“One interesting result was the increase in women seeking mental health care and prescription drug use pre- and post-abortion. Prior to their first pregnancy resulting in an abortion, 13 percent of those surveyed reported having visited a psychiatrist, psychologist, or counselor, compared to 67.5 percent who received mental health services after their first abortion.”

We know it’s a lie that abortion doesn’t harm women. We know this anecdotally, from talking with mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends who have had abortions, and shared their stories of pain, doubt, shame, guilt, and suffering. We also know it from research that demonstrates quantitatively that significant numbers of women are left clinically depressed as direct result of having had an abortion.

As often as we hear these stories, it’s still exceedingly difficult for women hurt by abortion, and their supporters, to get the message out. As Katie Yoder from Catholic Vote explains: “don’t expect the mainstream media to give them a voice. That’s not to say the media shy away from abortion stories. They don’t. But there’s a catch: The stories they share are positive ones. In presenting abortion in a positive light, the media not only dismiss countless abortion testimonies, but also overlook research.”

The Divide Between Rhetoric and Women’s Experiences

Even though more Americans identify as pro-life than pro-choice, and have for a long time, we are still a nation deeply conflicted over the issue. One of the reasons for the conflict is in no small part due to the huge significance placed on having an abortion as the true mark of a woman taking ownership of her body. As if a woman isn’t truly in control of who she is until she’s exercised her right to abort her unborn child.

Abortion advocates see abortion as the final frontier for womanhood, the event horizon, the point after which a woman will pass, and never feel the same again. This is why abortion rhetoric must be powerful, because if abortion supporters can continue to distract the post-abortive woman with the idea that she has nothing for which to apologize; abortion is about her reproductive rights; and that it wasn’t her baby, it was a clump of cells, it will be easier for her the next time she choices to abort.

But for a large number of women suffering in silence, it’s a cold, brutal wake-up call. Pro-abortion rhetoric falls heavy and flat against the harsh reality of what they’ve done. No amount of empowerment propaganda can allay the sick feeling in the pit of their souls. They have that gut-wrenching feeling you get when you know you’ve done something you can never undo, and all you want more than anything in the world is to undo it. In that moment, when everything collapses into a single point, they can see all too clearly what abortion is, and it’s utter devastation.

What 987 Post- Abortive Women Told Researchers

A recent study by Priscilla Coleman, Ph.D., et al., entitled, “Women Who Suffered Emotionally from Abortion: A Qualitative Synthesis of Their Experiences,” looked at multiple variables that affect how women adjusted to their post-abortive experiences. The authors explain that current research methods aren’t sensitive enough to capture the complexity of women’s emotions from the beginning to end of the abortion process:

The professional post-abortion literature relevant to both the average woman, and those known to be at the highest risk for adverse responses, is primarily derived from group-level, quantitative studies that often fail to capture the breadth of feelings and thoughts at the core of women’s individual experiences.

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