British Medical Journal Study Publishes Highly Flawed Study Designed to Refute Link between Abortion and Depression.

In late October the web site of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) posted a study by Sarah Schmiege and Nancy Russo which purported to show that there was no association between abortion and depression. Although the conclusions were reported uncritically in newspapers, a closer look reveals that the study is rife with flaws and weaknesses in design, presentation, and discussion. Moreover, its conclusions are not in line with most recent research that reveals that abortion is associated with negative aftereffects for women.

When National Right to Life News asked Priscilla Coleman, associate professor of human development and family studies at Bowling Green State University, to comment on "Depression and unwanted first pregnancy: longitudinal cohort study," she began by pointing out that Schmiege and Russo re-analyzed the same National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data used in a 2002 BMJ paper written by David Reardon and Jesse Cougle. Whereas Schmiege and Russo argued that "[w]ell designed studies have not found that abortion contributes to an increased risk of depression," Reardon and Cougle found that when compared to an unintended pregnancy carried to term, there was a 92% greater risk of depression in women who aborted a first pregnancy.

As Reardon pointed out in a letter to the BMJ, the "uninformed readers may wrongly infer from the authors' presentation that our NLSY [National Longitudinal Survey of Youth] study is the only study linking abortion to depression. In fact, it was simply the first study to compare women who have had abortions to a control group of women who have carried unintended pregnancies to term."

Dr. Coleman, who has published widely on the psychology of abortion, agreed, noting that the re-analysis used different criteria to decide which participants to include in the study and lacked controls for key variables associated with the choice to abort. Consequently "Depression and unwanted first pregnancy: longitudinal cohort study" makes very little sense scientifically.

Schmiege and Russo chose to exclude women who said they had at some point wanted their pregnancy before deciding to abort. This is very significant.

Research by Hunsfeldt and colleagues (1995) suggests that 44% of women who abort experience doubts prior to the procedure. Eliminating women from the study who had at some juncture wanted their pregnancies biases the results, since a wealth of data indicates that women who are ambivalent about the decision to abort are at a higher risk for post-abortion mental health problems.

The researchers in effect removed a large group of vulnerable women. Thus their results do not speak to the typical woman choosing abortiononly to those who claim to have had no doubts about their choice.