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Monday, March 17, 2008

Abortion Can Lead to Mental Illness

The debate about the risks involved in abortion is not just confined to the United States. Even in highly secularized Great Britain, researchers are finding that abortion is not the magic bullet once claimed to alleviate all female ills.

According to the Times newspaper, The Royal College of Psychiatrists has recognized the mental health risks of abortion:

Women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions, a medical royal college has warned. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says women should not be allowed to have an abortion until they are counselled on the possible risk to their mental health.

This overturns the consensus that has stood for decades that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion.

Why would there be such regrets at having had an abortion? Because most women know instinctively that what is growing inside them is human life.

A number of women testified across South Dakota in 2006 that they deeply regretted their abortions, and that regret led to things like bitterness, marital conflict, substance abuse, thoughts of suicide, and a host of other ills. Even aborting a baby conceived in rape can lead to deep regrets, since that child is no less a part of its mother than the child conceived in a loving relationship.

An act done in haste, in a time of pressure, confusion and anxiety, often leads to a lifetime of mental and emotional anguish.

The myth is that having the child would produce more mental anguish than aborting the child. But is that true, or is it a convenient excuse?

The Times article sheds some light on this question:
More than 90% of the 200,000 terminations in Britain every year are believed to be carried out because doctors believe that continuing with the pregnancy would cause greater mental strain.

This is why the latest abortion ban proposal limits the "health" exception to real, physical, permanent damage and not just "mental health" reasons. Allowing abortion for reasons of "mental health" would provide an exception you could drive a truck through. When you get down to it, though, just living causes "greater mental strain." Life is tough sometimes. Bearing children and raising them is tough, but it's been done for thousands of years; sometimes you just have to cowboy-up and deal with life.

But is having the child more of a mental strain than aborting the child?
an inquest in Cornwall heard that a talented artist hanged herself because she was overcome with grief after aborting her twins. Emma Beck, 30, left a note saying: “Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I want to be with my babies; they need me, no one else does.”

Though abortion advocates work desperately to ignore it, it turns out that abortion is a tremendously risky and unhealthy act--fatal for the child, and hazardous for the mother.

Abortions can result in injuries to the woman during the procedure (even in so-called "safe, legal" abortions), increased risk of infertility, mental and emotional problems, and an increased risk of breast cancer.

Encouraging or allowing people to place themselves at great risk, especially in ignorance, has never been a loving act, and it has never been ethical.

What has happened to our value system that we consider it of paramount importance to allow a human life to be ended for convenience, and another human life to be hurt for the rest of their life?


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm... Abortions lead to mental health problems, huh? Isn't having children just as likely to do the same thing?

Bob Ellis said...

Being a parent, it feels like it sometimes.

But seriously, abortion is much more devastating to mental health, as researchers are finding. That's what this post is about. It may seem like your kids are driving you crazy sometimes, but the toll that the guilt of an abortion brings on is far worse.

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