Saturday, September 3, 2011

Abortion's mental health risks in the news






Jameson Graber said...

Never hurts to include some links to the mainstream media's reporting.

In the US:

In the UK:

M said...

The most interesting part from that tidbit, to me, is the "nearly 10 percent of the incidence of mental health problems were shown to be directly attributable to mental health problems."

I'm interested in how they showed that. The rest of it is correlation, and while it's worth noting, it's better data when contrasted with situations that best control for all factors besides abortion that could contribute to mental health problems--like the comparison to women who delivered unexpected pregnancies.

Even then, though, I'm not convinced the unexpected factor is the main issue. Say, hypothetically, a woman who was abused as a child is more likely to be in an abusive relationship, more likely to get an abortion, and more likely to be depressed/alcoholic/suicidal. I'm not sure you could attribute any of those mental health issues to the abortion when it could easily be the abusive relationship that's destroying her.

I guess what I mean is you have to wonder if the factor influencing some women to have abortions is the same factor causing them to have mental health problems.

Still, good post. I'm going to check out the study more.