Another Straw Man Down

Any one who has dealt with anti-choice zealots knows they will say and do anything to stop a woman from exercising her right to terminate pregnancies. This includes the use of a number of number of pseudoscientific studies that supposedly justify what is essentially their narrow religious viewpoints with facts and the scientific method.  Today, one more scientific study has shown yet another religious right talking point on abortion supposedly backed by scientific study is just that, a talking point, with no basis in fact.  It’s time for women’s rights advocates to get this information out so we reframe this in terms of science and not patriarchal religious tomes.

Abortion not seen linked with depression

Review of studies found no evidence of emotional harm after procedure

updated 7:59 a.m. CT, Thurs., Dec. 4, 2008

WASHINGTON – No high-quality study done to date can document that having an abortion causes psychological distress, or a “post-abortion syndrome,” and efforts to show it does occur appear to be politically motivated, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reviewed 21 studies involving more than 150,000 women and found the high-quality studies showed no significant differences in long-term mental health between women who choose to abort a pregnancy and others.

“The best research does not support the existence of a ‘post-abortion syndrome’ similar to post-traumatic stress disorder,” Dr. Robert Blum, who led the study published in the journal Contraception, said in a statement.

Scientists are supposed to approach data without political or religious bias and this study looks through many scientific studies, examines methodology and design of the study to determine which side’s conclusion has a basis in fact.  Fact, and not political ideology, is clearly the winner in this mega-study.

“Based on the best available evidence, emotional harm should not be a factor in abortion policy. If the goal is to help women, program and policy decisions should not distort science to advance political agendas,” added Vignetta Charles, a researcher and doctoral student at Johns Hopkins who worked on the study.

This is truly good news since women’s health central to abortion as a legal procedure.  Right wing groups have tried to argue that women’s mental states are actually threatened by abortion despite study-after-study showing that most women experience no long-lasting physical or emotional problems after terminating a pregnancy.  It should now become more difficult for the religious right continues to push supposed ‘contrary’ evidence. This is a mega-study that examines all major studies on the relationship between termination and women’s health published in English language journals between 1989 and 2008.  This means their findings are based on a huge number of studies and not just one. 

Additionally, their findings determine that only the studies with flawed methodology found negative consequences.  This is an important part of doing a mega-study.  Each study must be examined on its own merits before inclusion in the study and each study will be sorted into a category based on its research design and methodology.  This basically means that the religious right is engaging in pseudoscience, then trying to present the results as facts to back-up their beliefs, rather than find what the facts suggest based on the facts themselves.

Women should not be surprised about this since control of women’s reproductive health and bodies is perhaps the most powerful tool any patriarchal society can wield.  It is in our best interests to be continually aware of psuedoscience and its role as a tool to persuade us instead of inform us.  This is a great study since it uses so many studies to back up its conclusions.  We need to ensure that every woman facing this difficult decision knows that the depression and regret guilt trip, is just that, a religious meme based on the desire to ensure women are not left to make these important decisions on their own.  We must not buy into the argument that pregnancy terminations will give us just one more reason to be labelled ‘hysterical’ and emotionally crippled.