Women, Abortion and Mental Health

The bottom line regarding abortion and mental health is that women have been hurt and they need help, says the founder of Project Rachel.

"I have met women from every continent," Victoria Thorn told ZENIT. "I have heard many experiences and reasons for abortions -- and the sadness in a woman's heart is universal."

Thorn's statement is in response to the American Psychological Association's study released this month that found there is "no credible evidence that a single elective abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in and of itself causes mental health problems for adult women."

The draft report of the APA Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion was released Aug. 12 and the conclusions presented at the association's annual convention in Boston.

The task force concluded the "prevalence of mental health problems observed among women in the United States who had a single, legal, first-trimester abortion for non-therapeutic reasons appeared to be consistent with normative rates of comparable mental health problems in the general population of women in the United States."

Although the research found that some women do experience sadness, grief and feelings of loss following an abortion, even "clinically significant disorders, including depression and anxiety," the study did not find sufficient evidence "to support the claim that an observed association between abortion history and a mental health problem was caused by the abortion per se, as opposed to other factors."

The task force report cited considerations such as poverty, abuse, outside pressure to terminate their pregnancy, and the stigma associated with abortion, to be contributing factors that could lead to negative psychological reactions.

Thorn, who founded Project Rachel to help women heal in the aftermath of an abortion, acknowledged these factors to be "significant" in the lives of the women she has spoken to who have experienced an abortion.

"I deal with the very feelings they describe, and perhaps they are exacerbated by the [factors] they site," she said. "But the bottom line is that women are hurting and they need help. They [the women] identify the root problem as the abortion."

"And in terms of the global statements about psychological impact of abortion being misleading, this is pure folly," she said.