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Monday, October 4, 2010

The Myth of Post Abortion Syndrome - debunked AGAIN!

As all six of you who read this blog know, the attempt by anti-choicers to market some fabrication of theirs called post abortion syndrome is one of my pet peeves. Thanks to SW, I just read a fantastic article debunking it again. I'd like to say "once and for all," but we know those anti-choicers don't care much for science. But for those of you who need some ammunition, take a look at an article in Bioethics by E.M. Dadlez and William L. Andrews called, "Post-Abortion Syndrome: Creating An Affliction." (See Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) Volume 24 Number 9 2010 pp 445–452). I know. I'm almost a year late on this one, but it is as relevant today as it was last year. 

Here's a link to the abstract if you need help getting it or want to buy it or do whatever we have to do to access it.

Abstract:
"The contention that abortion harms women constitutes a new strategy employed by the pro-life movement to supplement arguments about fetal rights. David C. Reardon is a prominent promoter of this strategy. Postabortion syndrome purports to establish that abortion psychologically harms women and, indeed, can harm persons associated with women who have abortions. Thus, harms that abortion is alleged to produce are multiplied. Claims of repression are employed to complicate efforts to disprove the existence of psychological harm and causal antecedents of trauma are only selectively investigated. We argue that there is no such thing as post-abortion syndrome and that the psychological harms Reardon and others claim abortion inflicts on women can usually be ascribed to different causes. We question the evidence accumulated by Reardon and his analysis of data accumulated by others. Most importantly, we question whether the conclusions Reardon has drawn follow from the evidence he cites.

Excellent. The full article is well worth the read.

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