NewsRescue
According to a January study, the majority of women who had abortions said that outside pressures influenced their decision to abort. Furthermore, those who felt pressured into having an abortion were more likely to have had negative emotional and mental health reactions to the decision.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute, an organization that leads the pro-life movement with “groundbreaking scientific, statistical, and medical research,” surveyed 1,000 women in the United States between the ages of 41 and 45 in a recent peer-reviewed study.
According to the study, 61% of women felt “high levels of pressure” to have the procedure done.
According to the respondents, “perceived pressure to abort was significantly associated with more negative emotions.” Abortion pressure was also linked to disruptions in daily life, work, or relationships, intrusive thoughts and flashbacks to the abortion, frequent feelings of loss and grief about the abortion, and moral conflict about their decision to abort.
Tessa Longbons, senior research associate at Lozier Institute and study co-author, argued that abortion does not empower women but rather controls them through the “abortion industry’s coercion.”
Women with a history of abortion reported “higher levels of stress” when it came to completing the survey, and they were four times more likely than women without a history of abortion to abandon it once the topic was brought up.
“A history of abortion, particularly when there was pressure to abort, is associated with more stress when completing questionnaires touching on abortion experiences and with a higher dropout rate,” the report stated.
According to the study, abortion providers should screen for potential perceived pressures and provide counseling services to ensure that women are not pushed into having unwanted abortions.
“Abortion clinics cannot claim to be pro-woman while allowing the majority of their clients to be pressured into unwanted abortions,” said David Reardon, Ph.D., a Lozier Institute associate scholar and lead author of the study.
“Surely, in a country torn apart by political debate over abortion, these findings highlight one point on which we should all be able to agree,” Reardon added. “No woman should ever be forced to have an unwanted abortion. Abortion clinics must clearly improve pre-abortion screening and counseling in order to prevent unsafe and unwanted abortions.”
