Tanis Cortens, Feature Writer:
Father Paul Sullins, Ph.D., submitted a research article to The International Journal of Women’s Health Care. The study, published September 15, was entitled “Persistent Emotional Distress after Abortion in the United States” and consisted of a retrospective survey of 226 women aged 41-45, whose abortions had happened an average of 20 years earlier (range 0-31 years). Fr. Sullins found that 44.8 per cent of the women reported post-abortion emotional distress (PAD), with 20.7 per cent describing their distress as “moderate” and 24.1 per cent as “high.” For some, PAD included “‘frequent feelings of loss, grief or sadness’” (31.2 per cent) or “‘frequent thoughts, dreams, or flashbacks’” (24.6 per cent). No correlation existed between PAD and time since the abortion; in fact, “PAD did not diminish but persisted for decades.”
What sets this survey apart from others like it, is its timeframe: According to the abstract, “Few studies have followed women for longer than five years.” Fr. Sullins’s method may therefore be more accurate in determining whether abortion causes serious long-term distress.
Under “Clinical and Policy Implications,” he wrote, “In many jurisdictions, legal termination of a healthy pregnancy is justified by a determination that doing so will benefit the mental health of the mother. The fact that a quarter of post-abortive women experienced serious long-term emotional distress suggests that, as a therapeutic strategy for resolving stress associated with undesired pregnancies, induced abortion was often unsuccessful.…While the present study, as all studies in this area, has considered competing evidence for greater or lesser harm following an abortion, no evidence has yet demonstrated long-term mental health benefit (as opposed to short-term relief) from readily available abortion in any population of women.”
The data Fr. Sullins analyzed came from a May 11, 2023 study in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science written by David Reardon, Katherine Rafferty, and Tessa Longbons. “The Effects of Abortion Decision Rightness and Decision Type on Women’s Satisfaction and Mental Health” questioned a previous study (known as the Turnaway Study) conducted by pro-abortion group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH).
The Turnaway Study asked women who had had abortions three years previously, “Given your situation, was the decision to have an abortion the right decision for you?” and reported that 99 per cent answered yes, interpreting the affirmative response as indicative of decision satisfaction. However, a different analysis of the same women by ANSIRH showed significant guilt (53-63 per cent), anger (31-43 per cent), regret (41-66 per cent), and sadness (64-74 per cent). This apparent contradiction, combined with other factors such as ANSIRH’s refusal to share their research instruments and data, invited criticism of the study.
Reardon is best known as director of the Elliot Institute, which publishes research to educate people on abortion’s physical and psychological harms. Of the overwhelming number of studies linked to on their website (afterabortion.org), more than 30 deal with the negative effects of abortion on women’s mental health, including anxiety, sleep problems, clinical depression, substance abuse, psychiatric hospitalization, and suicide.
Some of their most compelling evidence is presented in an October 31, 2018 post that links to a study by Reardon published two days earlier in Sage Open Medicine. The comprehensive review looked at previous reviews published since 2005 of the literature on mental health effects associated with legal abortion. Experts on both sides of the debate agreed that “abortion is consistently associated with elevated rates of mental illness compared to women without a history of abortion (and that) the abortion experience directly contributes to mental health problems for at least some women.”
Furthermore, “pro-choice” researcher Dr. Brenda Major and her colleagues wrote an article in the August 2000 issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry that acknowledged the existence of post-abortion syndrome (PAS), a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. She said one per cent of women in her study (six out of 442) met the criteria for PAS according to their responses to the questionnaires, countering the pro-abortion talking point that the psychiatric illness does not exist.
One of Reardon’s recent studies, published Dec. 15, 2026 in the Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, found that almost 40 per cent of women aged 41-45 who had lost an unborn child (either naturally or by abortion) “reported that the worst of their negative feelings attributed to their pregnancy losses continue and persist today (an average of 20 years after the fact).” Reardon concluded, “More research and intervention resources should be allocated to serve those struggling with past abortions and pregnancy losses.”
A July 2025 study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research dealt specifically with abortion and its long-term mental health implications. The study analyzed 1.2 million pregnancy outcomes (either abortion or birth) in Quebec hospitals between 2006 and 2022. Researcher Nathalie Auger and her colleagues found mental-health related hospitalizations (for psychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, and suicide attempts) were associated more with abortion than with birth.
The Eastern Journal of Medicine published an article in their July-September 2020 issue reviewing the literature on abortion’s psychological effects. The authors distinguished between PAD or post-abortion distress (intense post-abortion stress, including feelings of loss/guilt and psychological pain) and PAS or post-abortion syndrome (a more serious chronic disorder with symptoms such as reliving the trauma, use of defense mechanisms, anxiety, depression, addiction, and suicidal thoughts). PAD “appears in the first three months after abortion and may persist for about a year,” the authors wrote, while PAS “sometimes develops a long time after abortion or reappears periodically.”
Michael New, a senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, often points out the flaws of pro-abortion studies in his writing for National Review Online. In a January 15, 2020 piece, he questioned aspects of the Turnaway Study. Besides noting ANSIRH’s pro-abortion bias, he mentioned that “less than 38 (per cent) of the (667) women they asked actually agreed to take part in the study. It seems likely that the women who made themselves available for the study might have had either a higher level of decisional certainty or fewer moral qualms about obtaining an abortion, skewing the results.” Later in the article he wrote, “a 2017 article in JAMA Psychiatry that used Turnaway-study data indicated that only 58.4 (per cent) of participants had responded to a survey five years after it began. This information further skews the results, as it is likely that women who disappeared from the survey were experiencing more psychological suffering than women who responded.”
On March 28, 2018, New and obstetrician-gynecologist Donna Harrison wrote an article about a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS). The report analyzed various abortion methods and long-term health effects, concluding that abortion is safe both physically and mentally. New and Harrison’s article described a number of problems with the report, including a “readily apparent” bias (reviewers of the report included abortionist Willie Parker and vocal Planned Parenthood supporter Sara Rosenbaum, while at least two of the six foundations providing funding — The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation — had previously made grants to Planned Parenthood).
Another point New often emphasizes is the mainstream media’s sympathy for pro-abortion studies, however flawed. In a December 17, 2010 piece, he noted that the Washington Post praised Julia Steinberg and Lawrence Finer for calling out the methodological errors of Priscilla Coleman’s May 2009 study linking abortion to mental health risks; at the same time, the Post failed to mention the methodological errors of Steinberg’s and Finer’s study, such as their shorter time frame for looking at mental health effects (30 days compared to Coleman’s 12 months). According to New, the shorter time frame “poses two problems. First, it reduces the number of data points in the study and therefore makes it more difficult to obtain a statistically significant finding. Second, a significant percentage of women may not suffer psychologically until months after the abortion has taken place.”
New wrote an October 28, 2010 article on Coleman’s refutation of a Guttmacher Institute study from the month before. The study aimed to answer the question, “Do Depression and Low Self-Esteem Follow Abortion Among Adolescents?” and found that 69 teenage girls who obtained abortions had similar proportions of depression and low self-esteem to 220 girls who did not obtain abortions. Coleman took issue with the small sample size, the method of measuring depression (based on self-reporting by respondents rather than use of professional counselling for psychological distress), and the disconnect between the study’s data and the annual teen abortion rate at the time of the study (approximately 156 more girls would have been expected to have abortions during that time). “It seems likely that girls who were psychologically healthy might have been more willing to report their abortions than girls who were psychologically distressed,” wrote New. He added, “This further skews the results.”
A brief article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on August 30, 2005 referenced several studies of psychiatric problems suffered by post-abortive women, including a Finnish study that found suicide rates after abortion almost six times higher than after birth. In an intriguing contrast, the authors found that “the risk of suicide after birth is half of that among women of reproductive age in general.”
Similarly, a July 16, 2013 literature review in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences compared abortion with childbirth in general, the birth of an unplanned child, and miscarriage. The authors wrote in the abstract, “Abortion versus childbirth: 13 studies showed a clear risk for at least one of the reported mental problems in the abortion group versus childbirth, five papers showed no difference…Only one paper reported a worse mental outcome for childbearing. Abortion versus unplanned pregnancies ending with childbirth: four studies found a higher risk in the abortion groups and three, no difference. Abortion versus miscarriage: three studies showed a greater risk of mental disorders due to abortion, four found no difference and two found that short-term anxiety and depression were higher in the miscarriage group, while long-term anxiety and depression were present only in the abortion group.”
All these studies only confirm what thousands of women know from painful personal experience. The Silent No More Awareness Campaign collects testimonies that show the damage caused by abortion. Here is an excerpt from one woman’s story: “I gravely underestimated the lasting harm abortion would cause me. Riddled with shame, guilt, and regret—I tried to mask the pain of those abortions with the busyness of life, but the damage was too deep. I developed PTSD, depression, and anxiety and with no tools to cope I suffered in silence for over a decade.” She continued: “I tried to withhold this part of my life from Jesus because I was deeply ashamed of the darkness within my own heart. I never thought I could murder my own children and this truth caused anguish to my soul.”
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