We Cannot But Tell

Looking for a second opinion? Here's some of what we are reading in the news these days...

"Every Third Russian Abortion Ends in Patient's Death," MosNews, April, 8, 2005: "Two million abortions are performed in Russia every year, with only 1.5 million children actually being born. Moreover, badly performed surgeries kill every third patient and leave many infertile for the rest of their lives, Vladimir Kulakov, deputy director of the Russian Women's Health Center reported at a video conference. 'There are more than 6.5 million infertile women in Russia today, 15% of Russian couples are facing the problem of infertility,' RIA Novosti quoted Kulakov as saying.

"Artificial termination of pregnancy after week 12 is fraught with grave consequences for a woman's health," says an official spokesman for Russia's Health Ministry. "Abortions account for 30 percent of maternal mortality in Russia. It has been decided to reduce these dangers." The dangers include sterility; abortion is a leading cause of increasing diagnoses of infertility in Russia.

Whether from contraception or from abortion or post-abortion sterility, Russia's birthrate continues to plunge.

Russia's population now shrinks by an estimated 700,000 annually - a statistic that causes deep chagrin in Russian nationalist circles. UN experts have predicted that in a half-century, Russia will drop from the current rank of the world's sixth most populous nation to 17th.

President Vladimir Putin has called the slide "a creeping catastrophe," while military hawks warn that Russia may not be able to defend itself or hang onto its vast Siberian hinterland if the decline is not reversed within a few decades.

August 28, 2003 CS Monitor

Abortion rates in Russia are some of the highest in the world. Conservative estimates indicate 60% of all pregnancies end in abortion. LifeSiteNews reported in August that Russia's abortion rates exceeded the national rate of birth for the first time in 2005.

A self-described pro-choice atheist and rationalist set out to prove that abortion does not have any psychological consequences. He found the opposite, and the results were so profound that they cannot be ignored in the scientific field or the political arena.

Professor David Fergusson, New Zealand researcher at Christchurch School of Medicine and Health, said, "[F]rom a personal point of view, I would have rather seen the results come out the other way -- but they didn't. And as a scientist you have to report the facts, not what you'd like to report."

Fergusson and his colleagues were surprised by the study that followed 500 women from birth to age 25 and revealed that abortive women were one-and-a-half times more likely to suffer mental illness.

"Those having an abortion had elevated rates of subsequent mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviors and substance use disorders," according to the research published in the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology.

"If we were talking about an antibiotic or an asthma risk, and someone reported adverse reactions, people would be advocating further research to evaluate risk," Fergusson explained. "I can see no good reason why the same rules don't apply to abortion."

New Zealand Researcher: No Denying, Abortion Harms Women

By AFA Journal April 24, 2006

Sleep Disorders Increase after Abortion
Study of 56,284 May Link Sleep Problems to Abortion Trauma.

Springfield, IL (Jan. 25, 2006) A new study published in Sleep, the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, has found that women who experienced abortion were more likely to be treated for sleep disorders or disturbances compared to women who gave birth.

Abortion and Substance Abuse Link Often Overlooked, Women's Health Review Reports

Springfield, IL (January 20, 2005) -- A new research review published in Current Women's Health Reviews highlights the growing body of evidence that abortion is linked with increased rates of substance abuse among women.

WorldNetDaily, MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
Study: Abortion raises risk of depression
Researcher believes results could undermine basis of laws
Posted: January 3, 2006

A new study finds women who have an abortion in their youth raise the risk of developing depression, anxiety and other mental health problems.

God help us for not protecting the most precious and vulnerable among us. I can only repeat the questions asked by Sen. Brownback: "What does that do to us? What does that say about us?"

Abortion's Lingering Damage Revealed Studies indicate a substantial percentage of women experience serious post abortion complications

By Dr. Barry De Veber, Institute for Bioethics and Social Research in Toronto originally published as an Op-Ed in the London Free Press

Pro-life supporters come from various moral and religious backgrounds, but they all want to see the unborn child or fetus given some recognition and status so it cannot be eliminated simply because it's not wanted.

They see a small, defenseless human individual, which at seven weeks has a heart beat and brain activity, and by 14 weeks is fully developed. By 20 to 24 weeks these babies become viable, as in rare cases they can survive outside the womb. About this time, before birth, they can have intrauterine surgery on the heart and other organs, at which point they become patients. Of course, they have no legal status until a miraculous passage through the birth canal, when it is recognized by everyone as a legal human being.

However, since abortion supporters choose to ignore these facts, they should be concerned about complications following abortions that are increasingly reported in scientific literature: 1) A study sponsored by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, in 2001 showed that 41,000 women who had abortions had five times the number of hospital admissions for psychiatric problems, compared to a similar number of women who had no abortion. This was a short-term study done at three months, and did not deal with long-term effects of abortion. 2) A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2003 showed an increase number of psychiatric admissions among lower-income women who had induced abortions. 3) A Finnish study of the records of 600,000 women showed a six-fold increase in suicides in post-abortion women compared to those with a live birth, three times the incidence of women in general. There are other published studies in Britain and the U.S. showing similar findings. 4) It is obvious there are large numbers of women with post-abortion psychological problems, judging by the growth of hundreds of related counseling centers in North America, the largest being Project Rachel.

The pro-choice counseling service, Healing Choice, estimates at least 10 per cent of post-abortion women have severe psychological problems, and that many others who appear to have "moved forward with their lives" suffer various degrees of guilt, grief and ambivalence, sometimes for the rest of their lives. There are documented cases of women expressing grief, guilt and spiritual pain on their death beds many decades after an abortion.

Besides these psychological problems, there are documented medical problems that are less common, yet still significant, such as subsequent premature deliveries, infertility and increased risk of breast cancer. The incidence of maternal mortality from induced abortions is unknown (Statistics Canada), since maternal deaths after abortion are classified by the cause of death (hemorrhage, infection, etc.) and not by the procedure itself.

Although post-abortion problems may not affect the majority of women, the number of women affected is significant when one considers
.* See link to "Statistics."

*Note: most of the data is derived from reported rates, so these figures are approximate.