The Truth Is: Abortion Hurts Women.(Women's Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence)

We know that the culture of abortion in America is built on lies. One of the cruelest and most damaging of these is that "abortion is safer than childbirth." This is one of the basic claims and assumptions of the abortion culture, so any evidence that abortion harms women must be suppressed by abortion supporters.

It is clear from polling data that many Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of abortion, yet feel they must accept it because they believe it to be necessary for the health and well-being of women. If pro-lifers could show this ambivalent group of Americans that abortion, in addition to killing babies, also damages women, we would go a long way toward exposing the lies of the abortion culture and undermining the position of those who consider themselves to be "pro-choice."

We now have a new resource to help us meet this end. Women's Health After Abortion--The Medical and Psychological Evidence, written by Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles, is an excellent summary of the literature on the negative effects of abortion on women. It was published in Canada by the deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research and is now available from the National Right to Life Education Department (see page 13).

This book reviews research, but is written for laypeople. It is an important book for pro-lifers, who need to be able to use scientific evidence in making the case for the truth about abortion's effects. The most difficult problem for us in this debate is that our opponents have effectively propagated the notion that abortion is not harmful for women. So the false claim that research demonstrates that abortion is not harmful is believed as a matter of course. And, in fact, some methodologically flawed research is available to be cited by abortion supporters.

Pro-lifers need to be prepared to counter these false arguments. The book by Ring-Cassidy and Gentles provides assistance with an excellent chapter discussing some of the methodological problems of the research in this field. There are three basic problems with the research. The first is that many of the earlier studies observed women while they were still in the clinic following their abortions. This can hardly yield a comprehensive picture of the long-term effect that the abortion will have on the woman's life, her personal relationships, later health and family life, etc. Yet, such long-term effects can hardly be left out of a serious investigation into the effects that abortion has on a woman.

A second problem occurs with many of the research studies on the psychological effects of abortion involving the type of psychological test used in the collecting of research information. Many of the studies relied on asking the subjects how they had been feeling since having the abortion. This is tantamount to asking the subjects to psychoanalyze themselves. Most of us have a great deal of difficulty evaluating our reactions to traumatizing events in our lives. These studies claim that most women after an abortion simply report feeling relieved that the ...