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Even though pro-abortionists deny it, the evidence is there: Abortion Hurts Women

Mar 23, 2012

By Dave Andrusko

Eric Zorn

If you are a pro-abortionist, near the top of your daily things-to-do list is to sneer at the very idea that women can (let alone do) suffer emotional and physical aftereffects from an induced abortion. The labeling runs the gamut from dismissive to contemptuous but the common thread is that “anti-choice” activists stitch together bad research (or preliminary results since outdated) which have taken the form of ”inaccurate, misleading and irrelevant information in abortion counseling,” according to Elizabeth Nash, who tracks legislation for the pro-abortion (and former research arm of PPFA) Guttmacher Institute.

Let me offer the two most prominent examples and the way solid scholarly work is cavalierly—nay, arrogantly–dismissed.

Analyzing data from the National Comorbidity Survey, scholars recently concluded there were a large number of significant associations detected between abortion and various mood, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders. This was ridiculed by New York Times Editorial Page Editor  Andrew Rosenthal as saying abortion “drive[s] women bonkers.”

Rhetorically hauling out a two by four, Rosenthal tells his readers that because the scholars who found this association had also made a minor error, they were the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Nothing of what they concluded need be taken seriously.

But in his haste to discount the results with smarmy and snide putdowns, Rosenthal managed to miss (a) that the error changed nothing of significance; (b) it was in one study when a huge overview analysis that appeared last year showed that women who have had an abortion have an 81 percent higher risk of subsequent mental health problems compared to women who have not had an abortion; and that women who aborted have a 138 percent higher risk of mental health problems compared to women who have given birth—to name just two results.

Likewise with the evidence going back to 1957 that having an induced abortion increases the likelihood of a woman having breast cancer. This association (known as the ABC link) is particularly threatening to pro-abortionists for obvious reasons. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn recycles the critiques of pro-abortionists (with a single reference to supporters of the ABC link) to provide readers a heads up that  “old scare tactic a new weapon in abortion wars.”

What’s fascinating is (because he is so confidence) he offers the crux of the biological argument, lifted from materials that would be provided if a particular women’s right to know life passed. Zorn writes

“The bill requires the written materials to say that ‘when an abortion ends a normal pregnancy, the woman is left with more immature breast tissue than she had before she was pregnant. In short, the amount of immature breast tissue is increased and this tissue is exposed to significantly greater amounts of estrogen — a known cause of breast cancer. Women facing an abortion decision have a right to know that such medical data exists.’”

He then scoffs that this is described as “undisputed.” Hello, it is! Those who deny the ABC link head off in different directions, but this is a simple biological fact of life.

Zorn then applies the hammer—various and sundry medical “authorities” who deny or minimize the likelihood that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer—to nail down his case. The irony here is that the same “authorities” he cites simply refuse to acknowledge that there is a truckload of studies going back to the 1950s showing that abortion increases the incidence  of breast cancer.

And this is made easier for them when researchers find the link and (not anxious to seem out of step) then spend an extraordinary amount of time explaining the results away! (For the latest example, see www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/11/study-of-armenian-women-shows-increased-breast-cancer-risk-for-those-who-have-aborted.)

Not to belabor the point, but abortion DOES exact a physical and  emotional toil both because of the biology (a very natural process is being unnaturally—and violently—interrupted) and because of the hole it leaves in so many hearts.

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Categories: Abortion