Before the Supreme Court swept away most abortion laws in its landmark Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973, those who fought to legalize abortion argued that the only trauma associated with ending a pregnancy was the humiliation and horror of an illegal procedure. Deal with a problem pregnancy painlessly and safely, and a woman could get on with her life without the destruction caused by a back-alley butcher. Any emotional suffering experienced after a safe, legal abortion could be explained as transient "bad feelings" caused by hormonal fluctuations.

The notion that abortion normally produces few, if any, emotional aftereffects prevails among doctors and psychologists to this day. This probably stems from the fact that most of the limited research about postabortion trauma has, until very recently, been based on questionnaire data. Unfortunately the results of questionnaires completed by women soon after an abortion are likely to be unreliable because of the psychological "numbing" that often occurs in reaction to a highly stressful event. In order to protect their mental stability, many women must rationalize the need for an abortion and therefore repress any initial feelings of guilt. As a result, most emotional reactions to abortion are delayed, sometimes for as long as five to ten years.

It is not surprising, then, that women who take the time and effort to fill out and return questionnaires would report few negative emotional reactions to their recent abortions. As these results have been compiled and published in the professional literature, counselors have developed a widespread attitude that the need for postabortion counseling is minimal except in a small number of women who are already "unbalanced" emotionally.

It is interesting that one survey of more than 1,000 women who were on their way to a clinic for an abortion indicated that twenty-four percent of the women were having "deep emotional conflicts" about the impending procedure (Medical World News, March 9, 1987). This would imply that more than 350,000 women a year, in this country, may well be hurting over a previous abortion. And yet, on a recent radio talk show in the Los Angeles area, a Planned Parenthood representative claimed that no more than "a couple of hundred women at the most" per year are negatively affected by abortion in the United States.

From "Identifying and Overcoming Post-Abortion Syndrome"
Reprinted with permission from Focus on the Family