A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Manitoba, Canada has confirmed a clear link between abortion and substance abuse, revealing that women who have abortions are 3.8 times more likely to have substance abuse disorders.
Natalie Mota, a PhD student, co-wrote the study with Margaret Burnett and Jitender Sareen and published it in the April issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.
The study also revealed links between abortion and mental health conditions even when other factors such as exposure to violence were included.
Ms Mota told the Toronto Sun newspaper:
‘These are associations only. Further research needs to look at the different factors that might be playing a part.’
However, Ms Mota also said that her findings were larger than many previous studies showing adverse mental health issues for women who have an abortion in comparison with those who carried their baby to term.
Priscilla Coleman, an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University, has conducted previous studies establishing the link between abortion and mental health problems for women. She said:
‘In the area of substance abuse the increased risk for alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, drug abuse, drug dependence, and any substance use disorder were equal to 261%, 142%, 313%, 287%, and 280% respectively.
‘Between 5.8% and 24.7% of the national prevalence of all the above disorders was determined to be related to abortion.’
Commenting on Ms Mota’s study, Priscilla Coleman said the research confirms ‘results of many previous studies on abortion and mental health and are generally consistent with our results using an earlier version of the National Co-morbidity Survey (NCS) data.’
She added that researchers who support legal abortions ‘frequently claim the associations between abortion and mental health problems in the literature are due to an unmeasured history of violence exposure being related to both the choice to abort and to mental health problems’.
‘Mota and colleagues tested this assumption by controlling for violence in all the analyses conducted. They also controlled for age, education, marital status, household income, and ethno-racial background,’ she said.
‘The results revealed statistically significant associations between abortion history and a wide range of mental health problems after controlling for the experience of interpersonal violence and demographic variables.’
Coleman says the Mota’s study provides increasing evidence for the American Psychological Association which claims that abortion presents no mental health problems for women.
‘This report represents the latest in a series of articles from across the globe published in recent years directly contradicting the findings of the American Psychological Association Task Force report released in 2008. Large scale, well-controlled studies using sophisticated data analysis methodologies consistently confirm a relationship between abortion and psychological distress that the national professional organization has dismissed.’
In September 2009, a Canadian study showed that women who had an abortion in the first or second trimester had a 35% increased risk of a low birth weight baby and a 36% raised risk of a pre-term baby in later pregnancies. Having more than one termination further increased these risks (72% increased risk of low birth-weight baby and 93% increased risk of premature birth).
(See the CCFON report)
In November 2009, a study suggested that more abortions are carried out annually in Britain than in any other country in Europe.
The Institute for Family Policies, a Norwegian pro-family pressure group, issued the calculated statistics collected by the European Union’s statistical arm, Eurostat, showing for the first time that Britain has overtaken France, which has a population of more than 65 million, compared to Britain’s 59 million. Britain is now taking the sixth place in the world in annual abortion figures behind China, the US, Russia, India and Japan.
(See the CCFON report)