Anti-choicers have long claimed that abortion causes PAS - Post Abortion Syndrome. They claim that women suffer anxiety, depression, substance abuse, etc, etc, after having an abortion. This is a highly contentious claim. The anti-choicers justify this claim by referencing the anecdotal stories of women who are unhappy with the choice they made, and regret it (I wonder who made them feel bad? Could it be all the idiots insisting that they are cold hearted if they don't regret their decision? Could it be all the zealots calling them murderers? As I've discussed before, the anti-choicers might be partially to blame in this).
But now the Dakota Voice (a right wing news source) is reporting on a new study has been released claiming a correlation between abortion and various anxiety and substance abuse issues. While I can't actually get into the study itself, and hence can't assess its worth, it's being published in what I take to be a decent peer-reviewed journal. Of course, given the other studies which deny this claim (linked to from the Voice article), and given the fact that statistical science is the least reliable of the sciences, it's still not clear that PAS actually exists.
And honestly, I wish the anti-choice crowd would stop pushing this. It's just another indication that they are completely devoid of any understanding of basic critical thinking skills. Even if abortion carried with it the risk of PAS, that does not make it any less a legal right. Children of religious nuts might vary well suffer psychological damage, but that doesn't mean we should make it illegal to teach your children that they are inherently worthless and evil and are headed for fire and brimstone. Many women suffer post-partum depression, but that's no reason to make having children illegal. Many of the choices we make carry with them risks to our persons - both physical and mental - but that doesn't necessarily mean that those choices should be made illegal. You've got to make an argument for that.
But that's just the thing. The anti-choice crowd lacks any reasonable argument for their position. They rely on religious dogma and emotional appeals to convince people. And that's what they are doing with PAS - attempting to use it to frighten women away from making a choice that might actually be best for them in their situation.
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