Over 35 years ago, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion in the Roe vs Wade decision. Many people today are concerned not only with the legal and moral aspects of that decision but about the effects it has on women’s health. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan asked the Surgeon General to research and issue a report on the psychological consequences that abortion had on women’s health. According to the surgeon general’s research, there was not sufficient evidence to compile a report. He stated “obstetricians and gynecologists had long since concluded that the physical sequence of abortion was no different than those found in women who carried to term or had never been pregnant” (Koop, 1989, p.195). The American Psychological …show more content…
Is there self-esteem compromised? Does it cause them to have problem behaviors such as substance abuse, depression, or anxiety disorders? Through stressful life event perspective, stress and coping perspective, sociocultural perspective and co-occurring risk perspectives it is shown that women react in various ways to abortion.
Pregnancy and motherhood mean very different things to different people. The belief system, religious preferences, social and economic aspects all play a part in a women’s opinion about abortion. “Approximately half of women in the United States will face an unintended pregnancy during their lifetime, and about half of those who unintentionally become pregnant resolve the pregnancy through abortion” (Finer &Henshaw, 2006 a). Many women are not ready to become a mother, have relationship problems, are not financially stable enough to care for a child or feel too immature themselves to care for a child therefore they choose to terminate the pregnancy. Psychological theories of stress and coping view abortion as a stressful event but the stress associated with the unwanted pregnancy is resolved by terminating it which in turns gives the women a sense of relief. The variability perspective states that even though a woman has an abortion it will not cause negative …show more content…
However, the way the woman views her pregnancy, her ability to cope with stress and life events, and her emotional well-being shape the way she will cope with the abortion. Many environmental conditions come into play such as resources to help, a supportive partner, her values, personality and religious beliefs. Several factors have been associated with women who have more negative psychological reactions to abortions such as family and partners opposing the abortion, no support from family or partner, low self-esteem and a history of mental health problems prior to any pregnancy. Life is very stressful and these same factors can be an indicator of how women will react to many other stressful situations throughout their lifetime. Another perspective views abortion as a traumatic experience because it involves human death and witnessing a violent death, and violating parental responsibility lead to feelings of loss, depression, remorse, guilt which can cause problems after the abortion. Speckhard and Rue “coined the term post abortion syndrome (PAS). They conceptualized PAS as a specific form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) comparable to the symptoms of trauma such as flashbacks and denial and symptoms such as depression, grief, anger, shame, survivor guilt and substance abuse.”