Symptoms of Post Abortion Syndrome

Defense mechanisms are very effective in keeping the painful memories away, but they consume a lot of mental energy as a woman works to ignore powerful emotions. Eventually, if enough stress enters her life, she may find that she lacks the stamina both to cope with current stresses and continues repressing "forgotten" memories. A variety of experiences (such as pictures of prenatal development, a subsequent pregnancy, or even the whine of a dentist's drill that resembles the sound of the abortionist's equipment) may trigger symptoms associated with PAS.

These symptoms will not necessarily appear at the same time, nor is any woman likely to experience the entire list. Some may occur immediately after an abortion, and others much later. However, if three or more of the symptoms listed below describe what you have been going through recently, chances are you are experiencing PAS.

Guilt

Guilt is what an individual feels when she has violated her own moral code. For the woman who has come to believe, at some point after the abortion, that she consented to the killing of her preborn child, the burden of guilt is relentless. There is little consolation to offer the woman who has transgressed one of nature's strongest instincts: the protection a mother extends to her young.

This inner voice of self-condemnation begins playing a repeating tape in the mind that accuses, "You are defective. How could you have done this thing? You are a desperately wicked person." It is also normal for many postabortion women entering therapy to verbalize their belief that any unhappy events that have occurred since the abortion were inevitable because they "deserve it." Most of the remaining symptoms listed below result from listening to that mental tape day in and day out.

Anxiety

Anxiety is defined as an unpleasant emotional and physical state of apprehension. Postabortion women with anxiety may experience any of the following: tension (inability to relax, irritability, etc.), physical responses (dizziness, pounding heart, upset stomach, headaches, etc.), worry about the future, difficulty concentrating and disturbed sleep.

The conflict between a woman's moral standards and her decision to abort generates much of this anxiety. Very often she will not relate her anxiety to a past abortion, and yet she will unconsciously begin to avoid anything having to do with babies. She may take excuses for not attending a baby shower, skip the baby aisle at the grocery store, and so forth. This unrecognized "baby phobia" may eventually lead to a full blown agoraphobia, where the mere act of leaving home creates great distress.

One such woman entered therapy a year after her abortion, profoundly shocked at the levels of pain and anxiety she was experiencing. Every day she was taking eight to ten Xanax (a tranquilizer related to Valium), prescribed by a psychiatrist who had discounted her description of the pain surrounding the abortion. She has developed agoraphobia and was in imminent danger of losing her job because of the panic attacks that occurred frequently before leaving for work. Only when she had come to realize that her present behavior was somehow connected to her abortion could she force herself to drive on the freeway, at night, to attend a postabortion therapy group.

Psychological "numbing"

A person who has experienced a highly painful loss will develop an instinct to avoid future situations that might lead to serious pain again. Many postabortion women maintain a secret vow that they will never again allow themselves to be put in such a vulnerable position. As a result, without consciously thinking about what they are doing, they may work hard to keep their emotions on a flat level, experiencing neither highs nor lows. Not only does this flatness of emotional experience affect their own outlook, but it greatly hampers their ability to form and maintain close interpersonal relationships.

It is not uncommon during therapy to hear a postabortion woman talk about her life as if it were happening to another person whom she watches go through all the motions of living.

Beth expressed it this way: "I remember when I was younger I would wake up in the morning excited just to be alive in such a wonderful world. When we first got married things that happened to me either made me really happy or really sad. but after the abortion two years ago, it seemed like something turned off inside me. Nothing touches me anymore--good or bad. I can't get excited about things that used to put me in orbit, and now when I read about sad things that happen in the newspaper I just think, 'Oh well, life comes and goes. They'll get over it.' I wish I could go back to the way I used to be. What's the use of going through life cold and indifferent to things that happen to you and around you?"

Depression and thoughts of suicide

All of us are acquainted with depression. It is a mood filled with sadness, guilt and feelings of hopelessness. A more severe and prolonged depression is characterized by a sense of utter futility, and a complete inability to experience pleasure from any source. It may lead to suicidal ideas, as a person blames and hates herself so much that she simply wishes she were dead.

Few postabortion women reach the point of an overt clinical depression. Most continue to function and perform the duties of life, while  still expecting many of the following:

Emily described herself, during the first session of postabortion group therapy, as being normally a very disciplined person. She was very surprised by her emotional instability offer the past several weeks. She said that she was avoiding meals, tossing and turning at night for the first time in her life, and crying in the middle of the day for no reason at all. She had become increasingly irritable with her two children, and was easily distracted. For instance, she described one incident where she went into the kitchen to prepare her son's lunch, then found herself standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring off into space, unable to remember what she started to do. Most of all, Emily was terribly frightened because she had never experienced anything like this following seemingly more traumatic events before.

Her husband was becoming angry about her prolonged agitation over the abortion and began to insinuate that maybe she was mentally unbalanced. After many weeks of fighting, Emily had come to feel that it was all quite hopeless and had given up trying to salvage the relationship. She admitted in the first therapy that she was toying with the idea of taking her own life, but didn't think she could overcome her strong sense of responsibility toward her children. She began to cry profusely as she confessed that even this sense of loyalty to her own children was beginning to crumble. After all, she sobbed, she wasn't a fit mother. Perhaps they would be better raised by someone else.

It is important to remember that the symptoms listed above may be seen in anyone who is depressed. Post abortion syndrome may be the primary cause of the depression, or it may be but one of several contributing problems. Some work with an experienced counselor (hopefully one who understands PAS) may be necessary to put all of the components of a depression into perspective.

Anniversary syndrome

There tends to be an increase of PAS symptoms around the time of the anniversary of the abortion and/or the due date of the aborted child. This phenomenon is reported with some consistency by women who are experiencing  PAS.

Re-experiencing the abortion

A common event described by postabortion women is the sudden distressing, recurring flashbacks of the abortion episode. Sometimes this happens in situations that resemble some aspect of the abortion. A routine gynecological exam is an obvious example, but even the suction sound of a household vacuum cleaner, for example, has reportedly triggered troubling flashbacks.

Often, women re-experience the abortion in the form of recurring nightmares about babies in general or her aborted baby in particular. These dreams usually involve themes of lost, dismembered or crying babies. One woman described a recurrent nightmare in which the bloodied upper torso of her aborted child was clinging to the outside of her bedroom window at night, repeatedly calling out to her mournfully, "Mommy, help me!" Another woman talked about a nightmare in which she was frantically trying to gather up all the pieces of her aborted baby and put them back together like a jigsaw puzzle. As gruesome as these dreams sound, they are not unrepresentative of the experiences shared in a postabortion therapy group.

Preoccupation with becoming pregnant again

A significant percentage of all women who abort become pregnant within one year of their abortion. The desire to quickly become pregnant again -- as soon as possible -- is verbalized often in the counseling room. This may represent an unconscious hope that a new pregnancy, often called the "atonement baby," will serve as a replacement for the one that was aborted.

Anxiety over fertility and childbearing issues

Some postabortion women maintain a fear that they will never become pregnant again or never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. Some expect to have handicapped children because they have "disqualified themselves as good mothers." Those women whose worldview includes a belief in God and divine accountability will actually verbalize these fears in terms of God punishing them.

Interruption of the bonding process with present and/or future children

The postabortion woman may not allow herself to become properly bonded to another pregnancy because of a fear of loss, as explained above. Or she may begin another pregnancy intending to be the world's most perfect mother, in order to make up for aborting the last pregnancy.

Likewise, the woman who already had children at the time of her abortion may discover that she is beginning to look at her existing children in a different light. At one extreme, she may unconsciously devalue them. One woman sadly commented, "I always thought my children were the most prized possessions we had; now I catch myself looking at them while they are playing and thinking bizarre things like, 'You were the lucky ones. You were allowed to live.'" She may go in the opposite direction and become overly protective. Another woman confessed that, since her abortion experience, she had become obsessively involved with her children, wanting to prove to the world and to herself that she was not a bad mother.

Survival guilt

Most women do not abort for trivial reasons. They find themselves in the midst of a heartbreaking situation whereby they stand to lose much if they choose to carry their pregnancies to term. In the end, the decision boils down to a sorrowful "it's me or you, and I choose me." In an attempt to assuage the guilt of being the survivor, some women will enter a heightened  and unrealistic compensation mode whereby they attempt to atone for their selfish choice.

She may keep herself very busy doing unselfish volunteer work. Indeed she may become overly zealous in the pro-life movement. And this unfortunately, may be the worst possible place for her to be. If she has not found forgiveness for her own abortion, she will not likely be able to extend compassion and forgiveness to anyone else who has aborted a child. All too often, "talking someone out of having an abortion" becomes her way of making payments on the debt she feels she owes. Any seasoned director of a crisis pregnancy center has learned to screen out and refer for counseling the well-intentioned volunteer who hasn't worked through a  past abortion. While postabortion women who have experienced healing and forgiveness are usually highly effective counselors, those who lack this experience of healing can turn a conversation with an abortion-minded woman into a disaster.

Development of eating disorders

Some women seeking postabortion counseling have developed eating disorders. While this phenomenon remains largely unexplored at this time, several factors may contribute to it. First, a substantial weight gain or severe weight loss is associated with unattractiveness, which reduces the odds of becoming pregnant again. Secondly, becoming unattractive serves as a form of self-punishment and helps perpetuate the belief that she is unworthy of anyone's attention. Thirdly, extremes in eating behavior (such as bulimia or anorexia) represent a form of control for the woman who feels her life is totally out of control. And finally, a drastic weight loss can shut down the menstrual cycle, thus preventing any future pregnancies.

Alcohol and drug abuse

Alcohol and drug use often serve initially as a form of self-medication -- a way of coping with the pain of the abortion memories. Sadly, the woman who resorts to alcohol and/or drugs eventually finds herself having not only more problems but also fewer resources with which to solve them. The medical and physical consequences of alcohol or drug abuse only amplify most of the symptoms the woman is already experiencing.

Other self-punishing or self degrading behaviors

In addition to weight loss and substance abuse, the postabortion woman may also enter into abusive relationships, become promiscuous, fail to take care of herself medically, or deliberately hurt herself emotionally and/or physically.

Brief reactive psychosis

Rarely, a postabortion woman will experience a brief psychotic episode for two weeks or less after her abortion. The break with reality and subsequent recovery are both extremely rapid, and in most cases the person returns completely to normal when it is over. While this is an unusual reaction to abortion, it bears mentioning only because it is possible for a person to have a brief psychotic reaction to a stressful event without being labeled a psychotic individual. During such an episode, the individual's perception of reality is drastically distorted.

One woman, a respected professional who lived by herself in a small town, passed a very large piece of bloody material only hours after returning home from her abortion. She examined it and decided that it had to be her eight-week fetus. (She later reported that the clinic had been extremely busy the Friday she had gone in; presumably, the physician neglected to make sure the fetus had passed through the suction tube, or perhaps she had been carrying twins.) Because she had, until then, believed that an eight-week fetus in an unidentifiable mass, the unmistakable human characteristics of the fetus sent waves of horror through her.

Using a soft kitchen towel, she carefully wrapped it up, decided it was a girl, gave her a name, and proceeded to rock her and talk to her during the next two days as if she were a live baby. By late Sunday afternoon, she began to acknowledge that her baby had died. She drove out to the seaside, because she wanted to bury her baby in the ocean. A few hours later, she felt as though she were waking from a long dream. The fetus she passed had been real, but then she had experienced a total break from reality for nearly two days. Needless to say, she was badly shaken by the experience. Having heard that a local crisis pregnancy center offered postabortion counseling, she went there for help soon thereafter. She has not experienced any recurrences of psychotic episodes, brief or prolonged, since that time.

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