Study Linking Abortion and Mental Health Problems Is Called False

The Journal of Psychiatric Research, which in 2009 published a research article purporting to show a a link between abortions and long-term mental health problems, this month offered a critique of the research, saying that the authors’ analysis “does not support their assertions that abortions led to psychopathology.”

In looking for mental health disorders (like panic attacks, depression, substance abuse and post traumatic stress disorder) associated with abortion, Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green State University and her co-authors included all lifetime mental health disorders in their analysis, rather than only those instances occurring after the abortion took place. They were “hoping,” she says in a letter defending her methodology, “to capture as many cases of mental health problems as possible,” by including a longer period of time. In a detailed re-analysis of the (publicly available) data used in the study, Julia Steinberg of the University of California at San Francisco and Lawrence Finer of the Guttmacher Institute found what they called, in a letter to the journal’s editors, “untrue statements about the nature of the dependent variables and associated false claims about the nature of the findings.”