For well over twenty years anti-abortion forces have been urging American women to bring unwanted and unintended pregnancies to term, despite the fact that safe, legal abortion has been available. This effort has failed; women continue to utilize abortion services as they have throughout recorded history. Pro-lifers have added to their tactics: they paint women as "victims" of abortion and insist those who terminate their pregnancies "suffer" from "Post Abortion Syndrome" or PAS. (Also known as "Post Abortion Stress Syndrome" or PASS.) Armed with this seemingly authentic diagnoses, opponents of abortion can claim to be pro-woman by trying to "protect" women from abortion.

 Upon investigation of this "syndrome", one finds no empirical research or data to support the existence of such a disorder. PAS supporters depend exclusively on narratives from women who feel strongly that their abortion was a mistake to "prove" the syndrome exists. This is what is known as anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence alone is a totally inadequate method with which to establish a new disease or illness. To illustrate why, consider the following: many women who experience an unplanned pregnancy elect to give the baby up for adoption. While this solution works extremely well for numerous, probably most, birth-mothers, some women experience long-term emotional distress after giving their child up for adoption. Their emotional discord can last for decades after the birth, and many attribute their subsequent emotional problems to the adoption. While strongly emphasizing the need for more study of the psychological consequences of adoption, Nancy F. Russo, Ph.D., speculates that the psychological risks to adoption may, "be higher than those for abortion because they reflect different types of stress. Stress assocciated with abortion is acute and typically ends with the procedure. With adoption, as with unwanted childbearing, however, the stress may be chronic for women who continue to worry about the fate of the child."(1) If a number of birth-mothers reported such emotional problems, would this mean that they were collectively suffering from "Post Adoption Syndrome"? The answer is no; a percentage of birth-mothers' anecdotal evidence alone is not enough to establish a brand new diagnoses. This is one reason the medical and scientific communities do not recognise PAS as an actual illness.

 Which brings us to a question: does this lack of acknowlegement of PAS as a valid "syndrome" deny or minimize the pain of those women who feel their abortion caused grief or remorse that they are unable to move through? It certainly does not. No competent psychiatrist, psychologist, or therapist would refuse to treat a troubled birth-mother on the grounds that there is no such thing as "Post Adoption Syndrome". By the same token, no proficeint mental health professional would turn away a woman who felt the need for help after an abortion because there is no such thing as PAS. One does not have to be diagnosed with a syndrome in order for their pain to be considered "real" or legitimate.

Another reason for the scientific community's skepticism is simple: not only is there no data to support PAS, the existing research actually contradicts the contention that abortion is psychologically harmful. in 1989, the American Psychological Association (APA) convened a panal of six psychologists to conduct an exhaustive review of the available data. They reported that the studies with the most scientifically rigorous research designs consistently found no evidence of "Post Abortion Syndrome". The panal concluded that, "research with diverse samples, different measures of response, and different times of assessment have come to similar conclusions. The time of greatest distress is likely to be before the abortion. Severe negative reactions after abortions are rare and can best be understood in the framework of coping with normal life stress."(2) Nancy F. Russo, Ph.D., and Amy J. Dabul, Ph.D. conducted an eight-year longitudinal study involving nearly 5,300 women that found no evidence for the existance of PAS. Commenting on the results they reported, "Although an intensive examination of the data was conducted, controlling for numerous variables and including comparisons of Black women versus White women, Catholic women versus non-Catholic women, and women who had abortions versus other women, the findings are consistant: The experience of having an abortion plays a negligible, if any, independant role in women's well-being over time, regardless of race or religion. The major predictor of a woman's well-being after an abortion, regardless of race or religion, is level of well-being before becoming pregnant....Our findings are congruent with those of others, including the National Acadamy of Sciences, and the conclusion is worth repeating. Despite a concentrated effort to convince the public of the existence of widespread and severe postabortion trauma, there is no scientific evidence for the existence of such trauma, even though abortion occurs in the highly stressful context of an unwanted pregnancy (emphasis added)."(3) Dr. Nada L. Statland finds, "Signifigant psychiatric sequelae after abortion are rare, as documented in numerous methodologically sound prospective studies in the United States and European countries. Comprehensive reviews of this literature have recently been performed and confirm this conclusion. Signifigant psychiatric illness following abortion occurs most commonly in women who were psychiatrically ill before pregnancy...".(4) Transient self-limiting feelings of saddness and guilt are not entirely uncommon, but for most women, the prominent emotional reaction (to abortion) is one of relief.(5) Studies performed in environments where abortion is safe, legal, and accesseble reveal that the incidence of psychiatric illness following abortion is comparable to that following term delivery.(6)

 To question the existence of PAS in anti-abortion circles is to risk accusations of being "anti-woman". But to insist in the face of the evidence that PAS exists could well be construed as being "anti-science". Proponents of PAS, however well-intentioned some of them may be, are not being "pro-woman" with thier staunch insistence that PAS is an actual illness. Quite to the contrary, they are hijacking the personal, private sorrow of individual women to further their anti-abortion political agenda.

 1. Russo, Nancy F. "Psychological Aspects of Unwanted Pregnancy and Its Resolution." J.D. Butler and D.F. Walbert (eds.), Abortion, Medicine, and the Law (4th Ed., pp. 593-6260.) New York: Facts on File, 1992

 2. Adler, Nancy E., Henry P. David, Brenda N. Major, Susan H. Roth, Nancy F. Russo, and Gail E. Wyatt. "Psychological Factors in Abortion: A Review." American Psychologist, Vol. 47, no. 10 (Oct., 1992): pp. 1194-1204

 3. Nancy F. Russo, Amy J. Dabul. "The Relationship of Abortion to Well-Being: Do Race and Religion Make A Difference?" Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol. 28, no. 1.

 4. Stotland, Nada. "The Myth of the Abortion Trauma Syndrome." Journal of the American Medical Assocciation, Vol. 268, no.15 (Oct. 21, 1992): pp. 2078-2079

 5. Adler NE, David HP, Major BN, et al: "Psychological Responses to Abortion." Science 248 (4951): 41-44, 1990

 6. Brewer C: "Incidence of Post-Abortion Psychosis: A Prospective Study." Obstet Gynecol Surv 32(7): 600-601, 1977

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