|TOP|Physicians, scientists, pro-choice advocates and pro-lifers alike continue to ponder on the implications of an astonishing study recently published in New Zealand which found a link between young women who have abortions and the development of subsequent mental disorders.

The Christchurch Health and Development Study, by a group of professors led by Professor David M. Fergusson, surveyed approximately 500 women from birth to 25 years of age, revealing that those who had abortions experienced elevated rates of suicidal behaviours, depression, substance abuse, anxiety and other mental problems.

The researchers had, according to Professor Fergusson, undertaken the survey expecting that the results to confirm that any mental health problems found after abortion would be traceable to prior mental illness or other “pre-disposing” factors.

“We know what people were like before they became pregnant,” Fergusson told The New Zealand Herald. “We take into account their social background, education, ethnicity, previous mental health, exposure to sexual abuse, and a whole mass of factors."

The researchers found that women who became pregnant before the age of 25 were more likely to have experienced family breakdown and adjustment problems, were more likely to have left home at a young age, and were more likely to have entered into a cohabiting relationship.

The study data still revealed, however, that women who had abortions were still significantly more likely to develop mental health problems, indicating that the abortion itself may have been the cause of the subsequent mental health problems.

When Fergusson presented his results to New Zealand’s Abortion Supervisory Committee, the Committee recommended that it would be “undesirable to publish the results in their ‘unclarified’ state”, reports The New Zealand Herald.

|QUOTE|Fergusson, who is himself pro-choice, responded to the recommendations of the Committee with a letter in which he advised that it would be “scientifically irresponsible” to suppress the findings of the report simply because they were a highly sensitive issue politically speaking.

“I remain pro-choice. I am not religious. I am an atheist and a rationalist. The findings did surprise me, but the results appear to be very robust because they persist across a series of disorders and a series of ages,” Fergusson told an Australian radio host. “Abortion is a traumatic life event; that is, it involves loss, it involves grief, it involves difficulties. And the trauma may, in fact, predispose people to having mental illness.”

Professor Fergusson warned women and doctors not to blindly accept the widely held presumption that abortion is generally harmless or beneficial to women, criticising particularly the advice of the American Psychological Association (APA).

Fergusson warned that the 2005 position paper - in which the APA stated that “well-designed studies” have found that “the risk of psychological harm is low” - ignored many key studies publicising evidence of the harmful consequences of abortion, adding that it had only looked at a selective sample of studies that have a number of methodological flaws.

“It verges on scandalous that a surgical procedure that is performed on over one in 10 women has been so poorly researched and evaluated, given the debates about the psychological consequences of abortion,” he said.

The findings of the recent survey have already stirred debate outside of New Zealand, in the U.S. and U.K. over the legal and ethical justifications of abortion.

|AD|Researcher Dr David Reardon, who has published more than a dozen studies into the impact of abortion on women, said: “Fergusson’s study underscores that fact that evidence-based medicine does not support the conjecture that abortion will protect women from ‘serious danger’ to their mental health,” said Reardon. “Instead, the best evidence indicates that abortion is more likely to increase the risk of mental health problems. Physicians who ignore this study may no longer be able to argue that they are acting in good faith and may therefore be in violation of the law.”

Reardon, who is also director of the Elliot Institute, a research organisation based in Springfield, Illinois, added: “Record-based studies in Finland and the United States have conclusively proven that the risk of women dying in the year following an abortion is significantly higher than the risk of death if the pregnancy is allowed to continue to term. So the hypothesis that the physical risks of childbirth surpass the risks associated with abortion is no longer tenable. That means most abortion providers have had to look to mental health advantages to justify abortion over childbirth.

“This New Zealand study, with its unsurpassed controls for possible alternative explanations, confirms the findings of several recent studies linking abortion to higher rates of psychiatric hospitalisation, depression, generalised anxiety disorder, substance abuse, suicidal tendencies, poor bonding with and parenting of later children, and sleep disorders,” he said. “It should inevitably lead to a change in the standard of care offered to women facing problem pregnancies.”

Reardon also warned of the stance of many abortion providers that “insist that it is not their job to try to figure out whether an abortion is more likely to hurt than help a particular woman”.

“They see their role as to ensure that any woman who wants an abortion is provided one,” he said.

He added: “Women deserve better. They deserve to have doctors who act like doctors. That means doctors who will give good medical advice based on the best available evidence as applied to each patient’s individual risk profile.”

The New Zealand Herald speculated that the study may lead to a reduction in the number of abortions that may be allowed to be carried out.