According to a study conducted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute and published in the magazine Cureus, six out of ten women (60.6%) in the United States who have had an abortion admit that they were under "a high level of pressure to abort from one or more sources, and those same women report higher levels of subsequent mental health and quality of life problems." Twenty-three percent indicated that the level of coercion was somewhat lighter than the previous one.
The study, called Effects of Pressure to Abort on Women's Emotional Responses and Mental Health, asked respondents to indicate where the pressure came from: their male partner, a family member, another person, financial concerns, and other situational pressure.
Of the women surveyed, 31.3% stated that they had had an abortion because of pressure from their male partner; 34.7% because of a family member; and 23.7% because of someone else. 54.6% explained that their decision was forced by economic concerns and 64.7% by another type of circumstance.
One of the dilemmas raised in the study is whether abortion clinics should allow patients to have abortions after being pressured to do so. In this regard, David Readon, Ph.D., an associate at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and co-author of the research, said:
Abortion clinics cannot claim to be pro-woman while at the same time allowing the majority of their clients to be pressured into unwanted abortions.
Mental health consequences
When a woman is pressured to have an abortion, it can have serious consequences for her health, both physical and mental. Regarding mental health, Dr. David Reardon stated:
Our national study finds that women who feel pressured to have abortions are significantly more likely to blame their abortions for contributing to a decline in mental health, increased disruptions in their daily lives, and more frequent episodes of grief and loss.
Charlotte Lozier Institute researcher Tessa Longbons, co-author of the study, blamed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for being, in part, responsible for putting pressure on women to abort:
Abortion does not empower women. This coercion can have long-lasting mental health repercussions, and now that the FDA allows the abortion pill to be dispensed without a woman ever seeing a doctor, the abortion industry’s coercion problem may only get worse.
The study shows that almost half of the women (49.1%) who had an abortion due to pressure from one of the above-mentioned parameters (partner, family, etc.) explained that they had moral conflicts due to abortion, while 46.3% indicated that they had family conflicts.
