While it looks like many media outlets have taken a pass of this story, the LA Times and Boston Globe, both notorious for taking pro-abortion editorial positions, were happy to spread a flawed study.
The study alleges that abortion does not increase risk of mental health problems. The problems with the study are many as pointed out by Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University Dr. Priscilla Coleman. She rightly notes that:
The researchers focus on the fact that there is not a statistically significant difference in first-time inpatient admissions and outpatient psychiatric visits before and after an abortion, concluding that it is unlikely that the abortion procedure causes mental health problems. However there are some major problems with this conclusion.
First, the measure of pre-abortion mental health is likely high (more than 3 times greater than prior to birth, 14.6% vs. 3.9%), because many of the women were probably in the midst of abortion decision-making when they experienced their first psychiatric visit. This high rate of pre-abortion mental health problems is construed to indicate that women who choose abortion will often experience mental health problems based on factors other than the procedure.
In fact, the women in the sample are quite unlikely to fall into this “vulnerable” category since none of the women included in the study had any history of psychological diagnoses prior to 9 months before the abortion. These researchers used a window of 0-9 months to measure pre-abortion mental health; however, the assessment should instead have been before the pregnancies were detected. The data do indicate that rates of mental health problems are significantly higher after abortion compared to after childbirth (15.2% vs. 6.7%) and compared to not having been pregnant (8.2%).
Read the rest of her analysis here.
Oh and Carol Rose of the Boston Globe also gave us this beauty earlier today as the opined that “Access to safe and legal abortions is pro-life”. I’m sorry but efficiently killing children is not pro-life. Has she seen the video of an actual abortion before?
