By Dave Andrusko
I’m re-running Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon’s excellent review of a mega-analysis compiled by Prof. Priscilla Coleman which puts the lie to the nonsense that there are not significant mental health implications for women who abort. Dr. Coleman found that aborting women showed an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, with particular risks (e.g., substance abuse, suicide) even higher; and that 9.9% of the incidence of mental health problems in the population group of aborted women was directly attributable to abortion.
I’m also providing Dr. Peter Saunders excellent overview of “Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995–2009,” which offers additional insights.
If I may, I’d like to add another layer to the discussion with a couple of paragraphs about two sentences that appeared in a British publication. What they hint at is hugely significant:
Professor Coleman has been the frequent target of pro-choice campaigners in the U.S. for her insistence that abortion is linked to poor mental health. But while critics have doubted her methods, they have failed to damage her academic reputation, and publication in the peer-reviewed British journal is a signal that the psychiatric establishment is now taking seriously the possibility that abortion is a cause of anxiety, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide.
[This is from “Women who have abortions ‘face double the risk of mental health problems,’” by Steve Doughty found at www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2032431/Women-abortions-face-double-risk-mental-health-problems.html?ito=feeds-newsxml]
Dr. Coleman—a target? You betcha. Why? Because she’s produced a raft of excellent, peer-reviewed studies that are unassailable—academically. Pro-abortionists can always sling mud. But so what if she has?
Well, women have been sold this bill of goods: that abortion is akin to removing a wart. No pain and all gain, if you will.
But it’s not. Abortion exacts a horrific toll—1.2 million dead babies annually in the United States alone; an army of spiritually and emotionally wrung-out women; and an incalculable coarsening effect on the culture.
Bravo to Dr. Coleman. And bravo to Dr. O’Bannon as well, for his outpouring of outstanding work for National Right to Life in general, and especially for NRL News, in particular.
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