Post-abortion Trauma

217 Pages·2014·1.24 MB·English

Pontifical Academy for Life
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ISBN 978-88-97830-27-6 P 2014

Human Life in Some Documents of the Magisterium
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FAITHt ArNaD uHUmMaAN LIFE
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EXISTENTIAL AFTERMATHS
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Rome 2014
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All right reserved
© Pontifical Academy for Life
ISBN 978-88-97830-27-6
Contents
Presentation of the Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Vincent M. Rue, Ph.D.
Clinical dimensions of post-abortion trauma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
 1. The Many faces of trauma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
 2. Abortion as trauma ............................ 30
 3. Abortion’s aftermath: clinical realities ............ 36
 4. Grief & trauma ................................ 46
 5. Post-traumatic stress disorder ................... 57
 6. Post-abortion syndrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
 7. Special considerations .......................... 92
 8. Prevention & Conclusion ....................... 98
 Table 1 .......................................... 104
 Table 2 .......................................... 107
 References ....................................... 108
Priscilla K. Coleman, Ph.D.
Women at risk for post-abortion mental health problems and
abortion associated relationship challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
 1. Review of Academic Literature on Risk Factors for
     Post-Abortion Mental Health Problems .......... 149
 2. Review of Academic Literature on the Relational
     Consequences of Abortion ....................... 156
 Table 1 .......................................... 160
 Appendix A: Full Citations of Studies listed in Table 1 180
 References ....................................... 190
CONTENTS
Justo Aznar, Md. Ph.D. and Germán Cerdá, Md. Ph.D.
Abortion and women’s mental health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
 Discussion ....................................... 204
 Conclusions ...................................... 206
 References ....................................... 207
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presentation of the volume
Presentation of the Volume
1) Choosing the Topic
the collection of studies contained in this volume was born
out of the widely shared awareness that having an abortion
leaves remnants of a profound suffering, and which in not a
few cases leads to real psychological damage. the problem of
post-abortion trauma today is of both a scientific and human
relevance and we can no longer ignore it on account of the
enormous spread of abortion in many countries of the world.
We see that in the current state of things, the debate
regarding the existence and characteristics of post-abortion
trauma often appears to be conditioned by an ethical approach
present in various cultures, an approach that can vary between
considering abortion to be essentially a means of birth control
(by now the most common) and condemning it as a severely
grave violation of the sacredness of unborn human life. in
many of the studies conducted up until our current day – the
collection, analysis and interpretation of data – the results
are strongly influenced by the position assumed prior to any
undertaken research. According to some individuals, easy
access to abortion is a kind of modern success and otherwise
abortion is seen above all as the deprivation of the future life of
a being not yet born. In the latter case it is easier to recognize,
in addition to the harm done to the baby, the damage inflicted
upon the woman which continues to unfold after the fact.
the main objective of any emphasis on the damage
done to one’s psychological health by procuring abortion is
generally to provide potential deterrents to abortion, both in
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legislation as well as, and above all, in the context of practical
decision-making. In other words, the existence and gravity
of post-abortion trauma would only be a further reason to
seriously consider the prevention of abortion.
in relation to the perspective of the studies undertaken by
the authors of the present volume, it is important to clarify
that when one speaks of abortion, this may be in reference
to one of many very different kinds of situations. There is
abortion defined as “spontaneous” inasmuch as the death of
the conceived occurs despite the will of any person – that is,
it occurs for some medical reason pertaining to the mother
or the fetus which renders the continuing development of the
conceived unto birth impossible. The so-called “voluntary”
abortion, inasmuch as it is procured intentionally, is thereby
the consequence of deliberate choice. In this case, an abortion
has a direct connection to the responsibility of the person who
chooses it. Yet in the current social context there is often a
third kind of abortion. it is generally not considered to be
distinct from voluntary abortion, but it nonetheless appears
worthy of its own separate space in that there are implications
of this kind of abortion that are very much related to the
intention behind the work found in this volume. We speak
of situations of voluntary abortion, in which the conditioning
endured by the woman through external factors results as
particularly important. here one thinks above all of the
prenatal diagnoses that show positive results for the presence
of certain developmental anomalies or other health problems
in the newborn – today this situation almost inevitably yields
to the practical application of abortion, an imposition that the
woman is rarely able to resist.
These three situations exert a very different impact on the
psychological condition of the woman and most certainly on
the path leading up to the event of an abortion. in the case
of spontaneous abortion, a desired and willed pregnancy
ends itself. on an existential level such an abortion almost
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always means the loss of a child, one’s son or daughter. In
this case one experiences the harm inflicted on account of the
loss of someone important whom the woman and the family
expected to welcome. Nevertheless, since the spontaneous
abortion comes entirely as a fact simply to be endured,
wherein the woman is rendered a passive subject in relation
to the determination of the event, one can expect this type
of abortion to follow the ordinary course of unfolding grief.
On the contrary, voluntary abortion implies accepting
responsibility for the interruption of the development of
the conceived, a responsibility that one may try to hide
yet cannot erase. Lastly, in the case wherein the decision
to abort positions itself as a consequence of pressure and
conditioning, the woman might live through the sensation of
the unavoidable sense of the decision to abort. Yet at the same
time there are the marks of the presence of an element of a
personal decision that cannot be denied. voluntary abortion
– more or less conditioned in the final decision – leads to a
more difficult kind of mental processing, bringing with it a
serious state of suffering that sometimes lasts for a lifetime.
For this reason the efforts of the scholars in this volume
are above all concentrated on the subsequent psychological
damage in this kind of abortion, with the aim of investigating
the preparatory or supporting factors, of studying the clinical
characteristics of this kind of abortion (some theorize the
existence of a true and proper syndrome correlative to the
event of voluntary abortion), always intent on uncovering
adequate courses of action with respect to assisting women
who are living through this experience.
2) The Significance of the Problem
As expected, the phenomenon of post-abortion trauma
shows itself to be particularly relevant to the continuing
spread of the practice of abortion, something that is also
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