These facts re both the physical & psychological dangers of abortion are pretty accurate but they usually reduce if counselling is given both pre & post abortion & if the person was not forced into making this decision.

One additional area of facts that should be made are the physical & psychological affects of not having an abortion because of church, family, social pressures that are bought to bear. Many of the physical & psychological affects are the same:

1) pre-occutation with the chance they missed to abort

2) flashbacks & forewards to the life they would have had without this unwanted child.

3) nightmares of the fights & pressures that caused them not to abort

4) nightmares of how their resentment of an unwanted child might affect the child

5) inability to trust anyone even family

6) inability to maintain relationships

7) child welfare involvement fears, since this person believes they're a lousy parent & so a self-fulfilling prophecy often occurs

fear (of what will happen to them & the child & of another pregnancy), guilt as to what they wanted to do, as to why they didn't & as to how they can cope with an unwanted child

9) many women who face the issue of abortion already were lacking in either self-esteem &/or self-confidence - sometimes if they are given the guidance to make the decision that is right for them these aspects can develop positively.

10) yes, siucide (attempts & actual) are very real especially if appropriate counselling from "objective & knowledgeable" people with no personal agendas is given before & after the choice (regardless of what the choice is. A woman who chooses to go ahead with the pregnancy because of pressure is also likely to siucide or attemt suicide.

11) a uterus can perforate or rupture due to pregnancy & giving birth

12) infection & inflammatory diseases of the uterus etc can happen with a full term baby & normal delivery & for various other reasons

13) miscarriage in later pregnancies - well some women do not have any abortions & just miscarry but still have successful later births, others have several kids then miscarry then more kids & others (i fit here) have a couple of miscarriages, a child, a miscarriage, a termination, a pre-cancer situation with several hospitalizations re the cervix, a pregnancy wherein I lost one twin & the other was full term & healthy.


My point is that all of the physical & psychological factors can apply to a woman whether she has a healthy full term wanted baby, an abortion or a full term unwanted baby.

All women do however need quality care & counselling rfom qualified people without hidden agendas.

No offence but I thought this forum was about medical facts on - having - an abortion - not a forum on -not- having one or child birth!

As a request please refrain from posting about child birth or not having an abortion on my threads unless they are about child birth or not having an abortion I find it disrespectfull and I am sure there is a section on eheath on child birth.

Thanx samie x

p.S. It is perfectly accurate!

You began a post within a forum on abortion which is within ehealth, the whole concept of ehealth & of the forums is to allow people to obtain information & advice on matters of interest to them.

A forum is not a place where people come to get just one point of view. Thus depite your polite request that others with any alternate views not post on your threads (& I do appreciate your politeness) i'm sorry but if I believe a thread provides only one side of a many sided & faceted situation/problem then I will post & I hope others will also.

You know being pro-choice is presented here as being pro-homicide rather than pro-life, which is a particularly nasty misrepresentation of the truth, pro-choice is just that "pro-choice" & I for one beleive that most pro-choicers would rather see the child born healthy & perhaps go to an adoptive family, however we believe that the "choice" should be up to the woman who has to carry that child for 9 months not up to a pile of strangers who know nothing of her or her circumstances/feelings/medical condition etc.

The fact is that pregnancy is very unhealthy (how many women are warned about the high risk of being permanently incontinent, for instance?!)

fact: more women die in childbirth each year than as a result of legal abortion.

Each year about 1.5 million women in america have abortions.
- legal abortion has half the fatality rate of a tonsilectomy and 1/100 the fatality rate of an appendectomy.
- less than 1% of abortion patients experience a major complication associated with the procedure.
- one in 160,000 abortion patients dies as a result of the procedure.
- one in 16,000 women die in childbirth.
Surgical abortions
- 88% of women who have abortions are less than 13 weeks lmp (last menstrual period) at the time of the procedure.
- 97% of women who have abortions less than 13 weeks lmp report no complications; 2.5% have minor complications; 0.5% require an additional surgical procedure and/or hospitalization.
- 10% of surgical abortions are performed between 13 and 20 weeks lmp.

Yes I have to side with the above two posts. It is fine that you are posting all of this information. Both is very informative! You cannot just look at one side of these issues. Especially for women considering an abortion all of the above information will help greatly. Purple was simply stating the side effects and causes of going through with having the baby and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
If you cannot take information from the other point of view then maybe you should refrain from posting.

Again this is a medical site about abortion not a site on abortion vs child birth... Which is the best option - no it is about the facts on the medical side of abortion nothing else. If you wish to debate abortion join a debate team or forum... Not a medical forum!

Samie you have no idea what you are even talking about. This is a forum about abortion, yes, but it is a place for girls who are considering abortion to come and ask questions. Now, if you only tell them the one side - abortion and not the other side-child birth then they are not going to be able to make an educated decision.
We are not trying to debate abortion here, we are trying to keep people who are debating off of here. But when prolife people come here and start this crap we have every right to defend women's rights. So, if you don't like it then you go away. You have done nothing but get defensive and testy anyway. If you want to post facts then post your facts, but don't you dare tell us to not put our input in.

If you want to put your input in please do it on another thread unless it is on topic. Is that so much to ask, am I being so unreasonalbe. I want my posts to remain on the topic they were intended for. If you want to post about another subject start a new thread....Please

Sorry, is this a private thread we have wandered into? Sew what? (sorry, pardon the pun, couldn't help it, I know, no time for jokes...)

the thread is about dangers of abortion -- clearly the aim of the post was to convince women that abortion is dangerous. By informing them that childbirth is, in fact, a very dangerous thing (not to mention advanced pregnancy itself) and letting them know that if they go through with a pregnancy they don't want they could also experience negative consequences, it is only adding to the information, i.E. Facts, available to them.

So if child birth is very dangerous and is less than 1% more deadly than abortion then abortion must be very dangerous too especialy when you consider the other none life threatning conditions of abortion that makes abortion more dangerous than pregnancy but remains slightly less deadly.

As for the thread, no it isnt private and you can post what you like on here but I had indeed ask that we stay on the topic at hand, but of course you didnt, a showing of a complete lack of respect for the author of the post.

Just as you show a complete lack of respect for the very difficult choices that women have to make -- notwithstanding your own claim to have made it.

And my post was all about the relative dangers of abortion, btw.

In addition to a complete lack of respect for punctuation, samie. Please, please begin and end your sentences!

Samie did you ever consider that one of the main reasons why child birth is less dangerous than abortion is because the women who would have had dangerous births decided to abort instead? Statistics are not facts. They are simply a number developed by people who participated in them. Not everyone is included, so they cannot possibly be valid.

Actually, childbirth (even legal childbirth) is significantly more dangerous than legal abortion.

The life-threatening complications of pregnancy that women face: hemorrhage, sepsis, pregnancy-induced hypertension including preeclampsia and eclampsia, obstructed labor caused by cephalopelvic disproportion, and iron-deficiency anemia.

Socioeconomic factors, including poverty, malnutrition, lack of education, and lack of access to prenatal care or emergency obstetrical care can further increase a young woman's risk of pregnancy-related complications .

Untreated pregnancy-induced hypertension can cause heart failure or stroke and result in the death of both the mother and infant. Hypertension occurs most often among women having their first child and accounts for a large proportion of maternal deaths in women under age 20.

Cephalopelvic disproportion—meaning that the woman's pelvic opening is too small to allow the infant's head to pass through during delivery—can slow or prevent vaginal delivery. In some cases, if cesarean section cannot be performed, the woman's uterus ruptures, and both mother and infant die. Cephalopelvic disproportion is common in very young women whose pelvic growth is not complete and women of any age who are of small stature because childhood malnutrition stunted their growth . The prolonged labor associated with cephalopelvic disproportion increases the risk of fistula—a tear between the vagina and the urinary tract or rectum, which allows urine or feces to leak out through the vagina.

In many regions iron-deficiency anemia is a factor in almost all maternal deaths. An anemic woman is five times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than a woman who is not anemic . Anemic women are less able to resist infection and less able to survive hemorrhage or other complications of labor and delivery.

Iron-deficiency anemia is particularly common among pregnant women, and young pregnant women are more likely than older women to be anemic, even in developed countries. For example, an analysis of eight us clinical studies found that pregnant women under age 20 were twice as likely to be anemic as older women. A us study of pregnant teenagers attending a prenatal clinic found that 70% lacked enough iron. Normal menstrual bleeding, a diet lacking absorbable iron, and malaria cause most anemia in pregnant women.

Note: I am not arguing that any of these risks justify having an abortion on their own. Simply pointing out that just because something is "natural" doesn't mean it's healthy. I also feel that the health risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth are something that should be taught as part of sex education. I keep reading about all these 13 or 14 year old girls who don't bother with contraception because they think it would be quite nice to have a baby. I can't understand why there isn't a campaign to have health warnings tattooed on every penis!

More dangerous for whom

One of the most faulty arguments against abortion is that it causes severe depression and trauma to the mother. Abortion opponents even claim that women may even suffer post-traumatic stress disorder -- five, ten or even twenty years later. Pamphlets handed out by pro-life protesters at abortion clinics usually start out with lines like "you're hurting."

the experiences of these women are not to be trivialized; most struggle with the decision to have an abortion, and most feel sorrow and regret. But the statistics overwhelmingly refute the claim that these women go on to suffer severe trauma. The predominant response to abortion is relief. This is confirmed by dozens of studies that have researched women's reactions to abortions (for example, adler, 1975; burnell, dworsky, and harrington, 1972; lazarus, 1985; payne, kravitz, notman, and anderson, 1976; and smith, 1973.) (1)

in one famous study, 90% of the women surveyed said their abortion was the right thing to do. (2)

c. Everett koop, the surgeon general under ronald reagan, conducted a study that tried to learn everything it could on abortion and concluded that the number of women who suffered from post-abortion trauma was minuscule. (3)

apparently, a small percentage of women who are hurting in their ordinary lives decide to have abortions, and link any later trauma to this experience, but it is clear that abortion is not the primary source of their problems. As noted psychiatrist nada stotland observed, "there is not one piece of evidence for such a syndrome." (4)

part of the problem with the pro-life claim is that they are misusing the term post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). Inevitably, all people experience loss or trauma at some point in their lives. Normally, they go through a period of disorganization, after which the healing process begins. In a few years they may be back to normal. But in a small percentage of cases, the trauma is unusually severe, and the victims unusually susceptible. Ptsd is a well-defined and extreme condition brought on by extreme circumstances, like war, concentration camps, brutal rape, disaster or torture. The symptoms are unmistakably severe: insomnia, anxiety, reliving the nightmare, withdrawal from society, emotional numbness, extreme passivity, even refusal to leave one's house. And these symptoms usually settle in quickly, within weeks of the trauma, and without treatment usually last a lifetime. They do not lie dormant under the surface, to resurface five, ten, or fifteen years later. If someone has ptsd, they will know it beyond all doubt. Fortunately, there are almost no known cases of ptsd attributable to abortion alone.

However, the fact that the predominant response to abortion is relief should not lull young women into believing that it is an easy form of birth control. It's actually the worst and most expensive form -- there simply is no substitute for earlier and simpler forms of contraception.

Why relief?

As mentioned above, many women struggle with the decision to have an abortion. As one social worker writes: "in my work… I have met literally hundreds of women who have made the decision. I have met few who did not stop and think every year that their child would be x years old now." given the negative experience that abortion undoubtedly is, why is the predominant response to it relief?

One analogy is divorce. People may feel sorrow and pain from divorce, but mostly they feel relieved to be getting out of a hellish marriage. Likewise, women who choose abortion know it's the best of a bad set of options. Expectant mothers instinctively know when conditions are not right for raising a child, and that going through with the pregnancy would result in needless suffering. Again, studies bear out the wisdom of a mother's instinct. At least 10 studies -- from nations as diverse as the u.S., sweden and czechoslovakia -- have studied women who wanted abortions but could not get them, or had unwanted children for other reasons. These studies found that unwanted children suffer from most of the following: (5)

more mental handicaps
more psychological disorders, ranging from mild to severe
more borderline psychoses requiring treatment
poorer social adjustment
less ability to adapt to frustration and stress
greater dislike of school
worse academic achievement
poorer assessment of intelligence by peers, despite similar iq scores
worse behavioral problems in school
less higher education
greater juvenile delinquency
greater adult criminality
greater criminal recidivism
greater alcoholism and drug abuse
greater welfare participation
worse family relationships and dysfunctionality
the relief that most women feel from having an abortion most likely stems from the deeper realization that they are avoiding these problems.


Endnotes:

1. Patricia lunneborg, abortion: a positive decision (new york: bergin & garvey, 1992), p. 92, citing adler, nancy e., "emotional responses of women following therapeutic abortion," american journal of orthopsychiatry 45, 1975, 446-454; burnell, george m., dworksy, william a., harrington, robert l., "post abortion group therapy," american journal of psychiatry 129, 1972, 134-137; lazarus, arthur, "psychiatric sequelae of legalized elective first trimester abortion," journal of psychosomatic obstetrics and gynaecology 4, 1985, 141-150; payne, edmund c., kravitz, arthur r., notman, malkah t., anderson, jane v., "outcome following therapeutic abortion," archives of general psychiatry 33, 1976, 725-733; smith, elizabeth m., "a follow-up study of women who request abortion," american journal of orthopsychiatry 43, 1973, 574-585.

"most struggle with the decision to have an abortion, and most feel sorrow and regret"

why do people struggle with the decision to have an abortion, is there something wrong it?

Why do people feel sorrow and regret, what have they done to feel sorrow and regret?

Oh and the most faulty argument from pro choice(abortion) is "i personaly oppose abortion but wouldnt restrict another persons right to have one if they so wish"

its entirely like saying (and be honest) "i personally oppose child molesting but I wouldnt restrict my neighbours right to do it"

but any way

why do you personaly oppose abortion, is their something wrong with abortion?

P.S before you answer remember those who are not personally opposed to abortion are known as pro abortion not pro choice!

Maybe by you they are! Just life you may call yourself prolife, and I call it anti-abortion. No one is in favour of abortion. Hey, girls! Let's all go out this weekend and get knocked up, then next month we can have abortions, hey loads of laughs!

Of course abortion isn't nice, no one wants one. Even if you are relieved afterwards, there might be some element of what if...? But that doesn't mean it wasn't the right choice.

The pro-choice posts on this board are very clear that it is difficult decision, often a reluctant decision, but it is the woman's decision about her body and her life.