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• Editor's Note

• Wantedness & Coercion: Key Factors in Understanding
  Women's Mental Health After Abortion

• Learn More, Share More, Help More

 

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From the Editor

 

We are back from our Christmas and New Year's break with our first newsletter of 2012. It links to an article by Dr. Martha Shuping examining the relationship between unwanted and coerced abortions and mental health problems after abortion.

 

In the article, she writes, "Prior to abortion, women must be evaluated to determine whether or not they are being pressured, coerced or forced. ... Additionally, women also deserve to have  a comprehensive evaluation as to whether or not they have risk factors which may increase the likelihood of  adverse psychological outcomes after abortion."

 

The Elliot Institute's model legislation would hold abortion providers accountable for failing to women and girls for coercion and psychological risk factors. Legislation based on this bill has been passed in South Dakota and Nebraska.

 

Learn more about coerced and forced abortions or download (and share) our special report, Forced Abortion in America. Helpful resources for women and girls who are pregnant, including legal help for those being pressured or forced to abort, can be found here.

 

 

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Wantedness and Coercion

Key Factors in Understanding
Women's Mental Health After Abortion

Martha Shuping, M.D.

 

Dr. Shuping presented this article at a United Nations workshop in March 2011, and at the June 2011 meeting of the Association for Interdisciplinary Research on Values and Social Change.   

 

In 1973, as a 19-year-old undergraduate student, I worked as a volunteer at a clinic that helped women to access abortion services. I received one evening of training in which I was taught that abortion was a safe, simple procedure, and there were no side effects.

 

I was incorrectly taught that the developing baby was nothing more than a clump of cells. After that, I was considered to be a qualified pregnancy counselor, and I helped some women to obtain abortions.

 

Thirty-eight years later, many abortion counselors are still giving women that same misinformation. But today I know that many women have adverse psychological reactions following abortion.

 

I have known more than one thousand post-abortive women who have been unhappy about their abortions. Much of my professional life has been spent in helping women to deal with the emotional impact of abortion.

 

Read the rest of the article here ... (pdf download)

 

 

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