Women face increased risk of depression, hospitalization for mental health after abortion: study
Women who have abortions face an “increased risk of mental health-related hospitalization” compared to those who carry their pregnancies to term, according to a recent study.
Last month, the Journal of Psychiatric Research published a study by researchers with the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre, University of Sherbrooke and McGill University, titled “Induced abortion and implications for long-term mental health: a cohort study of 1.2 million pregnancies.”
Researchers oversaw a retrospective cohort study of 28,721 induced abortions and approximately 1.22 million births at hospitals in Quebec, Canada, between 2006 and 2022.
They followed up with women after their pregnancies to identify any mental health-related hospitalizations to see if there was a link between induced abortion and hospitalization.
According to the study, “abortion is associated with an increased risk of mental health-related hospitalization in the long term, but the association weakens with time.”
“Rates of mental health-related hospitalization were higher following induced abortions than other pregnancies,” noted the report, adding that women who had abortions experienced higher rates of “substance use disorders” and “suicide attempts” when “compared with other pregnancies.”
“The associations were greater for patients who had preexisting mental illness," or were younger than 25 at the time of their abortion.
David Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute, a pro-life organization, said in a statement released last week that the study was the most recent confirmation of a link between abortion and severe mental health problems.
“This is the latest in a string of record-based studies that do not suffer from any self-selection or recall bias. Plus, the authors fully controlled for women’s mental health histories before and after their abortions,” said Reardon.
“They found that prior mental health problems clearly magnify the risk that abortion will exacerbate the risk of a psychiatric crisis, but there [was] also elevated risks for women with no prior mental health issues.”
Reardon went on to note that while “it is difficult to know when, if ever, abortion may be the sole cause of any mental health problem,” it was also “ridiculous to assert that abortion never contributes to mental health issues.”
“We now know that the majority of abortion patients say that their abortions did negatively impact their mental health. To insist that abortion never impacts mental health is, essentially … an absurd, ideologically driven fantasy,” he added.
In 2023, BMC Psychiatry, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal, published an analysis of 15 papers that found, overall, 34.5% of women worldwide who had an abortion experienced depression.
"In conclusion, the occurrence of post-abortion depression has been observed to be widespread globally," stated the 2023 study. "Healthcare providers should prioritize the provision of post-abortion counseling, care, and emotional support to women."
