Abortion: the freedom to make tough choices

This article was published in Spiked Online 6 January 2010

The anti-choice lobby’s claim that abortions always impact on women’s mental health is moralism masquerading as science.

A recent commentary published in the journal Contraception by Julia Steinberg and Nancy Russo argues that guidelines should be developed ‘for others to follow when evaluating research on abortion and mental health’.

Their argument is that shoddy studies continue to be published in peer-reviewed journals appearing to show an association between induced abortion and mental illness, despite the fact that two major reviews of the literature – one by the American Psychological Association (APA) – have identified the weaknesses in studies purporting to find such an association.