Abortion does great harm to women
A study that is just now beginning to get publicity should put to rest any doubts that abortion does significant harm to women. The study, published in the journal BMC Psychiatry, demonstrates that women who have had abortions experience high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Nearly one-fifth of the South African women studied had symptoms of the disorder, leading the authors of the study to conclude that "high rates of PTSD characterize women who have undergone voluntary pregnancy termination."
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The study is hardly the first to draw the link between abortion and post-traumatic stress disorder. Other studies have demonstrated a connection between abortion and anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide.
The evidence is clear: abortion does great harm to women. Planned Parenthood and other abortion practitioners should be called to task for the damage they have done to women's lives.
Susan Karlovich
Springettsbury Township
I wonder what the level of "anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide" is among women who chose NOT to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. One can recover from the effects of an abortion, but the effects of having a child that you cannot, or don't want to, care for
last a lot longer. Terminating a pregnancy while still in the early stages is often the more sensible choice.
Like most opponents of other people's abortions, this letter misses the point. The constitutional basis for a woman's right to control an undisputed life which is wholly within and dependent upon her is her right to be free of government interference in her private medical decisions. It is arrogant in the extreme for anyone other than the woman to assert a right to make that decision in the early stages of pregnancy.
The Roe decision written by former Mayo Clinic counsel Justice Blackmun struck a reasoned medical balance among three trimesters, recognizing that the state had an increasing but not absolute interest in protecting life as it grew from a ball of cells into a human form with a beating heart.
Reversing Roe is easily said by politicans and clergy but not easily done by judges because it is based on older Supreme Court precedents which established the right of privacy. That right is not specifically written in the Constitution, but has been confirmed by a broad reading of the document in light of our Nation's history of freedom. Only the cramped and very recent "originalist" theory of Justices Scalia and "Silent Clarence" Thomas fails to recognize that right.
Even the Bill of Rights states that it is NOT an exclusive enumeration of rights, but that there are unenumerated rights, of which the right to privacy is one.
Funny how the right-wing loons shriek in anger when a liberal court decision cites a pro- human rights European law or legislation, but an obscure foreign medical study is somehow acceptable "proof" when they want to deny rights.