Post Abortion Syndrome

[emperorchaos]

I've read conflicting opinions on "Post Abortion Syndrome". I have a friend who is concerned with her pregnancy. I've told her to consult Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the like, but she's come across this "Post Abortion Syndrome" which is new to me.

Are there any experts or anyone who has more information on this subject so I might better assist my friend? Thank you.

[Xeriar]

I've read conflicting opinions on "Post Abortion Syndrome". I have a friend who is concerned with her pregnancy. I've told her to consult Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the like, but she's come across this "Post Abortion Syndrome" which is new to me.

Are there any experts or anyone who has more information on this subject so I might better assist my friend? Thank you.

Only some really skewed data (it came from pro lifers), but it seems that, especially if a pregnancy is allowed to progress past the first trimester, the mother develops an emotional bond with her child and has a high chance of regretting the abortion.

As far as any specific data, I don't know. I've heard claims as high as 80%, but then I read about the girl who dumped her newborn infant in a trash can at a party and have to wonder.

[LostAngeles]

Huh. The first thing I thought of was possibly feelings of guilt and/or regret after the abortion. I've heard of it happening and it makes sense. Getting an abortion isn't generally like dying your purple or buying skim milk instead of 2%. The decision to get an abortion is a major one.

Although Xeriar seems to at least be implying it's a pro-life (FSM, is that term stupid) tactic.

Acceding to the more wise and more inclined to do research right now.

[SpaceFluffer]

I, for one, would never consider dying my purple.

[PatKelley]

I, for one, would never consider dying my purple.
I like my purple living as well.

[Eos of the Eons]

I would take some of the Crisis Centre's materials in stride. Most are run by folks who are very anti-abortion, very, and will connect abortion to anything from depression to cancer. I'm not kidding. W-5 did an expose on the "information" they give out, and it was very one sided, including the "increased cancer" claim.

A W-Five reporter visited the Pregnancy Care Centres in both Red Deer and Calgary wearing a hidden camera and posing as a woman with a crisis pregnancy. The reporter was told by a counselor that abortion "doesn't make you not pregnant, it makes you the mother of a dead baby." She was also told that one in 13 women who undergo an abortion suffer life-threatening complications. But the real figure is more like one in a thousand, said Andre Lalonde, vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "Ninety-seven percent of patients go through an abortion without any side-effects, psychological or physical." He also said the centre's description of the surgical abortion process was "pure invention."

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/prochoicepress/00autumn.shtml#w5


Post-abortion syndrome is less likely to happen than post-partum depression. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, as abortion is not taken lightly by most, but the pregnancy centre information must be checked against facts.

[LostAngeles]

I, for one, would never consider dying my purple.

See what happens when you're posting at 4:30AM?

"...dying your hair purple..."

The word was there in my head, I swear.

[bluess]

I've had an abortion, and not had any issues. But then, I was raised in a culture that doesn't give a baby a name for thirty days, just in case it dies before the soul is firmly seated.

My then-boyfriend started a 'but what if that was the next Einstein' conversation, which I countered with 'but what if that was the next Hitler'.

I would be interested in seeing data about the existence of any regrets-syndromes tied to the religion of the women and also what type of 'counseling' they had before hand. I would think anyone who got an earful from the anti-abortion folks would be more likely to feel regrets.

[Dancing David]

Of my friends who had abortions, none of them did so gladly, they all did so because the consequences of having a child were ones that they found to be unacceptable. They all regreted what they had done and had some grief over the issue, however none of them have said that they wished they hadn't done it.

I think that our society does revere life and that women and men are trained to value pregnancy, there is alot of social 'oh wow that is great' pressure on people when it comes to having children.

Don't like abortion, give away free birth control!

[Soapy Sam]

emperorchaos- As a childless male, I am an obvious expert on this subject. The answer is...

It depends on the person.

Your friend needs support from her friends. Whatever her decision, whether you agree with her or not, is her decision. All you can do is back her.
Best of luck to you both.

[emperorchaos]

Thank you all for your responses. I've been away from a computer for the past few days so I've just had an opportunity to read them.

I believe I will continue to do research myself. And although my friend lives in New York, and I in South Carolina, I'll help her the best I can.

[Dr. Imago]

It is my understanding that the term "post-abortion syndrome" is really not a separate, distinct psychological disease entity, but instead better fits within the larger milieu of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As such, certain women (women only in this case, for obvious reasons) it seems would be more likely to suffer from such a condition not specifically as a result of the abortion itself, but instead by how they have patterned/developed overall coping mechanisms following intense emotional stress and trauma especially when mixed in with their particular belief system concerning "right or wrong", societal pressure and expectations, perceptions of guilt, etc.

In other words, you might find similar "syndromes" following other serious stressors in the same women (e.g., if they happened to be involved in a car accident in which someone else was killed and for which they were responsible, and then had intense feelings of guilt following that accident; we wouldn't then coin a "post-motor vehicle accident syndrome" to describe their emotional state).

Naturally, it proves to be far more melodramatic and politically charged to use such terminology when it fits a particular agenda, doesn't it? In that sense, specifically naming the psychological disturbance around the act belittles and perhaps limits our ability to further elucidate the true understading of the source of the underlying feelings by over-simplistically pigeon-holing it and attributing it solely the elective abortion. This then necessarily closes the discussion: stop aborting, you stop the syndrome, problem solved, end of story. How convenient.

-Dr. Imago

[ceo_esq]

From I. F. Brockington, "Post-Abortion Psychosis", Archives of Women's Mental Health 8:53-54 (2005):

There have been several surveys investigating the link between abortion and psychosis. The most thorough (David, 1985) used data from the 1975 Danish national registers - 27,234 terminations and 71,378 births. The psychiatric admission rate in the population was 0.75/1000; after childbirth it was 1.2/1,000 and after abortion 1.84/1,000. A Manchester general practice study (Gilchrist et al., 1995) found similar rates (about 1/1,000) after births and abortions, but more early onsets after births. In California (Reardon et al., 2003), admission rates were higher after abortion, especially for bipolar disorder - 0.35/1,000 after births and 1.08 after abortions (3.0, p=<0.01). Roldan (summarized in Brockington, 1996) followed a cohort of 29 women who developed mania before the age of 25: 9/13 of those who had an abortion suffered a new episode within 3 months, a base rate of 0.69/trimester, compared with 0.39/trimester for births and 0.16/trimester at other times.

These data establish a prima facie case for a link between abortion and acute manic or polymorphic psychoses in susceptible women.


The publishers of a recent medical text entitled Women's Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence (2d ed., 2003) have made available here (http://www.deveber.org/text/whealth.html) its table of contents and a very brief synopsis of each chapter.

[Dr. Imago]

What's your point, ceo_esq? We're talking about post abortion syndrome, not an associative link to psychosis in susceptible women following abortion.

-Dr. Imago

[ceo_esq]

What's your point, ceo_esq? We're talking about post abortion syndrome, not an associative link to psychosis in susceptible women following abortion.

-Dr. Imago

I have no point except to respond to the OP's request for relevant sources (I hope I have not unreasonably presumed that he might appreciate references to any published material on matters of women's mental health following abortion). I couldn't uncover many published sources, but the two I came across and shared might at least lead emperorchaos to information germane to his friend's concerns. Or so I hope.

[Dr. Imago]

I have no point except to respond to the OP's request for relevant sources (I hope I have not unreasonably presumed that he might appreciate references to any published material on matters of women's mental health following abortion). I couldn't uncover many published sources, but the two I came across and shared might at least lead emperorchaos to information germane to his friend's concerns. Or so I hope.

Post-abortion psychosis and "post-abortion syndrome" are not the same thing. The OP was asking about the latter. There are multiple references on the original topic available via a quick search of PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=10920466) . I fear you may be confusing the original discussion, if you go to the top and re-read the OP's question, by interjecting a tangential as well as equally separate topic. Psychosis and PTSD are very different entities, and your reference refers essentially to the "drawing out" of an underlying psychosis where there is, admitted by the authors, only an association and no clear causal relationship. Furthermore, statistically significance and clinical relevance are separate and not-necessarily always interelated concepts.

-Dr. Imago

[ceo_esq]

Post-abortion psychosis and "post-abortion syndrome" are not the same thing. The OP was asking about the latter. There are multiple references on the original topic available via a quick search of PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=10920466) . I fear you may be confusing the original discussion, if you go to the top and re-read the OP's question, by interjecting a tangential as well as equally separate topic. Psychosis and PTSD are very different entities, and your reference refers essentially to the "drawing out" of an underlying psychosis where there is, admitted by the authors, only an association and no clear causal relationship. Furthermore, statistically significance and clinical relevance are separate and not-necessarily always interelated concepts.

-Dr. Imago

I am fully aware of the distinction, and apologize if my comments obscured it for any reader. Your points are taken. I hoped, not unreasonably I think, that the two citations could lead emperorchaos to further information about research into psychological/behavioral outcomes in the abortion context (frankly, I suspect, after a cursory inquiry, that there is very limited treatment in the literature, if any, of "PAS" per se). If my inference that the information I provided might be of some interest or utility to emperorchaos was unwarranted, I trust he'll point it out.