it doesn’t exist?
Well, it really doesn’t seem to exist for most women who have an abortion – whereas post-birth depression is common enough among new mothers.
“I’m also going to just nitpick on the ‘god’ thing. Well all have different stances and beliefs here and including ‘God’ as someone/thing that -should- in everyone’s personal decisions is not very inclusive.”
Throw another nitpicker onto the pile. I fail to see why there’s a need to mention god at all in this post. I’ve never had an abortion and I’ve also had a tubal ligation so the likelihood of my ever needing an abortion is virtually nil. But if I did somehow become pregnant again, I would have an abortion. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. god would have nothing to do with my decision to have an abortion. god has nothing to do with anything I do. I don’t believe in god.
What about women who are Pagan and worship the goddess? Do they still need to involve god?
From the link provided by Cara:
It’s possible to be sad and upset if your abortion was part of a set of shitty circumstances in your life. If you were prone to depression before, that could certainly trigger it. But not everything has to be a “syndrome”.
I think that like any other moment in your life when you make a really important decision, you can end up being sad about it. Because your friends or family members pushed you into making a decision that wasn’t the best one for you, because later events make you regret your choice, or the unavoidable grief of having chosen the best of a bad set of options. But in any case, it’s individual to each woman, and no legislature can dictate the perfect thing to say to someone to prevent regret after making a life-changing decision.
Especially if, as with the Liberal (=conservative)government which was recently ousted in Australia, you accept tenders from Catholic organisations to provide the “counselling”, and allow them to operate without advertising their bias.
Because there’s no evidence that it does and lots of evidence that it does not? So no, we don’t “know” it, but only the same as we don’t “know” anything when it comes to medicine and can only weigh up the evidence and hope it leads us to a correct answer.
The reason I called it “phony” is partially because of the above, and partially because anti-choicers decided one day to pull the idea out of thin air and were smart to do so, because they won a lot of political clout with it. I’ve never seen anyone — and I do a lot of reading on this stuff, btw — who was not anti-choice support the idea of a post abortion syndrome, including the doctors they’ve found to speak on their behalf.
Every woman who has an abortion has a post abortion response. For most, surveys show that response is relief. For some, it is sadness and confusion. Emotions are complex, so for some it’s all of the above. For a small number, that sadness can turn to depression. But the fact that everyone has a post abortion response does not mean that there is a post abortion syndrome. And for the record, I do support having post-abortion counseling services available for those who decide they would like to have them, and I think that abortion doulas are a great idea for those women who for whatever reason decide they would like to have one.
My quickie two cents:
As a woman who actually HAD an abortion in the late ’80’s, I can tell you for certain that well, yeah, the procedure does often include a bit of pain/discomfort (hell, what do you expect; any procedure involving those delicate parts of the female anatomy would). HOWEVER….the relief I experienced afterward FAR outweighed any minor discomfort from the procedure. And believe me–I was VERY well attended to at the time. The only real depression I experienced was the ensuing failure of a relationship that was already abusive.
The hard truth? Abortion saved my life. There was NO guarantee that the fetus would have survived anyway (many first pregnancies often result in miscarriage, as we all know), and give the ill state of mental health of my family, the fetus’s sire and his family–it’s likely I could have birthed a future serial killer.
Nobobdy will EVER make me regret my decision to terminate a pregnancy that I was in NO way prepaired for or wanted. You can’t force love, either, fundie-freaks….there’s no guarantee that if I had gone on with the pregnancy that I’d have just LOVED to pieces my “little bundle of joy” afterwards. I GUARANTEE quite the opposite would have occured. If you don’t like abortions–DON’T HAVE ONE.
Thanks for letting me rant.
10G, while I am totally pro-choice, “If you don’t like abortions–DON’T HAVE ONE” is not a valid argument. Same-sex marriage, yeah, but not abortion – because people do think it’s murder. I think they are wrong, but it’s not as simple as you say.
Hmmmmm.
Yeah – what a shit law. Really. And the US calls itself a democracy? Forcing women to listen to anti-choice propaganda is no better than China restricting people to have just one child.
I picked up on something with the methodology – why compare women having terminations with only “mentally healthy” women? Surely being mentally unwell is a valid reason to have an abortion? (I certainly don’t mean that having mental health issues *necessarily* makes one an unfit mother, rather, if it’s her decision that she is not mentally in a place to be a mother right now, that is a highly valid reason for an abortion).
So the comparison group should simply be a random sample of the female population of reproductive age, with a representative rate of mental illness, who were not pregnant.
Yet since the study showed that there was already no greater a risk of mental illness in women who had abortions – even with the fact that mentally ill women were excluded from the no abortion group, but not those having abortions, which if anything would produce a false result showing more mental health problems in women having abortions – must be a strong result.
Unless women with prior mental health problems were also excluded from the abortion group?
Also – were women who had abortions compared to those who did not get pregnant, or those who continued the pregnancy? Pregnancy and birth can actually trigger mental illness e.g. postnatal depression.
I’m kind of missing why that isn’t a valid argument. The supreme court says it isn’t murder, court precedent agrees, English common law would seem to agree, the majority of the nation agrees, and even if abortion was murder, I can think of a half dozen self defense claims that could be made. It really doesn’t matter if some people think abortion is murder because the guy they pay to interpret the words of their 2000 years dead sky daddy says it is. We don’t take PETA seriously when they say eating a cow is murder, why on earth do we even bother to address the concerns of fundamentalist Christians?
That attitude (and yeah, Shannon’s inclusion of family, doctor, and god into a woman’s choice) is why abortion is so consistently under attack in this country. The battle was won 35 years ago, but for some reason abortion supporters seem to have this pathological need to placate the other side. Why do we coddle these people who, at a very basic level, wish to inflict their religious beliefs onto the bodies of others? Why do we constantly play into their little games? We’re so damn worried about bad PR that we accept every ridiculous, faulty, asinine assumption they come to the table with.
No, someone’s religious belief is not a counter argument for bodily sovereignty. Sorry, thats one of the fundamental building blocks of human liberty.
“Post traumatic stress wasn’t even considered as a definite syndrome less than a century ago, so to dismiss post abortion syndrome is pure folly or call it a ‘phony concept’ as the Sex/Justice blog does, is incredible to me.”
Well, we do things a little bit differently now than we did a century ago. I mean, I’m not saying we’re at the utter pinnacle of psychological understanding or anything, but you’re asking how we know made-up handwaving bullshit is nonsense and basing at least some of that question on the idea that we didn’t know a whole lot about PTSD back when we still thought lobotomies were keen and recommended circumcision to prevent masturbation.
Part of what makes something an actual syndrome or disorder is having a fairly concrete constellation of symptoms. If study after study after study can’t find any significant difference in women who aborted unplanned pregnancies and women who carried unplanned pregnancies to term, and nobody’s seeing any new or unique patterns emerging in post-abortion women who seek mental care, asking “How do you know it doesn’t exist?” is kind of like asking “How do you know unicorns don’t exist?” We don’t–it is possible that the entirety of both groups is hiding out with the Tibetan molemen in Antarctica–but we can say that it’s extremely unlikely that there exists a distinct, diagnosable, clinically unique disorder that’s only found in women who abort a pregnancy.
To go back to the PTSD example, you can be freaked out after a traumatic experience without having PTSD. You can have an emotional, physical, etc. reaction to having an abortion without having to hang a clinical diagnosis on it. Not everything women do needs to be medicalized to hell and back, and not everything that anyone has ever experienced needs to be tagged and given an entry in the DSM.
“Same-sex marriage, yeah, but not abortion – because people do think it’s murder.”
People also think meat is murder, but the vast majority of society feels absolutely no compunction about giving them the finger. Presumably the right to eat meat is much more socially solid than the right to say whether or not one’s body and health are co-opted by another individual.
And, the only ones who should be involved in that complex personal decision is the woman, her family, her doctor and God.
So much for it being a “personal” decision then, huh?
No. The only ones who should be involved in that sometimes complex, frequently very simple decision is anybody the woman wants involved. Her friends, her sex partners, strangers on the street, the people you listed, or nobody but her. That’s what “personal decision” means.
Fourthing the whole “god” thing. A woman can consult, or choose not to consult, whoever she pleases, but many women think your god is imaginary.
I’m going to nitpick on “This is not a place for Big Government Intrusion.” Since it’s a personal decision, then it can be a place for government intrusion, if that’s what you choose.
*sigh*
William, I disagree. I hate to trot out anti-choice arguments here, but the usual response is “That’s like saying ‘if you don’t like slavery, don’t own a slave.’” I disagree with the reasoning behind it, but using that argument won’t get anyone anywhere.
Abortion doesn’t hurt women. Well, except for the unborn ones. Most of them aren’t big fans.
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