By Margarita Nahapetyan
The link between abortions and long-term mental illness has been disputed since 2009, when a study by Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green State University in Ohio, claimed that women who had undergone the procedure of abortion were at an increased risk of suffering depression, anxiety and substance abuse disorders when compared to women who had not. The latest article in the Journal of Psychiatric Research provides a new analysis of that study and proves that the link is completely false.
The original study has been a source of constant debate since its publication when critics discovered numerous errors in the statistical analysis. Those errors triggered a correction by Priscilla Coleman and her team, but outside scientists found some other problems with the research. Most importantly, the original investigators stated women's mental health problems not only after the procedure of abortion, but throughout their life span, making it impossible to know whether women experienced mental issues before or after abortion.
Dr. Coleman's research found that termination of pregnancy on a voluntary basis was associated with all sorts of problematic things such as panic attacks, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and substance abuse. Also, her study not only linked abortion and mental illness, it revealed that there was a huge prevalence of post-abortion problems. In many cases, according to that study, having an abortion put a woman at risk for mental illness to increase more than 100 per cent.
The first study has been used to support state laws in America's seven states - Michigan, Nevada, South Dakota, North Carolina, Utah, Texas and West Virginia - requiring that women who want to undergo abortion procedure receive professional counseling in regards with its negative psychological effects. A similar analysis of data was conducted by Danish scientists (the report appeared last year in the British Journal of Medicine) who found no support for the hypothesis that abortion was associated with an increased accidence of mental illness.
Researcher Julia Steinberg, who authored the critique of Coleman's research, came out with a strong statement against the conclusions of the first study. This is not a scholarly difference of opinion, she said, the facts and results of the study were absolutely wrong. According to Steinberg, this was an abuse of the scientific process to make conclusions that are not supported by strong data. She also stressed out that the study did not look into mental health data of women who decided to go through with unplanned pregnancies, or put up their kids for adoption. It was also pointed out that the data, which is strongly biased towards women who underwent the procedure of abortions when they were young and childless, is unfairly balanced, since most of the women who opt to have abortions in the united States are already mothers.
The Journal of Psychiatric Research is not retracting Coleman's original paper. Still, its editor, Alan Schatzberg, and Ronald Kessler, the principle investigator of the National Comorbidity Survey, issued a statement confirming that the results do not support claims about the link between mental problems and abortion. Based on the joint review and discussion of the matter, they came to the conclusion that the Steinberg critique has considerable merit and that the Coleman analysis does not support their assertions that abortions were linked to mental problems in the NCS data.
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