An Abortion Won't Make You Crazy, But An Unwanted Pregnancy Might
LatestA popular claim of those looking to restrict abortion rights is that in addition to hurting the microscopic people who take up residence in the uterus, abortion harms women by making them infertile, breast cancer-ridden lunatics. We’ve known for some time that none of that is true, and now another large study has confirmed that abortion does not cause mental health problems. As anti-choicers will undoubtedly point out, women who terminate pregnancies do have higher rates of psychological problems. However, the researchers found that’s true of all women who experience unwanted pregnancies, whether or not they decide to abort.
In research paid for by Britain’s department of health, the U.K.’s National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health looked at 44 studies conducted around the world from 1990 to 2011, which included information on millions of women with unwanted pregnancies, according to the Associated Press. Roughly 11 or 12 percent of all women suffer from mental health problems, and that number shoots up to about one third for women who’ve experienced unwanted pregnancies. Since rates of mental problems were the same for women who had abortions and women who went through with their pregnancy, the researchers concluded that it isn’t abortion that’s the problem, but the unwanted pregnancy.