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Sleep Disorders After Abortion May Be a Symptom of Trauma
Earlier this month, millions of Americans lost an hour of sleep when we moved our clocks ahead. This is not the only reason why some people may not be sleeping well. Stress, being too busy, caring for a family, health problems, and other factors may all serve to disrupt sleep and leave us tired and unable to function well the next day. Getting enough sleep is important to maintaining good health and can cause severe detrimental effects when we don’t get it.
For many women, a sleep disorder may be the result of something deeper: abortion-related trauma. A 2006 study published in Sleep, the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, found that women who experienced abortion were more likely to be treated for sleep disorders or disturbances compared to women who gave birth. 1
The researchers examined medical records for 56,284 low-income women in California who gave birth or underwent an abortion in the first six months of 1989. They excluded women who had been treated for sleep disturbances or disorders in the 12 to 18 months prior to abortion or delivery.
The data showed that, up to four years later, women who underwent abortions were more likely to be treated for sleep disorders afterwards compared to those who gave birth. The difference was greatest during the first 180 days after the end of the pregnancy, when aborting women were approximately twice as likely to seek treatment for sleep disorders. Significant differences between aborting and child-bearing women persisted for three years.
Sleep Disorders Linked to Trauma
More research is needed to to see if women who have abortions are more likely to experience specific symptoms of sleep disturbance and whether those symptoms could be markers for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other problems.
Numerous studies have shown that trauma victims will often experience sleep difficulties. The authors believe their findings support a growing understanding that some women may have traumatic reactions to abortion. In a 2004 study of American and Russian women who had abortions:
In the book Forbidden Grief, author and therapist Dr. Theresa Burke notes that nightmares and insomnia are commonly reported among women after abortion. She writes: “When the conscious mind sleeps, the defense mechanisms in charge of repelling unwanted thoughts are relaxed. This is why intrusive thoughts related to a suppressed trauma often arise in the form of dreams or nightmares.” 3
Other studies have found that women with a history of abortion are subsequently at increased risk for depression, generalized anxiety disorder, substance abuse, suicidal tendencies, psychiatric hospitalization, and other problems.
This research points to a need for doctors, mental health professionals and others who see women with sleep problems to routinely inquire about prior pregnancy losses, as identification of unresolved grief issues may improve treatment of sleep disorders, anxiety, and other psychiatric problems linked to abortion.
1. DC Reardon and PK Coleman, “Relative Treatment Rates for Sleep Disorders and Sleep Disturbances Following Abortion and Childbirth: A Prospective Record Based-Study,” Sleep 29(1):105-106, 2006.
2. VM Rue et. al., “Induced abortion and traumatic stress: A preliminary comparison of American and Russian women,” Medical Science Monitor 10:SR5-16, 2004.
3. T. Burke with D. Reardon, Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2007).
Group Issues Call for Better Screening and Informed Consent
The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Great Britain has issued a statement saying that some women may suffer mental health problems after abortion and calling on health care providers to provide better screening and informed consent.
The statement was issued in response to a request from the House of Commons for the Royal College to update its 1994 report on mental health and abortion. The new, one-page statement said that the College had undertaken a review of existing research and that a “full systematic review around abortion and mental health is required.”
The statement goes on to say that while the question of how abortion impacts women has not yet been fully resolved, “mental disorders can occur for some women during pregnancy and after birth.”
It also calls on health care providers to screen women for pre-existing mental health disorders and other known risk factors that could cause problems after abortion, although it does not call for doctors not to do abortions in those cases or to screen for coercion. The statement also addresses the issue of informed consent by saying that the College “recognizes that good practice in relation to abortion will include informed consent.”
“Consent cannot be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information regarding the possible risks and benefits to physical and mental health,” the College stated.
At least one study in the U.S. has found that many women are not given adequate counseling or information before undergoing an abortion. A survey found that more than 83 percent of women having abortions said they did not receive adequate counseling before abortion, while 79 percent said they were not counseled on alternatives and 67 percent said they did receive any counseling. 1
This is especially a concern in light of other data from the survey showing that more than 50 percent of the women were uncertain about undergoing an abortion and 64 percent said they felt pressured by others to abort. Further, a survey of women seeking health care services found that 95 percent said they wanted to be informed about all the risks of elective medical procedures such as abortion, and 69 percent said they wanted to be informed about all alternatives to a procedure.
The new statement from the Royal College of Psychiatrists comes as Parliament is considering a measure to prohibit abortions for “social reasons” after 20 weeks gestation, instead of the 24 weeks currently allowed. Abortions in Great Britain are supposed to be performed after 24 weeks only if there is a danger to the mother’s physical or mental health.
Unfortunately, the leading professional mental health organizations in the U.S. have continued to deny or ignore evidence that abortion increases the risk of mental health problems among women, despite the publication of peer-reviewed studies linking abortion to increased rates of suicide, clinical depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorders and other difficulties.
Citations:
1. VM Rue et. al., “Induced abortion and traumatic stress: A preliminary comparison of American and Russian women,” Medical Science Monitor 10:SR5-16, 2004.
While the movement to acknowledge, raise awareness, and provide help to women struggling after abortion has been steadily growing over the past few decades, there has been comparatively little focus on the experiences of men who have lost children to abortion.
This fall, the first ever international conference on men and abortion, organized by the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, was held in San Francisco. The conference, called Reclaiming Fatherhood: A Multifaceted Examination of Men Dealing With Abortion, drew together researchers, counselors, and post-abortive men to present information on men’s abortion experiences and to explore ways to help men heal after abortion.
Resources for Men
The conference organizers have put together a web site at www.menandabortion.info that includes research, articles, personal stories, information and healing resources for men. It also includes information for counselors and others who provide post-abortion help to men.
The Fatherhood Forever Foundation at www.fatherhoodforever.org/index.html is dedicated to helping men find healing and hope after abortion by creating awareness that abortion does have an impact on men and providing encouragement and resources to those seeking help.
The Men’s Abortion Network at www.lifeissues.org/men/MAN/index.html is a network of researchers, counselors and others who promote healing and create awareness of men’s abortion experiences. The site contains helpful articles and links to counseling resources. A speaker’s bureau is also available.
Men who have been involved in an abortion are invited to participate on an ongoing research study about their experiences. To take part in this confidential survey, visit www.abortionresearch.net. Women, grandparents, and medical personnel who have been involved in abortion are also invited to participate in surveys.
Rachel’s Vineyard post-abortion healing ministry has information for men on their web site at www.rachelsvineyard.org/men/index.htm. The group
provides support for men struggling after abortion through weekend retreats and email support.
Each of these sites contains links to other sites and information on awareness, hope and healing for men. Visit our men and abortion page at www.unfairchoice.info/men.htm.
Dismissal of Post-Abortion Injustice, Trauma and Pain
Leaves Many With No Place to Turn
Melinda Tankard Reist, Giving Sorrow Words
Conventional wisdom has it that abortion is mostly trouble-free. Because of this, those who are troubled are made - indeed, often forced to be - invisible.
Attitudes towards women overwhelmed by grief following abortion demonstrate a cruel indifference to women’s pain. Their suffering is considered a figment of their imagination, a by-product of social/religious conditioning. In short, they are an embarrassment.
There is another constraint on their expression of grief. The politics surrounding abortion have drowned out the voices of women harmed by it.
How free are women to share their anguish when advocates extol abortion as “an act of individual self-determination,” and a “rite of passage into womanhood,” a “positive moral good” for women and “a source of fulfillment, transcendence, and growth”? Women whose lives are shattered by the abortion experience and for whom abortion was not a “maturational milestone,” women coerced or pressured into unwanted abortions, women who did not feel abortion made them a “mistress of their own destiny,” are cast aside as oversensitive, psychologically unstable, victims of socially constructed guilt. Their experience is trivialized.
When an article I wrote about women’s negative experiences of abortion appeared in The Canberra Times in 1997, a Family Planning figure hastily wrote in to dismiss post-abortion trauma. Similar reactions surfaced in a feminist e-mail discussion about my book that lasted several days. The project was treated with contempt by all but two participants. Someone suggested a quick on-line collection of “stories of women not hurt by abortion” be compiled. This reaction unnecessarily pits women’s differing stories against each other and, once again, suggests there is only one authentic experiential reality when it comes to abortion.
A woman’s abortion pain is discounted and minimized due to the prevailing view that a termination is really no big deal-an easy fix. Abortion is promoted by many who dominate the discourse on the subject as a procedure without repercussions. Because of this, attempts to discuss women’s abortion suffering have been constrained.
Suffering post-aborted women feel a resentment towards a society which ignores or neglects their suffering. They are not allowed to acknowledge or mourn their loss openly. The disdain for women suffering after-abortion trauma sends the message: you’re only upset because you’ve chosen to get upset. Herald Sun writer Evelyn Tsitas epitomizes this attitude: “Abortion can be an emotional subject-particularly for people who choose to get upset about it. There is a movement taking hold called: ‘I’ll always regret what I did and want to burn in hell for it.’”
This mocking response to women’s abortion-related suffering makes them feel they’re being melodramatic, oversensitive, attention-seeking. But many women are suffering emotionally from a procedure which was portrayed as emotionally benign. They are filled with feelings of self-loss, daily haunted by their abortion experience. “We live with that regret till the day we die and for some we were wishing we too were dead,” wrote a woman who signed her name “Tortured.”
These women might have been told “there is nothing there,” or that their fetuses look like “scraps of paper” (the description given to one woman by an abortion counselor). But to them, these were flesh and blood babies; for them, a baby died in an abortion. “I do not think I terminated a ‘bunch of cells’ but a real human being,” wrote Marguerite.
Their arms feel empty, they don’t like looking at babies, they cry often. They ask: “What would my baby have looked like? Was it a boy or a girl?” Would-have-been birthdays are quietly marked year after year.
As Margaret Nicol points out in her important work on maternal grief, it is a myth that a mother only bonds with her child after birth. A woman never forgets a pregnancy and the baby that might have been. When the baby is lost and there are no memories or visible reminders of the baby, “the feeling of emptiness and nothingness becomes pervasive and it is this uneasy and anxious void that makes women wonder if they’re going crazy.”
The Silence
Beatrice, who underwent a second trimester abortion, describes what this feels like: “My grief will be unresolved because you cannot grieve the normal way, you can’t repeat and repeat yourself. My husband and I never talk about the inner feelings … although I’m sure he must think of it too. It’s just taboo and you put it to the back of your mind … the regret will always be there.”
Katarina, a psychologist, wrote: “My sister has since had two stillbirths-as a family we have grieved and empathized with her and her husband’s dreadful pain. Inside of me I felt cheated as no one had grieved with me for my two lost children-not even me. My sister’s children died at the same time as both my losses-I felt responsible, guilty and so alone. When my mum says no one in the family has experienced pain like my sister my heart cries out silently-but I have.”
E. Joanne Angelo, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine in the U.S., has written about the importance of the mourning process:
“Grief following a death in the family is a universally accepted experience. A period of mourning following the loss of a loved one is a normal expectation in every culture. It is also generally understood that if this mourning process is blocked or impacted, there will be negative consequences.”
But there is no period of mourning for a woman suffering grief after an abortion. There are no grief teams, no body for her to cuddle and dress, no footprints or photographs to keep in an album, no ceremony, no grave on which to lay flowers; in short, nothing to acknowledge that this baby ever existed. A grieving post-aborted woman faces a conspiracy of silence.
Excerpted from the book Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief After Abortion by Melinda Tankard Reist. Copyright 2007 Melinda Tankard Reist. For ordering information, visit http://www.unchoice.info or call 1-888-412-2676.
The recent suicide of a British woman who had undergone an abortion points to the urgent need to raise awareness of the problem of unwanted abortions and post-abortion trauma.
The London Daily Mail reported that an inquest was held on the death of Emma Beck, a 30-year-old artist who underwent an abortion in September 2006. Her mother told the court that her daughter, who had been pregnant with twins, had not wanted to abort but that Beck’s boyfriend had not wanted the pregnancy. Beck’s doctor said that she had been “extremely vulnerable” prior to the abortion and had missed or cancelled two appointments for the abortion.
However, the hospital where the abortion was performed said that Beck had received adequate counseling, even though the regular counselor was away on vacation and the doctor who performed the abortion wrote on a form that Beck was living alone and had no support. The court heard that Beck had made “numerous cries for help” after the abortion and had made a previous suicide attempt the month before her death. She died in February 2007.
In a suicide note quoted by the Daily Mail, Beck wrote: “Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital. … I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies - they need me; no one else does.”
Her story echoes that of other women who said they were in despair and suicidal after their abortions, many of which were coerced or unwanted. Judith, quoted in Hope and Healing, writes:
“My doctor said the baby-at six-and-a-half weeks-was ‘just a blob,’ and I believed him. Afterwards, before I even got home, I began to cry. It didn’t help. When finally I stopped crying on the outside, I kept crying on the inside. … I felt cheated, betrayed, and manipulated. I went to counseling and the psychologist said ‘Forgive yourself,’ and ‘Let yourself go on.’ She didn’t say how.”
Another woman, Janet, a police officer, writes of trying to shoot herself after her abortion:
“With quiet deliberation, I took my handgun from under my pillow. I chambered a round, walked into my living room, sat in a chair, put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger. … To this day, I cannot think why the gun did not fire … I find it amazing in retrospect, how we can function so well in front of others, while suffering like that.”
Research Links Abortion to Coercion, Suicide
In one survey of U.S. and Russian women who underwent abortions, 60 percent of the American women said they “felt like part of me died” after having an abortion and 36 percent had thoughts of suicide. 64 percent said they felt pressured by others to abort and more than 50 percent said they felt rushed or uncertain about having an abortion. However, 84 percent said they did not receive adequate counseling and 79 percent said they were not given any information about alternatives to abortion. 1
Record-based studies of women in Finland and the U.S. found that women who had abortions were more likely to commit suicide than women who carried the pregnancy to term. In Finland, aborting women were six times more likely to commit suicide in the following year than delivering women, 2 while a U.S. study that looked at outcomes for up to eight years after the pregnancy found that women who had abortions had a 154 percent higher risk of suicide than women who had giving birth. 3
For more information on suicide and abortion, click here.
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Citations
1. VM Rue et. al., “Induced abortion and traumatic stress: A preliminary comparison of American and Russian women,” Medical Science Monitor 10(10): SR5-16, 2004.
2. M. Gissler, “Injury deaths, suicides and homicides associated with pregnancy, Finland 1987-2000,” European J. Public Health 15(5):459-63, 2005.
3. DC Reardon et. al., “Deaths Associated With Pregnancy Outcome: A Record Linkage Study of Low Income Women,” Southern Medical Journal 95(8):834-41, Aug. 2002.
In Wisconsin, Manishkumar Patel is facing felony charges for allegedly putting an abortion drug in his pregnant girlfriend’s drink without her knowledge.
According to the Associated Press, Darshana Patel (the couple has the same last name) became suspicious after noticing white powder on the rim of a glass that Minshkumar Patel gave her. She sent the powder to a laboratory for testing, which showed that the powder was mifepristone, which is used in the abortion drug RU-486.
Darshana, who later miscarried, had a four-year-old son with Patel and suffered a previous miscarriage in 2006. She said Patel had been preparing meals for her during her pregnancy. Police said Patel admitted that he brought the drugs from India and said that he didn’t want any more children.
The case follows the arrest in August of a Maryland man who allegedly spiked his pregnant girlfriend’s drink with a hormone that is used to induce abortion in cows. Lauren Tucker, who was 15 weeks pregnant at the time, told authorities that her boyfriend, William Stanley Sutton III, had wanted her to have an abortion but she refused. She and her unborn child were apparently unharmed.
These cases are only part of a number of cases involving violence or other methods used to coerce or force pregnant women into unwanted abortions . (See the report, Forced Abortions in America, at www.unchoice.info/Coerced.htm for more information.) Studies have found that homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women, and cases of violence against pregnant women are serious and widespread.
Yet women may also be subjected to other forms of coercion to compel them to undergo unwanted abortions, including pressure, threats, and disinformation from counselor and others in positions of authority. In fact, in a survey of women who had undergone abortions, 64 percent of American respondents reported feeling pressured to abort by others, 54 percent said they were not sure about having an abortion, and more than 80 percent said they were not counseled on alternatives or received adequate counseling before the abortion (67 percent said they received no counseling before abortion).
In response to this epidemic of violence and violation of the rights of women, a group of concerned citizens in Missouri have launched the Prevention of Coerced and Unsafe Abortions Act. If passed, this voter initiative would allow women to hold abortionists accountable for failing to screen for coercion or for other known factors that put women at risk for problems after abortion. The Act is based on the Elliot Institute’s model legislation and can be viewed online at www.stopforcedabortions.org. More information on how to get involved can be found there as well.
UK Cardinal Asks Catholic Hospital to Stop Referring for Abortion
States, “If it came to crunch I would say this is no longer a Catholic hospital but I won’t want to do that.”
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-OConnor, Britain’s highest Catholic official, is standing firm in his refusal to allow a famous Catholic hospital to make abortion referrals or provide contraceptives.
A leading web site on science issues ran an article on Tuesday from its “junk science” reporting that misleads women by saying the abortion-breast cancer link is nonexistent. It also says there is little or no way to prevent breast cancer, despite studies showing that having children helps protect women from the disease.
Three Alabama abortion facilities have been taken off temporary probation after correcting the health problems that state inspectors encountered. Rick Harris, director of the state Bureau of Health Provider Standards, said the three abortion centers in question are now in compliance with state regulations.
Aurora, IL – After pro-life efforts that kept the nation’s largest abortion mill from opening for two weeks, Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner issued a permit that allowed Planned Parenthood clinic to open on October 2.
“We’ve just begun to fight,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “We don’t give up on the lives of innocent babies that easily.”
Operation Rescue released today information to support the seven allegations made on a citizen petition effort to convene a grand jury to investigate alleged illegalities at a Planned Parenthood in Overland Park, Kansas. The Petition is being circulated by the L.I.F.E. Coalition, which includes Concerned Women For America, Operation Rescue, and Women Influencing the Nation.
“We are not just grasping at straws, here,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “In some cases, this evidence has been in the public forum for years. Other evidence only recently surfaced. There is ample reason to believe, based on public information alone, that Planned Parenthood may be breaking the law.”
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer Press Release
“Yesterday, journalists reported that scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center speculated on the reasons why childbearing protects women from breast cancer. They discussed a paper published in the journal Cancer Research.”
A new study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons yesterday finds that abortion is the best predictor of whether women will contract breast cancer. Abortion also is a better indicator of future breast cancer issue than six other commonly used factors.
Medical records support claims of illegal abortion and unethical conduct
“Operation Rescue announced today that a formal complaint has been filed with the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts against abortionists Shelley Sella and George R. Tiller for alleged illegal acts, unethical conduct, and breach of the standard of care in the 2003 late-term abortion of Michelle Armesto.”