Abortion is a polarizing issue in our nation. Most of us have an opinion – one way or another – about abortion. Regardless of personal opinions or beliefs about the issue, the fact remains that there are many women who experience great emotional difficulty after an abortion – whether it is a surgical procedure or produced by taking a series of pills. It is crucial that therapists are equipped to counsel these women.
While women can experience physical consequences as a result of abortion, it is far more common for them to report:
There is no universal agreement among mental health professionals regarding the frequency with which women are negatively impacted following abortion nor the severity of that impact. Studies can be found that support nearly any point of view. Can we at least agree that there are women who do struggle and that they deserve to be heard? That they deserve to be helped, without having their feelings invalidated?
Miriam Grossman, M.D. – in her book Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student – makes this observation:
"Our culture is stuck in a rigid, polarized view of abortion and its aftermath. It’s either right, without victims or fallout, or it’s wrong. It’s either constitutional or it’s unconstitutional. This works at church or in court, but not in my line of work. People are more complicated than ideology, and psychotherapists are supposed to know that. The inner life is a fluid tangle of wounds and fears, longings and dreams. A pregnancy is a new, enormous relationship, if only a potential one: I could now be a mother, a father; and an abortion is the decision to end that relationship, that possibility. These are tremendously profound and complex issues for women and men. To suggest that pregnancy and abortion do not touch essential parts of us is to deny our depth and sensitivity, and to diminish the awe and magnitude of creating a child. To compare an abortion with a tonsillectomy – as a procedure you go in for, take a Tylenol, and get on with your life – is a hideous defamation of us all."
And, this from Dr. Julius Fogel – a psychiatrist and obstetrician, as well as a long-time advocate of abortion who personally performed over 20,000 abortions:
"Every woman – whatever her age, background or sexuality – has a trauma at destroying a pregnancy. A level of humanness is touched. This is a part of her own life. When she destroys a pregnancy, she is destroying herself. There is no way it can be innocuous. One is dealing with the life force. It is totally beside the point whether or not you think a life is there. You cannot deny that something is being created and that this creation is physically happening…Often the trauma may sink into the unconscious and never surface in the woman’s lifetime. But it is not as harmless and casual an event as many in the pro-abortion crowd insist. A psychological price is paid. It may be alienation; it may be a pushing away from human warmth, perhaps a hardening of the maternal instinct. Something happens on the deeper levels of a woman’s consciousness when she destroys a pregnancy. I know that as a psychiatrist."
Expand your understanding about how abortion can impact women. There are numerous books and websites listed on our Resources page that can give you a glimpse into the hearts and minds of post-abortive women.
Add past abortion(s) to your inventory of traumatic life events that clients may have experienced.
Consider professional development opportunities that can further equip you to help women to a place of healing and wholeness. The American Association of Therapists Treating Abortion Related Trauma is one resource that can help.
Contact We Are Everywhere with questions or concerns that you may have.
