The Emotional and Physical Effects of Pregnancy Loss on the Woman and Her Family:

A Multi-Centered Study of Post-Abortion Syndrome and Post-Abortion Survivor Syndrome

Professor Philip G. Ney, MD, FRCPC, MA, FRANZCP, RPsych

May 2000

Originally presented to an audience in Washington, DC, USA

*Tables are not included. For a full text and table version of this article, please contact: mtjoy@vanisle.net

Introduction

Truth has never been accepted in its day.  We thank God for a few intrepid investigators and wise communicators, otherwise many uncomfortable facts would never be known.  This is particularly true for all those insights which make us most uncomfortable.  Truth about the effects of abortion on the family is probably the most discomforting and the least welcome evidence the world must deal with today.

We should not be surprised that the wholesale killing of innocent children has a destructive impact on the individuals directly involved.  What has gone mostly unreported is its deleterious consequences for the family.  More particularly, humans refuse to recognize what abortion has done to the ecological balances that maintain our species.  From our research it is possible to extrapolate into the future and predict that unless these balances be corrected, the species cannot survive.

Every investigator has a bias.  It is best that these be stated at the outset.  Mine are;  1) There is only one truth.  2)  If we do not learn from history we must repeat it.  3) What is bad for the recipient is as bad for the giver.  We cannot benefit at the expense of our neighbour.  If it is good for him it is good for us (Universal Ethic of Mutual Benefit).  4) The more uncomfortable the truth to an individual's self-righteous self perception, the less likely it is to be accepted.  5) The first original sin was to be or to be like God.  The second original sin was to know good and evil.  Now it is not possible to know one without the other.

Methodology

The following findings are based on two major ongoing studies.  We are collecting information from a variety of clinical populations of woman in Canada, The United States, Ireland, France and China regarding the effects of all kinds of pregnancy losses on general emotional and physical health.  This data is obtained by self report on valid and reliable questionnaires.  It was collected mostly from patients who were given the questionnaire while waiting to see their family physician.  Most of the measures are visual analogue scales, giving us the opportunity to record the full range of effects on health.  To date we have a sample of 3,300 women.  The main sample of women have similar demographic characteristics to the general population in that age group.  Although there are slightly more married women, we can generalize our findings at least to North America.

The second study is an assessment of the impact of child abuse and neglect.   Our sample includes a variety of clinical populations of children, men and women and a contrast group from a normal high school.  Assessments were made independently by the child, the parents, and by a staff member. We have used visual analogue scales to measure the causes and effects of physical abuse, verbal abuse, physical neglect, emotional and intellectual neglect, and sexual abuse.

From our assessments, done in a variety of ways, we believe we have assessed our questionnaires and established their validity and reliability.  We believe that the sampling is sufficiently representative of Canadians.

Effects of Pregnancy Loss on Women's Health

Table 1 shows the outcome of pregnancies at various ages of women in Canada on which most of these statistics are based.  As in most of North America, between twenty-five and thirty percent of teenagers abort their first pregnancy.  It also indicates that when the number of abortions are subtracted, teenagers are as able as older women to give birth to full term normal pregnancies.

When a multiple regression analysis is done on the forty-four factors we considered as important to a woman's health, the most important factors are (Table 2); the quality of family life, a loss during the first pregnancy and lack of partner support.  Table 3 indicates that of all the pregnancy losses, abortion has the greatest impact on a woman's assessment of her present health.  These pregnancy losses have a cumulative effect (Figure 1).  It appears that the outcome of the first pregnancy is most important (Table 4) in determining the outcomes of the following pregnancies.  Twenty-one percent of second pregnancies are aborted if the first one is aborted compared to five percent if the first is full term normal birth weight.

When asked about the direct effects of pregnancy losses on their health, women indicate that abortion and miscarriage have the greatest impact (Table 5).  If the other factors are left out of the calculations and abortions are compared to miscarriages, it appears that abortions have approximately twice the impact.  If the first pregnancy is aborted, compared to full term outcome, the miscarriage rate is approximately double (Figure 2) in the second pregnancy.

It appears that twenty-two percent of the women freely admit they have a moderate to marked need for professional help to mourn their pregnancy loss (Table 6).

It appears from this that all types of pregnancy loss have a deleterious effect on a woman's general health, but abortion has a much greater impact.  It seems that when a pregnancy loss is not mourned it results in a depression in the patient.  Depression interferes with the immune system, making the woman more vulnerable to both infections and cancers.  Abortion creates more psychological turmoil and the loss is much more difficult to more because;  1) it creates more complicated conflicts, 2) of the ambivalent regard (love and hate) for the bereaved object, 3) the fetus is never held, named, buried or mourned, 4) there is no one they can talk to easily, 5) it is an event that is not supposed to have happened.  Too often physicians not only don't recognize the impact of unmourned pregnancies, but studiously ignore the fact that abortion is an unmourned pregnancy and has a greater negative impact than other losses on a woman's health.

Why Do Women Abort?

When the computer does a logistic regression on all the factors we considered that might contribute to why women abort, it appears  four factors, lack of partner support, young age, marital status and low objection to abortion are the most important (Table 7).  When all kinds of losses are considered, it appears that these are more likely to occur where there has been a previous loss and where there is not sufficient partner support.  The third pregnancy is shown here (Table 8) as an example.

Partner Support

Both the miscarriage and the abortion rate is much higher when the partner is not supportive or is absent.  In the first pregnancy (Table 9), the abortion rate is four times greater if the partner is not supportive and six times greater if he is absent.  In the second pregnancy, the abortion rate is seven times greater if he is not supportive and eighteen times greater if he is absent (Table 10).  It appears that the miscarriage rate is double if the partner is not supportive, but not greater if he is absent.  The importance of partner support continues till the sixth pregnancy (Table 11), but whether the partner is present at birth or not seems unimportant to the pregnancy outcome.  The lack of partner support is more important than the total number of pregnancies and the young age of the women in determining the total of number of abortions (Table 12).  Whether a loss of the second pregnancy has a deleterious effect on a woman's health mainly depends on whether the partner is supportive, whether her health was affected by a first pregnancy loss, and whether or not she is young (Table 13).  It appears from Tables 14 and 15 that the reason more young women abort is because they have less partner support.  It should be remembered that the miscarriage rate is greater if there has been a previous abortion.  We also found (Table 15, 16) that the miscarriage rate is greater among those who support a woman's right for abortion.  We found that patients of doctors who belong to the Christian Medical and Dental Society are much less likely to have abortions and miscarriages (Table 17).

From these findings, I think it can be safely deduced that one of the most important elements in maintaining a pregnancy is to ensure partner support.  It appears that a substitute for the partner support by caring Christian physicians can reduce the incidence of miscarriage and abortion.  Although the mechanism is not clear, there may be a neuro-hormonal as well as psychological component to pregnancy losses.  This could explain why the miscarriage rate is also higher when there is insufficient support from the partner.

Data from other countries

It appears that there are differences in European countries and China that have yet to be thoroughly explored.  However, in all these countries, the data shows that pregnancy losses of all types, particularly abortions, create major health problems.  Our data from China is based on only 400 patients, and so I am not completely confident in the results.  However, though these patients enjoy being parents and have more partner support than Canadians, their emotional and physical health is as much affected by pregnancy losses (Figure 3,4).

Child Abuse and Abortion

It appears (Table 18) that women who have had an abortion or a miscarriage are more likely to severely verbally abuse, physically neglect, or emotionally neglect their children.  Those  who have lost a child by miscarriage or abortion are more likely to sexually abuse their children (Table 19).  There are high correlations between the mother's tendency to abuse or neglect their children and their propensity to respond to their crying with sadness, anxiety, helplessness or anger (Table 20).  Mothers who neglect their children are more likely not to have breastfed or held their babies at an early age.  Children who are neglected are more susceptible and vulnerable to abuse.  From a child's point of view, the most important causes of abuse and neglect are marital discord, parental immaturity, and parental alcoholism (Figure 5).

From these and other studies, it seems likely that women who have had an abortion are not as able to bond to their next child.  They are more likely to respond with fear and anxiety, and are unable to touch the child as often.  Therefore they cannot breastfeed them as well.  The fact that partner support is a major contributing factor in both pregnancy losses and child abuse and neglect is added evidence that a family is vital.

Post Abortion Survivor Syndrome (PASS)

We are now collecting data on people who have experienced various kinds of abortion survivor syndrome.  There are ten types, and these are:

1. Children who had a statistically low chance of surviving a pregnancy. Children in some Eastern European countries have approximately a 10% chance of surviving through a pregnancy.

2. Children whose parents carefully considered terminating them in utero.

3. Children who have had a brother or sister or both aborted, either before or after they were born.

4. Children who have been threatened by such statements as, "You wretched, ungrateful child. I have sweated and saved for you but you do nothing with your life. I should have aborted you!"

5. Children who know their chances of being aborted are higher because they are handicapped, are the "wrong" sex or are the result of a mixed marriage. Children with developmental defects often wonder whether their parents would have aborted them if they had known.

6. Those children whose parents would have aborted them if they could have.

7. Children whose parents could not make up their mind and delayed until it was too late for an abortion.

8. Children whose twin was aborted. Twins have an intimate relationship in the womb. If one is aborted, the other feels terrible and is often suicidal.

9. Children who survived deliberate attempt to terminate their lives by saline, suction curettage or hysterotomy. They have difficult psychological struggles, nightmares, confused identities and a fear of doctors.

10. Those tiny children who survived an abortion for a short period of time, but then were left to expire on a cold slab or were smothered by clinic staff.

There are terrible conflicts that arise from these situations, and these have an impact on the individual and on society.  Now that there are millions of those who have survived abortion, it is important to measure the effect of abortion on the function of a society.  Observations indicate that in countries where there have been high rates of abortion there is the greatest degree of economic chaos, governmental ineptitude and social unrest.

Conclusion

Abortion has devastating effects on a woman and the aborted infant's siblings.  Blessed are all those children who grow up in a home where abortion was not even considered. They are free from all the difficult conflicts experienced by abortion survivors. These blessed children are not alive because they were wanted, but because they have an inherent right to life.  Because they do not have to strive to stay wanted, they can be more independent and develop as God intended them to do.

God-fearing physicians, priests, pastors and counsellors should have no fear of recognizing the very unpalatable truth of abortion survivors. We hope that they will bring up the subject with their patients, especially with those patients who have many psychosomatic symptoms for which there does not seem to be any other explanation. When they can broach the subject and explain Post-Abortion Survivor Syndrome to their patients, there is often a sense of great relief. Later on, the patients may require extensive psychotherapy.  At least now they know why they have such an ambivalent attitude about life, their own life in particular.