Jivin J’s Life Links 9-2-11
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- As far as I’ve seen, CBS is the first American mainstream media outlet to cover the newest abortion/mental health study:
For the study, researchers analyzed data on 877,000 women, including 164,000 who had an abortion. They found women who had an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk for mental problems.
Women who had an abortion were 34% more likely to develop an anxiety disorder, 37% more likely to experience depression, 110% more likely to abuse alcohol, 155% more likely to commit suicide, and 220% more likely to use marijuana.
At National Right to Life’s blog, Randall O’Bannon has more:
Moreover, Coleman’s meta-analysis showed that 9.9% of the incidence of mental health problems in the population group of aborted women was directly attributable to abortion. This also included 34.9% of suicides in this group.
- Nicola Riley (pictured left), a Utah abortionist and former employee of infamous abortionist Steve Brigham, has been fined 10K for lying about her criminal history when she applied for a license to practice medicine. While her license hasn’t been pulled, Riley has agreed not to perform abortions in UT while she’s being investigated for her role in Brigham’s abortion caravans.
- The Guardian goes all in on attempting to provide the most biased look inside an abortion clinic ever. Though she’s inside an abortion clinic, Rachel Williams doesn’t describe what happens in an abortion at all. We know all about the anesthetics, the waiting room and recovery rooms, and the counseling but nothing about the actual abortion procedure. Nor does she describe what happens to the remains of aborted children. Those factoids are left out so clinic workers can continually describe themselves and their work positively.
[Riley photo via wholebodygreen.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Abortion goes against our natural instincts to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, so I’m not surprised that many women have problems. Of course, pro-aborts are rushing to attack Coleman’s credibility — you know, when there’s bad news, kill the messenger.
This is the first time I’ve seen a black woman abortionist. Given our history, this is indeed sad.
I remain highly interested in hearing more about the 10% of problems that can be directly attributed to abortions… as well as hearing greater detail about how the other problems are weeded out as not being attributed to a woman’s abortion. It’s common sense, and personal experience for many, that abortion harms women mentally, emotionally, spiritually… but I’d like to see more hard data to present to those who’s common sense is knocked askew. Right now it is too easy for them to fall back on the idea that those women needed abortions because of their existing problems/risks.
I’m always a fan of more indepth study wherever correlation is found…
The British Journal of Psychiatry is obviously comprised of a bunch of right wing kooks. What else could explain their findings that echo what pro-life groups around the world have been saying for years?
Seriously, if this study does not cause some soul-searching among choicers then nothing will. The overwhelming evidence of harm to women who procure abortions should lead to an intellectually honest admission that maybe, just maybe abortion does cause women to suffer terribly.
Association is not causation.
The BJP didn’t write the article. Only Coleman did, and there appears to be rather extensive criticism of Coleman’s work and conclusions.
Extensive criticism by people linked to pro-choice organizations. Of course they’d rush to criticize ;)
(I’m just saying, since as far as I’ve read, most of the criticism levied against Coleman has been that she’s associated with pro-lifers and/or pro-life organizations. If we’re going to be fair, then the same should be said of those criticizing her.)
No Some Guy. By the APA and other major medical bodies. They were unable to reproduce her results – one of the fundamentals of scientific enquiry – and were critical of her methodology.
Unless you deem that anyone who says anti-choice propaganda is inaccurate or inconclusive is pushing a pro-choice agenda?
The APA is an organization. The APA hasn’t criticized Coleman’s work. They weren’t able to reproduce Coleman’s work because they didn’t examine anything. Same with other major medical bodies. Individuals do the criticizing.
For example, let’s take the following study (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795361000729X ), in which it’s stated that Coleman’s work were unreproducable. You’ll find that Julia R. Steinberg, for example, works at a reproductive health center and Lawrence B. Fine works the Guttmacher Institute. If you look online, you’ll notice that a lot of criticisms from pro-choicers levied against Coleman are, among others, that she’s ideologically biased and has ties to pro-lifers/pro-life organizations. If this is the case, and we can discredit her findings on the basis of her being ideologically biased, then I suppose we can do the same for the previous two individuals who are also ideologically biased and have a stake in the matter, being pro-choicers or affiliated with pro-choice organizations.
Get it yet?
What I get Some Guy, is that Coleman’s work is not considered conclusive or accurate by anyone except those with an agenda.
Care to tell me which ‘reproductive health center’ it is that Steinberg works at?
Some guy,
You are wasting your keystrokes on Realstupidity.
Suggest you go back to something more basic like 2+2=4 and then attempt:
If a=b and b=c, then a=c.
Women who had an abortion were 34 percent more likely to develop an anxiety disorder, 37 percent more likely to experience depression, 110 percent more likely to abuse alcohol, 155 percent more likely to commit suicide, and 220 percent more likely to use marijuana.
Nearly 10 percent of the problems could be attributed to abortion, the authors concluded.
How in the world did they come up with the “nearly 10 percent of the problems could be attributed to abortion”? It’s been known for a long time that women with existing emotional problems, prior to having an abortion, are more likely to have them and/or develop new ones afterward, just the same as it is for women who elect to continue pregnancies.
10%? Does this mean that of the 220% greater marijuana use, 198% of it was due to “something else” while 22% was due to having an abortion. Come on… This is like finding some symptoms in mothers or post-partum women and saying that “10% of it was due to giving birth/having kids…” Good grief, that would be no surprise.
I’m certain that abortion causes many psychological problems and exacerbates existing ones.
Having a baby and giving it up for adoption is also a source of many emotional scars.
How do we minimize the unplanned pregnancies that lead to psychological horror for girls and women?
A quick question for those who are ready to dismiss the findings of this report in a kind of kneejerk reaction. This is a real learning moment–the report is EXHAUSTIVE–covering hundreds of thousands of women over many years.
So what is it about the report that you find so challenging? Perhaps if the report were about something other than abortion how would you react? Say for example that someone studied the effects of sitting at a computer for hours on end day after day for years on end is likely to cause a certain number of ailments that people who are active do not have near a likelihood of contracting. Would you not think, yeah, that probably makes sense?
We all know that abortion is not a lark. We all know that there are risks to any medical procedure. We all know that a great deal of emotion is invested by a woman into her pregnancy, whether she wants it or not. So why would it be a surprise that the BJP might find the results they found? Here is where we get into the intellectual honesty part of it. Pro-aborts as a rule do not want to hear anything negative about abortion, even to the point of rejecting findings that have been painstakingly and exhaustively studied. In so doing they risk perpetuating a system that actually harms the very people they purport to help.
Jerry: We all know that abortion is not a lark. We all know that there are risks to any medical procedure. We all know that a great deal of emotion is invested by a woman into her pregnancy, whether she wants it or not. So why would it be a surprise that the BJP might find the results they found?
Jerry, I agree – for many women abortion presents significant stress, and I’d say many unwanted pregnancies present conflict to the woman, i.e. they are not “100%” for ending it.
Numerous studies in the past found that the best predictor of a woman’s mental health after having an abortion was their mental health prior to having it. Those with pre-existing psychological conditions were much, much more likely to retain them after having an abortion or develop new ones.
From the study referred to, above:
“Women who had an abortion were 34 percent more likely to develop an anxiety disorder, 37 percent more likely to experience depression, 110 percent more likely to abuse alcohol, 155 percent more likely to commit suicide, and 220 percent more likely to use marijuana.
Nearly 10 percent of the problems could be attributed to abortion, the authors concluded.”
To me, it makes perfect sense that as a group, the women who have abortions will display some of that, as I’m assuming they are at least somewhat conflicted, in general. But what puzzles me is the “nearly 10 percent of the problems could be attributed to abortion” part.
Are the authors saying that over 90% of the problems were due to something else? It sure looks like that is the case. It sounds awfully subjective to me, in the first place, as well. How would one determine the difference, other than (for the sake of argument) being able to go back in time, or into a parallel universe, and then observing the same women when they did not have abortions?
Even taking the “nearly 10%” deal at face value, what in the world is then responsible for the other 90+%?
This thing is like looking at symptoms among women who give birth, seeing some degree of post-partum depression, and then saying that, “nearly 10% of the problems were due to giving birth…” What sense does that make?
If we’re looking at post-partum depression, it’s easy to say that “having the women have abortions would mitigate that.” However, that the women (especially since presumably those pregnancies were wanted) would then display some symptoms due to having had abortions is a given, IMO.
Likewise, what guarantee is there, for the group of women who had abortions in the above study, that had they not had abortions, their symptoms would be less? What guarantee can there be that they would not be worse off, for that matter?