The damaging effects
of having an abortion

Mary-Louise Kurey, Director,
Respect Life Office,
Archdiocese of Chicago

(appeared in The Chicago Tribune on April 10, 2003)

This is regarding "Refocusing abortion opposition" (Perspective, March 30), by Tribune correspondent Judith Graham.

Project Rachel is a program that aids women who suffer profound emotional, psychological or spiritual aftermath from one or more abortions. The program provides hope and healing to countless women throughout the Chicago metropolitan area and nationally.

Graham's assertion that our work in assisting these women to rediscover their joy is just an attempt to "refocus abortion opposition" is not only false but damaging to any woman who has experienced the trauma of abortion.

Graham's article features a study published more than two years ago by Brenda Major at the University of California-Santa Barbara as proof that post-abortive syndrome does not exist. But Major, whom Graham deems to be "prominent," conducted a study that is inherently flawed because her subjects' abortions occurred only two years earlier, whereas post-abortive trauma typically does not set in until at least five years after an abortion. The majority of women who call Project Rachel hotlines have experienced an abortion five, 10 or 20 years before.

On the contrary, the authoritative study published in the January 2003 issue of the medical journal Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey (published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a company that is not in any way affiliated with the pro-life movement) noted that, "Induced abortion increased the risks for both subsequent pre-term delivery and mood disorders substantial enough to provoke attempts of self-harm. . . . We conclude that informed consent before induced abortion should include information about the subsequent risk of pre-term delivery and depression."

The three professors of medicine who authored this study found that there is substantial medical evidence for post-abortive syndrome, contrary to Graham's assertions.

In addition, Graham recycles the well-worn myth that former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop reported in 1989 that there is no scientific evidence for post-abortive syndrome. His actual words at that time were, "the scientific studies [to date] do not provide conclusive data about the health effects of abortion on women."

Koop concluded that more comprehensive studies were needed, not that post-abortion aftermath did not exist.

Fourteen years later, we have such a study, and yet while it was provided to Graham, she chose not to include its findings in her article.

Those who are concerned about the health and well-being of America's women need to enter into a meaningful dialogue on the psychological aspects of abortion, which takes into account all of the evidence, rather than choosing just some. By editorializing the facts, omitting the most recent and authoritative scientific evidence, and misquoting people of the past and present, Graham's article succeeds only in adding to the barrage of misinformation that tells millions of women suffering in silence that they have no right to grieve.