Briefing.
From CFNews: Women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions, a medical royal college has warned. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says women should not be allowed to have an abortion until they are counselled on the possible risk to their mental health. This overturns the consensus that has stood for decades that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion. MPs will shortly vote on a proposal to reduce the upper time limit for abortions 'for social reasons' from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, a move not backed by the government. A Sunday Times poll shows 59% of women would support such a reduction, with only 28% backing the status quo. Taken together, just under half (48%) of men and women want a reduction to 20 weeks, while 35% want to retain 24 weeks. Some MPs also want women to have a 'cooling off' period in which they would be made aware of the possible consequences of the abortion, including the impact on their mental health, before they could go ahead.
Monday, March 17, 2008
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2 comments:
An abortion must be a traumatic thing for a woman to go through. I am making a huge assumption here, so please forgive me if I am innacurate, but I imagine many women have to go through it alone, which must make it even harder.
But I feel your article is a little misleding, because it makes no reference or camparison to the mental health of a woman who didn't have an abortion but went on to have the child against her will?
I did work experience in Social Services, and the long term mental effects on woman who does go on to have her baby are huge.
It has to be accepted that an abortion is sometimes the lesser of two evils.
The article suggests that they did make a comparison with women who carried their babies to term: "This overturns the consensus that has stood for decades that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion."
It would be very odd if they did the study without a control group, but you'd have to look at the study itself for the details.
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