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Australian Research Reveals Link between Abortion and Domestic Violence Against Women

By Meg Jalsevac

MELBOURNE, April 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – New research out of La Trobe University in Australia has found a direct link between domestic violence and a woman’s choice to kill her child through abortion.  The conclusions of the study are similar to several previous studies on the same topic in different countries.

The study, labeled the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women's Health, was carried out in an effort to reveal typical characteristics in Australian women who procure abortions.  The authors were Angela Taft and Lyndsey Watson of the Mother and Child Health Research of La Trobe University and the full article is published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.

The study discovered that determining which women had suffered from domestic violence was the most accurate indicator of which women would choose to have an abortion. 

The Melbourne study looked at 9,683 young Australian women aged 22 to 27 and reported that those women who claimed to have had an abortion in their teens or early twenties were 3 times more likely to have suffered some form of abuse from their partner than those who did not report having had an abortion.

The study also revealed that women in the same age demographic who sought an abortion were more likely to be from underprivileged backgrounds and coping with a low-income, inadequate education or little or no private health insurance.

The La Trobe study confirmed past research analysis from comparable studies in Canada, Britain and the US which have determined similar links between domestic violence and abortion. 

The authors of the Australian study offered their opinion on possible causal factors to explain the telling research.  “Women experiencing violence and abuse can be subject to coercive sex and unprotected intercourse, leading to a higher rate of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.”

However, a parallel British survey found that despite a high incidence of abuse only 2% of the women seeking abortion were pregnant as a result of rape. 

In concluding the Australian study, author Dr. Taft advised that in order to reduce abortion and teen pregnancy it would be first necessary to work to eradicate violence against women.  “The take home message is that if we want to reduce the rate of abortion and unwanted pregnancy in Australia, especially among teenagers, we need to reduce violence against women. Also healthcare providers and pregnancy counseling services should ask women seeking terminations about their experiences of partner abuse and if necessary, refer them to supportive agencies.”

As previously reported by LifeSiteNews.com, in the similar Canadian study, 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.

Pro-lifers have long purported a link between domestic violence and abortion – frequently suggesting that the link is also observed in reverse order to the above studies.  They warn that abortion is recurrently known to lead to instances of domestic violence.

According to the abortion awareness website, abortionfacts.com, “It is no accident that the abortion rate and the domestic violence rate have risen almost side by side. Abortion tends to create feelings of anger, bitterness and resentment between partners. A woman who is self-destructive or suicidal, but afraid to deliberately harm herself, may be more likely to become involved with a violent man. She may feel unconsciously that she ‘deserves to be punished’ because of her abortion. Because her abortion has destroyed her self-esteem, she may think that she does not deserve a better relationship than the abusive one she is in.” 

Read Previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Abortion and Domestic Violence Closely Linked Canadian Study Shows
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/mar/05032106.html

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