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Abortion and Domestic Violence Closely Linked Canadian Study Shows

Same study also reveals contraceptive mentality contributes to abortion rates

LONDON, March 21, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new survey by researchers from the University of Western Ontario, the London (Ontario) Health Sciences Centre and the University of Colorado have again shown a link between abortion and domestic violence. The new research coincides with findings from the US and Britain that have consistently shown a strong correlation between violence and abortion and between the use of contraceptives and repeat abortion.

1127 women completed a 65-item questionnaire at a hospital abortion facility in London, Ontario. The results showed that overall 20% had experienced physical abuse by a male partner, and 27% had a history of sexual abuse.

Similar research in the US has shown that 31% of women seeking an abortion have experienced physical or sexual abuse at some time in their lives and, of these, more than half have witnessed domestic violence as children. The British study showed that the risk of domestic violence more than doubled during pregnancy. The authors of the Canadian research suggest that a motive for some women who abort in a situation of violence do so out of a misguided desire to protect future children from living in the disrupted or violent environments that they themselves face.

The study also revealed that a significant percentage of the women who were seeking second or repeated abortions were using artificial contraception at the time they became pregnant. 90% of women seeking repeat abortions had used contraception sometime in their lives and at the time of the current conception 60% were using condoms and 40% were using an oral contraceptive.

Pro-life activists have for many years pointed out the danger of widespread chemical contraceptive use and its relation to high incidences of abortion. Their argument is that a woman engaging in sexual relations and using the pill is more disposed to using abortion as a 'back-up' form of birth control should it fail.

The British survey cited above also found that despite the high incidence of abuse only 2% of the women seeking abortion were pregnant as a result of rape. This is despite the fact that the so-called 'rape exception' is often cited as a justification for legal abortion-on-demand. The effect of the widespread use of contraception in creating what is called the 'contraceptive mentality' and the evidence that such a mentality leads to abortion has been documented more than once by the medical community.

Read the article from the Canadian Medical Association Journal:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/172/5/653?etoc

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