Any time a study comes out showing that abortion has a positive impact or isn’t risky to women, the mainstream media explodes with stories about it.
But when a study shows the opposite to be true, crickets.
This situation is playing out again this week after the journal JAMA Psychiatry published a study that claims to show that abortion does not negatively affect women’s mental health.
“Now, a new, large University of California, San Francisco, study of more than 1,000 women seeking abortions reports that women are much more emotionally stressed if they are denied an abortion initially than if they received one upon request,” Time Magazine reported.
The Huffington Post headlined its article about the study with, “It’s time to end the big lie that abortions make women depressed.”
Both news outlets cited other past studies that found similar results, but both failed to mention the numerous studies that found mental health risks to be higher among women who had abortions.
A 2011 study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, for example, found an 81 percent increased risk of mental health problems among women who had abortions, compared to women who give birth.
Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com
The 2011 study was based on an analysis of 22 separate studies that, in total, examined the pregnancy experiences of 877,000 women, with 163,831 women having had an abortion. The data revealed that the women who aborted their unborn babies faced almost double the risk of mental health problems as women who gave birth to their babies.
A 2009 study by New Zealand researchers at the University of Otago found similar results. They reviewed the medical histories of more than 500 women and concluded that having an abortion generally “leads to significant distress” in some women.
It noted women reporting adverse reactions to their abortions were up to 80 percent more likely to have mental health problems and risk of mental illness was “proportional to the degree of distress” associated with the abortion. The conditions most associated with abortion included anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders.
The team said the study showed no reason to support “strong pro-choice positions that claim unwanted pregnancy terminated by abortion is without mental health risks.”
These studies have prompted other countries to take action to attempt to help women post-abortion deal with these negative consequences.
In 2014, Amy Sobie, editor of The Post-Abortion Review, reported:
Voluntary guidelines for post-abortion mental health evaluations during the month following an abortion have failed to significantly decrease the rate of suicide after abortion in Finland, according to a new study.
Finland adopted the guidelines after a large-scale study of women’s health records, published in 1997, found that the suicide rate among women who had undergone abortions in the prior year was three times higher compared to women in the general population and six times higher compared to women who gave birth.
Even more evidence to support the increased risk of mental health problems after an abortion has been published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, the Bulletin of Clinical Psychopharmacology, the Journal of Pregnancy and other medical journals. These studies came from researchers in Great Britain, Norway, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the U.S., China and elsewhere.
In 2010, renowned researcher Dr. Priscilla Coleman compiled a list of 30 studies from 2005 to 2010 that showed increased risks
“A conservative estimate from the best available data is 20 to 30 percent of women who undergo an abortion will experience serious and/or prolonged negative consequences,” Coleman said in 2010. “Any interpretation of the available research that does not acknowledge the strong evidence now available in the professional literature represents a conscious choice to ignore basic principles of scientific integrity.”
If the mainstream media was fair and balanced, it would report on these studies as well. Instead, mainstream and liberal news outlets perpetuate the abortion industry’s lies, and allow them to block women from making a fully-informed decision.
Not only that but by using such studies to insinuate that it’s a proven fact that abortion does not hurt women, they are denying the experiences of thousands – potentially millions – of women who have suffered negative consequences and are suffering because they aborted their unborn child.
