Last month, Australian website Mamamia published an article about post-abortion syndrome, calling it “the condition so many don’t want to talk about.” The article cited Abortion Grief Australia, and said that “psychologists and mental health providers are extremely divided on the issue.” But not long after the article was published, it was quickly yanked. “Mamamia has always been well known for its pro-choice stance and we have an 11-year history of content and advocacy in this area,” Leigh Campbell, the website’s managing editor, said in an interview with Buzzfeed. “We have made the decision to remove this story while we further investigate its provenance.”
But the story didn’t end there. Mamamia then issued an apology, saying that it was not original content, but a “contributed submission,” and called it “regrettable” that it was published. “We have permanently removed the piece and we are reviewing our internal processes to ensure going forward we strengthen our checks and balances to avoid a similar error in future,” Holly Wainwright, the head of content, said. “Mamamia has and always will be a staunch pro-choice advocate.” Buzzfeed, which reported on the article’s removal and Mamamia’s apology, claimed that post-abortion syndrome does not exist.
That both media outlets are openly pro-abortion likely plays a role here. Because admitting that abortion hurts women would do incredible damage to the pro-choice movement.
Since abortion was legalized, just in the United States, tens of millions of preborn babies have been aborted in just 45 years. And it has unleashed a tidal wave of grief. Most women undergo abortions in the first trimester, usually having an aspiration abortion. As former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains, this involves first dilating the woman’s cervix, and then using a powerful suction catheter to force the preborn baby out of the womb. It is finished by using a curette to scrape the woman’s uterus, to ensure that none of the baby is left behind.
Many women do not immediately feel grief, but report that it swallows them years later, often when they have wanted children and regret their decision. And despite Buzzfeed and Mamamia’s insistence that post-abortion syndrome (or trauma) is not real, there is, in fact, scientific literature to support it. One recent study found a majority of women reporting that there were no positive effects to their abortions, and the majority of scientific data likewise shows that women are at high risk for negative psychological consequences after having an abortion — including drug and alcohol abuse, mental health disorders like anxiety and depression, and suicidal behavior. Women are increasingly speaking out about how they regret their abortions, and it’s not a secret within the abortion industry, either.
Former Planned Parenthood manager Crystal Eldridge explained that they would keep grief journals in recovery rooms. “The women would cry,” she recalled. “99% of people were not happy, and there were journals in the back room — in the recovery room — that the women were encouraged to write in, to kind of get their feelings out. And I could never read them in full because I cried too hard.”
That women suffer from abortion is the secret the pro-choice lobby is desperate to keep. Abortion, after all, is meant to be empowering and liberating. Abortion activists can’t have women knowing that it’s actually devastating.
