News

New Study Published in Top International Medical Journal

SPRINGFIELD, IL, January 17, 2002 (LSN.ca) – This week’s prestigious British Medical Journal reports that women who abort a first pregnancy are at greater risk of subsequent long term clinical depression compared to women who carry an unintended first pregnancy to term. Publication of the study coincides with anniversary events related to the Supreme Court’s January 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Data from a national study of American youths, begun in 1979, was used to conduct the research. In 1992, a subset of 4,463 women were surveyed about depression, intendedness of pregnancy, and pregnancy outcome. A total of 421 women had had their first abortion or first unintended delivery between 1980 and 1992.

An average of eight yeas after their abortions, married women were 138 percent more likely to be at high risk of clinical depression compared to similar women who carried their unintended first pregnancies to term. Among women who were unmarried in 1992, rates of high risk depression were not significantly different. The authors suggest that the lack of significance in unmarried women may be explained by the higher rate of non-reporting of abortions among unmarried women. Compared with national averages, unmarried women in this study report only 30 percent of the expected abortions compared with married women, who report 74 percent of the expected abortions. This may make the results for married women more reliable, say the authors. Another explanation is that unmarried women who are raising a child without the support of a husband experience significantly more depression than their married counterparts.

Since shame, secrecy, and thought suppression regarding an abortion are all associated with greater post-abortion depression, anxiety, and hostility, the authors conclude that the high rate of concealing past abortions in this population (60 percent overall) would tend to suppress the full effect of abortion on subsequent depression. Unreported abortions would result in women who experience depression following an abortion being misclassified as delivering women.

“Given the very high rate of concealment of past abortions “the fact that significant differences still emerged suggests that we are just catching the tip of the iceberg,” said David C. Reardon, Ph.D., the study’s lead author.

Reardon, the director of the Elliot Institute in Springfield, Illinois, says the study’s findings are consistent with other recent research that has shown a four to six fold increased risk of suicide and substance abuse associated with prior abortion. He says the findings are also important because this is the first national representative study to examine rates of depression many years after an abortion, on average approximately eight years later in this sample.