By Tim Waggoner

OSLO, Norway, August 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A 2008 study by the University of Oslo in Norway has found that young adult women who have had abortions are more likely to become depressed.

The study, which involved 768 women between the ages of 15 and 27, was carried out in order to “investigate whether induced abortion was a risk factor for subsequent depression.”

According to Willy Pedersen from the University’s Department of Sociology and Human Geography, who conducted the study, past studies have suffered in accuracy due to bad design, specifically a lack of control of “compounding factors.”

The new study strove to prevent this problem by creating a comprehensive list of factors to question women on, including, “depression, induced abortion and childbirth, as well as sociodemographic variables, family relationships and a number of individual characteristics, such as schooling and occupational history and conduct problems.”

Women in the sample who had abortions while in their twenties were “more likely to score above the cut-off point for depression,” and although the likelihood was reduced when the compounding factors were accounted for, their propensity to become depressed “remained significant.”

The study concluded that, “Young adult women who undergo induced abortion may be at increased risk for subsequent depression.”

See full report here:

https://sjp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/36/4/424