Whom should a woman listen to when deciding whether to have an abortion or keep a child? It would seem that only yourself, your inner voice. However, it is very difficult to abstract from the polyphony of others. Opponents of abortion scare a woman that it will backfire on her with a whole bunch of psychological problems. This is partly the way it happens — but often because of the pressure of society.
Although it is the third decade of the 2019st century, abortion is still one of the hot topics for political discussion and manipulation. While some conservative countries, under public pressure, legalize them (as, for example, Northern Ireland did in October XNUMX), in our part of the Earth, disputes still do not subside about whether abortion is considered murder and whether it is worth restricting women in the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
One of the central arguments of the opponents of abortion, in addition to the belief rooted in the religious worldview that any fetus has the right to life, is the negative impact of this operation on the mental health of a woman. It is widely believed that abortion leaves deep wounds on the body and soul of a woman and becomes a trauma that cannot be removed. Even a certain post-abortion syndrome has been invented — a set of post-abortion psychological complications, which, however, is absent both in the DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders and in the ICD-10 list of psychiatric conditions.
Like many other deeply rooted beliefs, these ideas originate in the works of the fathers of psychoanalysis — almost not a single pro-life article (pro-life — a social movement aimed at banning abortion. — Approx. ed.) is complete without a quote from Jung’s writings that unborn children «live the life of vampires in their mothers’ minds and never leave them alone» and that women who commit crimes against conscience will be avenged by symptoms of a severe neurosis that will haunt them all their lives.
Unfortunately, modern popular resources are not far from the bearded forefathers of psychoanalysis, who saw in women an exclusively reproductive function. Entering the query «the impact of abortion on mental health» into a search engine, you can get a list of symptoms that await any woman who decides to «end her life.»
It includes depression, neuroses, loneliness, alienation, dullness of the maternal instinct, guilt and remorse, anger and sadness, nightmares, suicidal thoughts, deep traumas and neuroses, hatred of a partner, aggression, “inadequate attitude towards children”, indifference and even whims. of a sexual nature. It’s amazing how puerperal fever did not appear on this list.
95% of respondents not only do not regret that they terminated an unwanted pregnancy, but also experience deep relief
But jokes aside. A number of modern studies reveal a statistical correlation between abortion and the deterioration of a woman’s mental state. For example, in 2011, the results of a study were published1, which showed that women who have had an abortion are several times more likely to develop mental illness.
There is, however, an important nuance in this study: the authors clarify that the likelihood of mental complications after an abortion is influenced by the desirability of pregnancy, combined with social factors that make its continuation impossible, as well as conservative views on abortion. And the last remark is especially curious. What exactly affects a woman’s mental health: an abortion or the very fact of an unplanned pregnancy in adverse living conditions? Abortion or the social attitude that this is murder, “you will definitely regret it”, “unborn children will appear to you for the rest of your life” and that “having had an abortion, you become a sinful woman of the second class”?
In early 2020, a group of scientists from California and Columbia Universities published a study2 about how women who have had an abortion evaluate their act after five years. The results turned out to be very interesting: it turns out that after five years, 95% of the respondents not only do not regret that they terminated an unwanted pregnancy, but also feel relieved and consider their act the only right decision that benefited them.
At the same time, slightly more than half of them report that it was difficult for them to take this step and that during the first year after the abortion they experienced many of the negative feelings that prolifers prophesy to «guilty» women: guilt, anger, sadness and regret. However, if we read the study to the end, we will find an interesting twist there.
‘Post-Abortion Syndrome’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy, mostly coming true because we believe in it.
The majority of women who spoke about psychological difficulties before and after an abortion simultaneously reported that they were afraid of condemnation of their decision by their inner circle. And the higher the level of condemnation and rejection of abortion in the immediate environment of a woman, the worse she felt immediately after the termination of pregnancy and during the first year after it. But even for these women, after a year, negative emotions were replaced by a sense of relief or a neutral attitude.
Approximately the same result can be found in the research of the American Psychological Association in 2008.3, which show that the termination of the first unplanned pregnancy does not lead to an increase in the risk of mental health disorders. In cases of recurrent abortions, the evidence is less clear, as factors that predispose a woman to multiple unintended pregnancies also correlate with her mental health (eg, being in an abusive relationship or a particularly vulnerable position, unavailability of contraception, chemical dependencies, etc.).
What do these studies and common sense tell us? Perhaps, first of all, about the fact that abortion itself, no matter how scandalous it may sound, may not become a traumatic factor in a woman’s life. What really hurts is the discrepancy between desires and opportunities (for example, the inability to maintain a desired pregnancy due to sudden changes in life, financial situation or health status), social status (for example, the onset of multiple unplanned pregnancies as a result of abusive relationships where a woman cannot to control their reproductive function) and, first of all, public pressure and social stigmatization.
The post-abortion symptoms that anti-abortion proponents most often talk about—shame, aggression, guilt, regret, and emotional withdrawal—are not the universal way any woman automatically responds to an abortion. These feelings are not ours, there is nothing natural and natural in them, they are social and imposed from outside. We know that we must test them if we want to be considered real women: child-loving, conscientious and responsible. And we are doubly ashamed if relief or other positive emotions become a reaction to an abortion.
The notorious post-abortion syndrome is a self-fulfilling prophecy, mostly coming true because we believe in it. And this prophecy, this imagined punishment for free choice, will lose power if we shift the focus from what we should feel to what we actually feel. And abortion, like any other deeply personal decision, can cause a wide variety of individual feelings: someone will regret what happened and be sad, and someone may feel that they have regained control of their own lives and made the right decision.
1. Priscilla K. Coleman, Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995-2009. BJP 2011, 180-186.2. Five years after abortion, study finds nearly all women say it was the right decision. EurekAlert! University of California.3. Susan A. Cohen. Still True: Abortion Does Not Increase Women’s Risk of Mental Health Problems. Guttmacher Institute. June 25, 2013.