Anonymous asked: I don't see how abortion is relevant to a mental health blog or why you should be promoting it.

[Trigger Warning: Discussion of abortion and its mental health consequences]

This study gives a good introduction to the relationship between abortion and mental health.

This study discusses the consequences to mother and child when abortion requested by the mother on the grounds of mental health is denied:

Many women denied abortion show ongoing resentment that may last for years, while children born when the abortion is denied have broadly based difficulties in social, interpersonal, and occupational functions that last at least into early adulthood

This study compares the psychological consequences of abortion versus mandatory motherhood, finding the latter generally worse:

documented research is presented that points to more widespread and severer mental health problems for women who are denied legal abortions. Studies that compared unwanted children to controls are shown to have consistently found the unwanted to be more often registered in psychiatric services and connected with antisocial and criminal behavior as well as drunken misconduct. Such children also were not as highly educated, and unwanted females tended to marry and give birth earlier than controls. It is concluded that whatever ill effects of abortion are found, they must be weighed against these proven psychosocial outcomes of mandatory motherhood.

This study looks into the long-term developmental effects on children of denied abortion:

Findings show that differences between the two groups of children widened over time, always to the disadvantage of the unwanted children. In the aggregate, unwantedness in early pregnancy has a detrimental effect on children’s psychosocial development. In adulthood, marital partners of the unwanted children were similar to their spouses. Families founded by men or women unwanted in early pregnancy were more problem-prone than families founded by individuals wanted or accepted in early pregnancy.

I’m not ‘promoting’ abortion: it is a personal choice but the option should be there for people who need it if that is what they have decided is right for them.

For some, abortion itself (and the stigma surrounding it) is traumatic and related to adverse psychological consequences. For others, it is forced motherhood that brings this distress.

For each person there should be an opportunity to make an informed choice as to a safe, legal path to follow which will allow them to minimise harm to themselves and/or their potential child.

Notes

  1. mindovermatterzine posted this