ABSTRACT
This chapter reconsiders the ostensibly settled question of abortion’s impact on women’s mental health. I show that, pace certain authorities, the best available evidence from pro-abortion sources clearly indicates that abortion has a causal role in a variety of psychiatric conditions, including suicide and anxiety. Women having abortions for unwanted pregnancies are at higher risk than women continuing their pregnancies, the latter of whom are almost invariably glad they did so in retrospect. I then demonstrate that one major explanation for this phenomenon—abortion being stigmatized—is both incomplete and, to some extent, irrelevant, since the basic reality of abortion is ineliminable. While abortion can cause considerable trauma, almost all women who deliver an unwanted pregnancy are glad they did so in retrospect, and no longer wish they could have had an abortion. Women have a right to know this information, and clinicians have a right to refuse abortions performed only on mental health grounds.
