The Untold Struggle of Post-Abortive Women
I. Introduction
The loss of a baby in pregnancy, whether from miscarriage or abortion, is grievous. That grief can remain for months or even years, and can fester into significant mental health disorders. In the case of miscarriage, society at large recognizes that because of a mother’s grief, mental health harms can develop, become significant, and last for an extended time. When it comes to abortion, however, the prevailing narrative is that there is nothing to grieve, that the mother lost only tissue, and that abortion is good health care. Ideologies notwithstanding, all pregnant women are prone to experience a profound physical and emotional bond with their preborn child, a bond that can create untold joy and closeness with the baby after it is born, or generate lasting grief and mental health harms after pregnancy loss, particularly if the mother has contributed to the loss. Regarding abortion, glaring gaps in mental health reporting and research conceal these harms and perpetuate the deception that abortion is safe. Until the culture embraces the rights of the preborn child, one practical way to discourage abortion is by educating the public about the well-documented but under-appreciated mental health harms of pregnancy loss.
II. Mental Health Disorders and Miscarriage
If we accept the World Health Organization (WHO) as a reliable guide, by 2030 most people in developing countries will suffer a mental health disorder, resulting in a cost to the global economy of about $6 trillion.1 Declaring mental illness “a growing public health priority,” WHO advocates addressing its root causes.2
According to WHO, one root cause of mental health disorders is grief from miscarriage, a pregnancy outcome that affects nearly one in four pregnancies each year (about 23 million miscarriages annually).3 Women who miscarry have 2.5 times the risk of major depressive disorder4 and a significantly higher risk of suicide5; one in three women who miscarry experience symptoms of PTSD, and one in four women have symptoms of moderate to severe anxiety.6
WHO admits that grief from miscarriage can cause prolonged mental health issues because it involves “the enormous toll” of losing a baby.7 When women lack channels to openly grieve and feel societal pressure to simply bounce back after miscarriage, the grief can intensify and become disenfranchised.8 Lisa, one of many shattered women who told their miscarriage stories to representatives of WHO, relates:
I felt emotionally and physically broken [after my miscarriage]. I wanted to grieve but I felt I couldn’t allow myself the time. The attitude that early pregnancy loss doesn’t matter is pushing women into darkness. That doesn’t help anyone. We need to talk about our grief—it’s the only way to heal.9
Testimonies like Lisa’s have led WHO to declare, “the unacceptable stigma and shame women face after baby loss must end.”10
Although grief is a natural response to losing the child a mother has cradled and nurtured, it is not obvious why women would grieve the loss of a baby they never met, such as in miscarriage. One answer is the physiological phenomenon known as microchimerism. Microchimerism involves the movement of cells from one genetically distinct individual to another.11 During pregnancy, fetal cells move between a mother and the preborn child through the placenta and lodge in the mother’s organs, including her brain. The brain records the presence of the baby’s cells, and this apparently creates a profound psychological bond between the mother and the child that persists after the pregnancy ends.12 One male child’s cells were found in his mother’s brain several decades after the pregnancy,13 illustrating how long babies’ cells can remain in the mother and maintain the psychological bond.
III. Mental Health Disorders and Abortion
Abortion, which according to WHO is more common than miscarriage, terminates almost one-third of all pregnancies and two-thirds of all unintended pregnancies (about 73 million abortions each year).14 In the case of an aborted pregnancy, as with with any pregnancy, microchimerism gives rise to a lasting physical and emotional bond between the mother and the preborn child. The resulting grief from the aborted child’s death not only exposes the mother to mental health disorders but is potentially compounded by the guilt of knowing that she contributed to the loss.
The following summaries of clinical studies and research reviews demonstrate the prevalence of mental health disorders after abortion. This list, which is far from exhaustive, merely highlights some of the more significant publications to illustrate the extent of research on the subject.
A. Harms Revealed by Clinical Research
In 2005, the South Dakota Legislature formed the Task Force to Study Abortion (Task Force) to evaluate proposed amendments to the state’s informed consent statutes. The Task Force reviewed testimony from thousands of women who claimed they were physically and emotionally harmed by their abortions. The Task Force corroborated the women’s claims and concluded that 1) many women were misled by abortion providers to believe that “nothing but tissue” was being removed, and 2) if they had been told that the procedure would terminate the life of a human being, these women would not have continued with the abortion. As one post-abortive spokeswoman testified, “We are told we lost nothing, nothing of value. The truth is that the loss is massive. Massive and life altering.”15
By 2008, psychologist David Fergusson, a self-proclaimed pro-choice atheist in New Zealand, had studied more than 1200 women for twenty years in an effort to prove that abortion had minimal health risks. What Fergusson found was unexpected: that young post-abortive women experienced more than twice the rate of major depressive disorder, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and substance abuse than women who carried a child to term or who were never pregnant.16 Although the New Zealand government tried to suppress his findings,17 Fergusson instead extended his study for another five years and discovered that, “[W]omen who had abortions had rates of mental health problems that were about 30 percent higher than rates of disorder in other women. . . [especially] anxiety disorders and substance use disorders.”18 Fergusson later commented, “[A]bortion is a traumatic life event; that is, it involves loss, it involves grief.”
In 2016, Rev. Dr. Donald Sullins, former associate professor of sociology at Catholic University and Senior Research Fellow at the Ruth Institute, reported the results from a 13-year study of a nationally representative cohort of 8005 U.S. women in adolescence/early adulthood, which demonstrated that abortion increased the overall risk of mental health harms by 45 percent.19
By 2019, epidemiology researcher and assistant professor of medicine in Paris, Dr. Louis Jacob, M.D. Ph.D., had studied data from 57,770 German women and found an increased risk of psychiatric disorders among post-abortive women who had no history of such disorders.20
B. Harms Confirmed in Reviews of Research
In 2011, Dr. Priscilla Coleman, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University, examined the mental health risks of abortion by pooling results from 22 peer-reviewed studies involving more than three quarters of a million participants—perhaps the largest quantitative analysis of research on abortion’s harms ever performed. Her analysis revealed that women who experienced an abortion had an 81 percent greater risk of mental health problems and a 55 percent greater risk of suicidal behavior than those who did not abort. Coleman observed that the greatest disparity in risk of harm appeared between post-abortive women and women who carried the pregnancy to term.21
Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a U.S. cancer surgeon, corroborated Coleman’s findings after analyzing more than 650 global peer-reviewed studies on abortion harms from both developed and developing countries; her analysis showed that the increase in mental health disorders, substance abuse, and suicide was “drastic and incontrovertible.”22
By 2015, Mika Gissler, Swedish epidemiology professor and author of over 800 peer-reviewed articles, had examined suicides in Finland’s national registry over a 25-year period and found that soon after an abortion, postabortive women were two times more likely, and teenage girls were three times more likely, to succumb to suicide than those who did not abort.23
In 2018, bioethicist and engineer Dr. David Reardon conducted an exhaustive review of research intending to enable healthcare providers to counsel women impartially about abortion harms before and after their abortions. Reardon determined that there were no findings of mental health benefits associated with abortion compared to carrying a pregnancy to term. Reardon also found that studies on all sides of the abortion debate collectively showed a “statistically significant” increase in mental health disorders for post-abortive women, including depression, trauma, and especially substance use; in 50 percent of the cases, women’s negative reactions increased with time.24
C. Harms Compounded by Chemical Abortion
Moreover, harms to a mother from chemical abortion are four times more likely to occur than harms from surgical abortion.25 Chemical abortion results from the medications mifepristone and misoprostol taken in sequence to terminate the pregnancy of a developing baby within the first ten weeks.
In 2016 and 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed longstanding safeguards so that consumers could obtain mifepristone without a doctor’s prescription, without in-person doctor visits, and without the original 49-day gestation limits. The FDA also eliminated healthcare providers’ obligation to report adverse events other than the mother’s death. Removing these restrictions ushered in an unprecedented increase in chemical abortions, which now account for about 63 percent of all abortions in the U.S.26
In 2022, a group of doctors and medical associations opposed the FDA’s revisions to mifepristone safeguards in the U.S. District Court. The District Court sided with the plaintiffs and suspended the medication’s distribution, noting that the FDA failed to study the psychological after-effects from the pill’s use. The District Court expressly acknowledged that many women who take abortion pills, “experience intense psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress from excessive bleeding and seeing the remains of their aborted children.”27 The FDA appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which agreed that the original safeguards should be reinstated but partially lifted the District Court’s suspension of the pills’ distribution.28 The FDA then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which restored full distribution of the pills pending the final outcome of the case. On June 24, 2024, the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit’s decision but did not address the substantive claims regarding the medication’s safety because, according to the Court, the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the FDA’s regulatory actions. Essentially, the Court reasoned that since plaintiffs were pro-life and unlikely to ever prescribe or use mifepristone, they had no “personal stake” in the dispute and thus could not demonstrate that they themselves had suffered or would suffer any injury from the FDA’s actions.29 The Court has remanded the case for further proceedings.
D. Harms Stifled by Cultural Stigma
Women who endure mental harms from abortion often find themselves alone. On the one hand, pro-abortion advocates dismiss their grief as unfounded, claiming they lost only tissue. On the other hand, the pro-life message is often muffled or mischaracterized as angry and judgmental by the public media; adding to this, pro-life discourse about abortion can easily trigger a sensitive conscience and bring to the surface a powerful sense of guilt and regret that discourages some post-abortive women from seeking the pro-life resources available to them.
Notwithstanding, it is uniquely in the pro-life movement that post-abortive women will find the support and services they need to heal.
One outreach to post-abortive women is The Justice Foundation, a non-profit legal organization that submitted affidavits from almost 5,000 women who suffered abortion harms in amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade. These affidavits provide a glimpse into post-abortive women’s emotional turmoil. For example, Jamie C., who aborted at sixteen, says, “I was very depressed and felt guilty for many years . . . I wish someone had told me about adoption.” Heather P. relates, “I was not told of any negative reactions, consequences of abortion. I wore a happy smiling face over the real Heather—[a] post abortion mess. I was hiding the guilt, shame, fear and anger. . . I didn’t forgive myself.” Jennifer A, a fourteen-year-old rape victim, claims, “I was informed of what an abortion is, but never did I understand the emotional and mental damage of the aftermath.” And when Jennifer was asked what she would tell women considering abortion, she replied, “I would say not just no, but Hell no!”30
Another outreach to post-abortive women is the Christian counseling nonprofit organization Concepts of Truth, Inc., which has helped post-abortive women and their loved ones find forgiveness and healing through counseling for reproductive loss and sexual trauma and through its international crisis helpline—the hotline has received more than 20,000 calls from grieving women and men. The organization also seeks to raise awareness about abortion’s harms through its advocacy at the United Nations.31
Additionally, the American Pro-Life Movement website provides videos and other educational resources from a variety of pro-life advocacy groups.32
IV. Suppression of Mental Health Harms of Abortion
Despite the documented harm from abortion, prominent global voices like those at WHO assert that abortion is simple, safe, and essential health care, that it should be available to all women and girls regardless of gestational age, and that it is the outlawing of abortion that causes mental health complications and maternal deaths.33
Similarly, the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) asserts, “Denial of access to abortion services jeopardizes a person’s physical and mental health,” “may constitute cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment,” and may even “amount to torture”34 (emphasis added).
Planned Parenthood likewise proclaims:
Both in-clinic and medication abortions are very safe. In fact, abortion is one of the safest medical procedures out there. . . [A]bortion pills are safer than medicines like penicillin, Tylenol, and Viagra. . . You can count on Planned Parenthood for expert, quality sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion. We regularly review new medical research and get updates from groups like . . . the World Health Organization . . . 35
Amidst this messaging, the lack of reliable reporting and research of abortion harm keeps the realities relatively unknown.
A. Lack of Standardized Reporting
WHO acknowledges that a major barrier to monitoring and accountability in mental health generally is “the lack of comprehensive, independent and comparable data.”36 In the U.S., there is no national reporting of data for pregnancy harms at all, much less for its mental harms. Only 28 states even report “abortion complications,” and the term often goes undefined.37 In states that do report complications, many physicians claim they were never informed about the reporting requirements and consequently the reporting is sporadic.38 For chemical abortions, which often trigger multiple emergency room visits, the only complication that providers are required to report is death. Meanwhile, an increasing number of women who visit the ER for abortion complications after chemical abortions are treated for what is erroneously coded as “miscarriage.”39
Outside the U.S., most of the reported mental health data comes from public psychiatric hospitals, so data regarding mental health services provided by the most commonly used healthcare providers, which are general hospitals, clinics, and schools, is not reported.40 Hospitals that do address mental health complications (from abortion) rarely follow up with patients after discharge,41 and thus fail to report data regarding the significant numbers of women whose mental health disorders arise later or increase with time.42 The underreporting is significant: When U.K. hospitals started tracking complications from abortion after discharge, the reported rate of complications jumped more than 11.9 times.43
B. Lack of Reliable Research
Clinical research on abortion’s mental health harms is also unreliable, prompting Australian researcher David Fergusson, mentioned above, to describe it as “one of the most methodologically flawed and illiterate” areas of research.44 As Fergusson observes, researchers can improperly manipulate a research pool to affect the outcome of a study so that it conforms to their biases.45 For example, in 2008 the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion (APA Task Force) was able to conclude that there was “no measurable difference” in mental health outcomes between women who aborted and those who did not46—but they only reached this conclusion after they had excluded multiple groups of women from the study who were at a higher risk for mental health harms.47
Researchers can also skew results when they shorten the time period of assessments to exclude women who experience delayed harms. Studies show that rates of mental health disorders such as substance misuse, depression, suicidal ideation, and PTSD more than double when post-abortive patients are tracked for more than a year after pregnancy loss.48 Even the chair of the APA Task Force (which was a twelve-month assessment) conceded that after two years, 38 percent of subjects had significantly rising rates of mental harms and decreasing rates of positive reactions.49
Unfortunately, even long-term studies may fail to present a realistic picture of persistent harms, because more vulnerable post-abortive women tend to drop out from long-term studies at a higher rate than their more stalwart peers. Such was the case in the celebrated “Turnaway Study,” where only 27 percent of the women in the original pool remained at the end of the three year assessment. The Turnaway researchers reported that “the overwhelming majority of women” felt that terminating their pregnancy was the right decision.50 In reality, the “overwhelming majority” of the women—78 percent—had dropped out; the Turnaway data revealed only that after 3 years, a self-selecting majority of the remaining 27 percent of women believed termination was the right decision for them.51
Perhaps another development in the suppression of information, particularly regarding chemical abortion, is that a number of peer-reviewed research studies that were formerly published by prestigious journals have been retracted, “at the request of the journal editor.”52
V. Conclusion
Women faced with the decision to abort should understand that, contrary to what they commonly hear, abortion has time and again resulted in PTSD, suicide ideation, substance abuse, chronic depression, and other mental health disorders. Revealing the realities about abortion will empower women to make informed decisions for themselves and their loved ones and encourage fair reporting and transparency in health care.
Grieving post-abortive women who realize that what they eliminated was more than tissue need support from their communities to acknowledge their grief and to heal. Pro-life communities are natural sanctuaries for such women whose grief is not recognized in the wider culture, and these women should be welcomed as natural allies with the pro-life cause.
NOTES
1. WHO, Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental Health for All. ISBN: 9789240049338 (June 16, 2022) https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/356119/9789240049338-eng. pdf?sequence=1 pp. xv. WHO defines Mental Health Disorder as a syndrome caused by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes that underlie mental and behavioral functioning. p. 8. The economic costs include direct costs of treatment as well as indirect costs of lost economic productivity when people can’t go to their jobs. p. 50.
2. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) and WHO. Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation: Guidance and Practice (October 2023). p. 1 OHCHR. Women’s Rights are Human Rights. United Nations Publication ISBN 978-92-1-154206-6. (2014) https://iris. who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/373126/9789240080737-eng.pdf?sequence=1
3. Doyle C. et al. Women’s desires for mental health support following a pregnancy loss, termination of pregnancy for medical reasons, or abortion: A report from the STRONG Women Study, General Hospital Psychiatry, Volume 84, 2023, pp. 149-157. https://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/abs/pii/S0163834323001184?via%3Dihub (Hereafter STRONG Study). See also, Herbert, D. et al. The mental health impact of perinatal loss: A systematic review and metaanalysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 297, Pages 118-129, ISSN 0165-0327 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.10.026; Pregnancy loss and anxiety and depression during subsequent pregnancies: Data from the C-ABC study. European Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23146315/
4. STRONG Study, p. 150.
5. Weng SC, Chang JC, Yeh MK, Wang SM, Lee CS, Chen YH. Do stillbirth, miscarriage, and termination of pregnancy increase risks of attempted and completed suicide within a year? A population-based nested case-control study. BJOG. 2018 Jul;125(8):983-990. doi: 10.1111/14710528.15105. Epub 2018 Feb 7. PMID: 29266732. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29266732/
6. Farren J, Jalmbrant M, Falconieri N, et al. Post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression following miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy: a multicenter, prospective, cohort study. Am J Obstet Gynecol (Dec. 2019) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajog.2019.10.102
7. WHO Spotlight, Why we need to talk about losing a baby. https://www.who.int/news-room/ spotlight/why-we-need-to-talk-about-losing-a-baby (accessed March 27, 2024).
8. Arach, A.A.O., Kiguli, J., Nankabirwa, V. et al. “Your heart keeps bleeding”: lived experiences of parents with a perinatal death in Northern Uganda. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 22, 491 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-022-04788-8; Editorial: worldwide reform of care is needed. The Lancet (April 26, 2021) DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00954-5. p. 1597; STRONG Study.
9. WHO Spotlight, Miscarriage: Why we need to talk about losing a baby: Lisa’s story. https:// www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/why-we-need-to-talk-about-losing-a-baby/lisa’s-story (Accessed 4/16/24).
10. Id.
11. Shrivastava S, Naik R, Suryawanshi H, Gupta N. Microchimerism: A new concept. J Oral Maxillofac Pathol. 2019 May-Aug;23(2):311. doi: 10.4103/jomfp.JOMFP_85_17. PMID: 31516258; PMCID: PMC6714269. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31516258/
12. Martone, R. Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains. Scientific American. (December 4, 2012) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cellsliving-in-mothers-brain (accessed March 23, 2024).; Schepanski, S., Chini, M., Sternemann, V. etal. Pregnancy-induced maternal microchimerism shapes neurodevelopment and behavior in mice. Nature Communications, 4571 (5 Aug. 2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32230-2
13. Chan WF, Gurnot C, Montine TJ, Sonnen JA, Guthrie KA, Nelson JL. Male microchimerism in the human female brain. PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e45592. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045592. Epub 2012 Sep 26. PMID: 23049819; PMCID: PMC3458919. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain (accessed March 23, 2024).
14. WHO Fact Sheet. Abortion. (Nov. 25, 2021) https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ abortion. In the U.S., about 1 in 5 pregnancies ended in abortion in 2020.
15. State of South Dakota Legislative Assembly Eightieth Session, Senate Affairs Committee, HB1233 (2/23/05) https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/Bill/105284.html?Year=2005
16. Fergusson, D., et al. Abortion in young women and subsequent mental health. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47:1 (2006), pp. 16–24 (2006). https://www.unav.edu/ documents/16089811/16216616/aborto_psych_JChildPsych2006_Fergusson.pdf
17. Reardon DC. The abortion and mental health controversy: A comprehensive literature review of common ground agreements, disagreements, actionable recommendations, and research opportunities. SAGE Open Med. 2018 Oct 29, 6:2050312118807624. doi: 10.1177/2050312118807624. PMID: 30397472; PMCID: PMC6207970. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6207970
18. Fergusson, D. “Abortion and Mental Health Disorders: Evidence from a 30-year Longitudinal Study.” The British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 193 No. 6. (Dec. 2008).
19. Sullins DP. Abortion, substance abuse and mental health in early adulthood: Thirteen-year longitudinal evidence from the United States. SAGE Open Med. 2016 Sep 23;4:2050312116665997. doi: 10.1177/2050312116665997. PMID: 27781096; PMCID: PMC5066584. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27781096/ (accessed May 12, 2024).
20. Jacob, L., Gerhard, C., Kostev, K., & Kalder, M. (2019). Association between induced abortion, spontaneous abortion, and infertility respectively and the risk of psychiatric disorders in 57,770 women followed in gynecological practices in Germany. Journal of Affective Disorders, 251, 107–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2019.03.060
21. Coleman P. “Abortion and Mental Health: A Quantitative Synthesis and Analysis of Research.” British Journal of Psychiatry (2011). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journalof-psychiatry/article/abortion-and-mental-health-quantitative-synthesis-and-analysis-of-researchpublished-19952009/E8D556AAE1C1D2F0F8B060B28BEE6C3D
22. Complications: Abortion’s Impact on Women, Langranchi, A. DeVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research (2018).
23. Gissler M, Karalis E, Ulander VM. Decreased suicide rate after induced abortion, after the Current Care Guidelines in Finland 1987-2012. Scand J Public Health. 2015 Feb;43(1):99-101. doi: 10.1177/1403494814560844. Epub 2014 Nov 24. PMID: 25420710.
24. Reardon DC. The abortion and mental health controversy: A comprehensive literature review of common ground agreements, disagreements, actionable recommendations, and research opportunities. SAGE Open Med. 2018 Oct 29, 6:2050312118807624. doi: 10.1177/2050312118807624. PMID: 30397472; PMCID: PMC6207970. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6207970
25. Israel, M. Chemical Abortion: A Review. The Heritage Foundation. Life. (March 30, 2021). https://www.heritage.org/life/report/chemical-abortion-review
26. Guttmacher Institute (March 19, 2024) https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2024/medication-abortions-accounted-63-all-us-abortions-2023-increase-53-2020 (accessed March 24, 2024).
27. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2:22-CV-223-Z (U.S. Dist. Ct., N. D Texas, Amarillo Div). Memorandum and Order. Judge Kacsmaryk, M. (April 7, 2023) (Hereafter Alliance v. FDA).
28. Alliance Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, No. 23-10362 (5th Cir. 2023), p. 32. Danco Laboratories, a company that devotes its entire business to distributing Mifepristone, intervened to help defend the FDA. On appeal, the FDA did not dispute that “a significant percentage of women who take mifepristone experience adverse effects.”
29. Food and Drug Administration, et al. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, et al., 602 U.S. (2024).
30. Affidavits 26, 52 and 109 respectively. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/bkcpx3jz1rt37r9xxnauf/ AAl1Qpq5TBqkMQoCt8jPWWA?rlkey=hb7ighzmyg9c1bf0o4x2gf2zd&e=1&dl=0
31. https://www.ffcc4u.com/our-services/concepts-of-truth
32. https://www.americanprolifemovement.com
33. Abortion care guideline. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2022. License: CC BYNC-SA 3.0 IGO. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/349316/9789240039483-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y , pp. 2, 710, 28. Accessed April 18, 2023. See also, WHO Fact Sheet: Abortion. Nov. 25, 2021. Accessed May 16, 2024. Abortion is “safe,” WHO claims, when it relies on methods and professionals recommended by WHO; abortion is “unsafe” when it is illegal. In other words, abortion should be globally legalized and promoted as long as it relies on WHO’s standards for care. WHO’s premise for legalizing abortion contradicts statistics from many countries, particularly in Africa, showing that the number of maternal deaths, mental health harms, and even the number of illegal abortions increased once abortion became legal. For example, in Rwanda, after the country legalized abortion in 2012, abortion-related deaths soared from 3 percent to 5.7 percent in 2012 and 7.0 percent in 2013. In Ethiopia, after abortion was legalized in 2006, abortion-related deaths significantly increased, along with the number of illegal abortions. In Nigeria, 50 percent of doctors believe that legalizing abortion would not improve maternal mortality. Analysis: Legalizing abortion makes African women less safe. Maternal mortality stats prove it. Life Site News: (Nov. 24, 2023) https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/legalizing-abortion-makes-african-women-less-safematernal-mortality-stats-prove-it/ Accessed May16, 2024.
34. OHCHR Statement. Abortion is essential healthcare and women’s health must be prioritized over politics. (Sep. 28, 2021). https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2021/09/abortion-essential-healthcare-and-womens-health-must-be-prioritized-over Accessed May 16, 2024.
35. Planned Parenthood. What facts about abortion do I need to know? https://www. plannedparenthood.org/learn/abortion/considering-abortion/what-facts-about-abortion-do-i-needknow (Accessed May 16, 2024).
36. WHO, Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental Health for All. ISBN: 9789240049338 (June 16, 2022) https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/356119/9789240049338-eng.pdf?sequence=1p. 53.
37. Guttmacher Institute. Abortion Reporting Requirements as of September 2023. https://www. guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/abortion-reporting-requirements
38. Studnicki, J. et al., A Longitudinal Cohort Study of Emergency Room Utilization Following Mifepristone Chemical and Surgical Abortions, 1999–2015. Sage Journal (2021) Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology, Volume 8: 1-11 DOI: 10.1177/23333928211053965 journals.sagepub.com/home/hme (accessed March 28, 2024) Recently retracted.
39. Studnicki, J. et al., A Post Hoc Exploratory Analysis: Induced Abortion Complications Mistaken for Miscarriage in the Emergency Room are a Risk Factor for Hospitalization Sage Journal (sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/23333928221103107. Accessed March 28, 2024. Recently retracted. Some abortion providers have admitted they specifically instruct patients to disguise their abortions as a miscarriages. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/ magazine/2022/05/10/new-mexico-border-provider/
40. WHO, Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental Health for All. ISBN: 9789240049338 (June 16, 2022) https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/356119/9789240049338-eng.pdf?sequence=1pp. 52 53.
41. Doyle, C. Strong Study; Summary Paper on the impact of induced abortion on Women’s subsequent mental and physical health. Deveber Institute for Bioethics. https://www.deveber.org/ womens-health-after-abortion/
42. Reardon DC. The abortion and mental health controversy: A comprehensive literature review of common ground agreements, disagreements, actionable recommendations, and research opportunities. SAGE Open Med. 2018 Oct 29, 6:2050312118807624. doi: 10.1177/2050312118807624. PMID: 30397472; PMCID: PMC6207970. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6207970
43. U.K. Government Official Statistics. Complications from abortions in England: comparison of Abortion Notification System data and Hospital Episode Statistics 2017 to 2021. https://www.gov. uk/government/statistics/complications-from-abortions-in-england-2017-to-2021/complicationsfrom-abortions-in-england-comparison-of-abortion-notification-system-data-and-hospital-episodestatistics-2017-to-2021 (Nov. 23, 2023). The U.K. government notes, however, “At present, there is no commonly agreed definition of what should be included as an abortion complication used by both ANS and NHS England” (accessed March 27, 2024). Even then, the term “abortion complications” was not defined. See also, National Right to Life. Government review shows abortion complication rates likely much higher than being reported by British abortion providers (Nov. 27, 2023). https:// nrlc.org/nrlnewstoday/2023/11/government-review-shows-abortion-complication-rates-likely-muchhigher-than-being-reported-by-british-abortion-providers/ Accessed May 16, 2024.
44. Hill, R. Abortion researcher confounded by study. NZHerald.co.nz (Jan. 4, 2006). https://www. nzherald.co.nz/nz/abortion-researcher-confounded-by-study/3FYSQTNVHDEWTOTS4HKSEYG6 GA/?c_id=1&objectid=10362476
45. Major B, Cozzarelli C, Cooper ML, et al. Psychological responses of women after first-trimester abortion. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2000; 57(8): 777–784. https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/ abortion/mental-health.pdf
46. American Psychological Association, Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion. (2008). Report of the Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/mental-health-abortion-report.pdf
47. Reardon Comprehensive Literature Review. Reardon reports that the APA Task Force conveniently excluded women with the following risk factors from the research pool: 48 percent–52 percent of women with a history of abortions; 18 percent of women who were minors; 11 percent of women who were beyond the first trimester; 7 percent of women aborting for reasons of health; and the 11 percent–64 percent of women who wanted their pregnancies.
48. Grauerholz KR, Berry SN, Capuano RM, Early JM. Uncovering Prolonged Grief Reactions Subsequent to a Reproductive Loss: Implications for the Primary Care Provider. Front Psychol. 2021 May 12;12:673050. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.673050. PMID: 34054675; PMCID: PMC8149623. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8149623/ Nearly half of the women reporting had waited more than 4 years to share their story.
49. Major B, Cozzarelli C, Cooper ML, et al. Psychological responses of women after first-trimester abortion. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2000; 57(8): 777–784. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]. https://www.apa. org/pi/women/programs/abortion/mental-health.pdf .
50. Rocca CH, Kimport K, Roberts SC, Gould H, Neuhaus J, Foster DG. Decision Rightness and Emotional Responses to Abortion in the United States: A Longitudinal Study. PLoS One. 2015 Jul 8;10(7):e0128832. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128832. PMID: 26154386; PMCID: PMC4496083.
51. Reardon DC. The abortion and mental health controversy: A comprehensive literature review of common ground agreements, disagreements, actionable recommendations,
and research opportunities. SAGE Open Med. 2018 Oct 29, 6:2050312118807624. doi: 10.1177/2050312118807624. PMID: 30397472; PMCID: PMC6207970. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
52. See, e.g., recent retractions from the SAGE Journal concerning the dangers of chemical abortion. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23333928211053965
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Original Bio:
Josephine M. Tyne has been a litigation attorney, a homeschooling mother of five, and a teacher of informal logic and the Bill of Rights at a homeschool cooperative. She now serves as a United Nations representative for Concepts of Truth Inc., an NGO that provides faith-based counseling, recovery, counselor training, and an international crisis helpline for reproductive loss and sexual trauma as well as educational resources for sexual and maternal health.
