A reader asks:
I am writing to ask whether a post-abortion syndrome really exists. And if so, what does it consist of and whom does it affect?
Answer:
Among physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, and even priests, the so-called “Post-Abortion Syndrome” (“PAS”: “Post-Abortion-Syndrom”) is well known. It designates the pathological picture comprising a complex of physiological, psychological, and spiritual symptoms triggered after a procured (voluntary) abortion has been carried out. It affects primarily the women who have aborted, but it is also found (in varying degrees) in all the others who took part in the act: the child’s father, the physicians, and the abortion staff[1].
The symptoms that appear are directly related to the reasons for which the abortion was carried out, the length of the pregnancy, the relationship between the child’s parents, the steps taken in reaching the decision, and the influences endured during the traumatic period of the decision.
1. The psychological process of the decision to abort
In a woman with normal convictions (whether she has faith or not), the decision to abort is a complicated and painful process. Some of the usual steps she tends to go through from the moment of her pregnancy are the following:
1. From the moment she becomes pregnant, the woman’s body arouses in her, as a mother, an instinctive maternal feeling. This is observable even in animals and is due, on the one hand, to the physiological processes that accompany the changes proper to motherhood (nature prepares the woman for the mother-child relationship) and, moreover, to other factors of a sociological, psychological, and spiritual order, such as the customs of the society in which she lives, her personal maturity, her faith, etc.
2. The natural tendency to continue the motherhood begun with the conception of the new being can enter into crisis owing to various external or internal factors that bombard the woman’s psychology, such as, for example (to indicate some of the most frequent):
a) The adverse opinion of the pregnant woman’s parents (especially if she is an adolescent), whether out of fear of defamation if she is unmarried or for many other variously classifiable factors.
b) The burden the woman sees in raising the child (especially if she already has others).
c) Unresolved psychological conflicts: in the case of women who have had a bad experience of filiation with their own mothers, there arises the fear of facing their own experience of motherhood.
d) Conditions imposed by the child’s father: generally, these are threats of abandonment if the pregnancy is continued.
e) The pressure of the social rhetoric against birth: the propaganda about overpopulation, the framing of abortion as a woman’s right, the assertion that the fetus is merely a cluster of cells, etc.
f) The ideology of materialism: when the new child is seen as an obstacle to economic progress and comfort.
g) Selfishness: when the child is seen as a chain on one’s freedom (“first finish my degree, then get a job, and only then think about children”).
h) Legal pressure: there are societies that press to impose birth regulation; a certain kind of pressure already exists in the very “legalization” and “state subsidy” of certain abortions.
3. These pressures can lead to a genuine inner conflict, confronting the woman with the need to make a decision. If she needs advice, in most cases the advice she is given will push her toward abortion, especially if in her case the civil law protects it, medicine guarantees it, and society is indifferent to it.
4. Once the decision is made, a certain relief is usually felt (natural upon temporarily ending the state of conflict), which is sometimes taken as a sign that the decision was correct. When women decide to abort, they generally close themselves off to any contrary advice, since reconsidering the question would mean reopening the traumatic situation of the deliberative process.
5. Next comes submission, that is, a kind of resignation whereby they place themselves in the hands of a physician with a certain sense of fatality.
6. The shock of the final moments: in order to abort, a woman has to suppress her own maternal instincts, which are of a natural order; to do this she has to convince herself that the being she is going to abort is not a human being; with this attempt at self-persuasion the process of rationalization against her own moral conscience and against natural instinct itself begins. The woman is confronted with a chaos of conscience; many times, behind her apparent resignation, there is an anguished plea that someone would stop the whole process, which presents itself as beyond her strength.
7. Inner hardening. After the abortion there is a time when the woman wants to be left alone; she becomes apathetic, uninterested in things; there is an interior refusal to accept what has been done. She must also struggle against the feelings of aggression, despair, and fear that emerge with the abortion. On the one hand they would like to unburden themselves to someone, but on the other hand they are afraid of reliving the process they have gone through.
8. The work of pathological reconstruction begins: she wants to return to normality as soon as possible, and so she seeks to fill herself with activities in order not to think about anything.
9. But normally, at some point, the breakdown occurs of the defense system that the person involved in the abortion builds up around herself. Such a reconstruction of life generally fails when one of these situations occurs:
–The person who has had an abortion is left too alone.
–When she recalls the abortion, or recalls the date of the abortion, or the date that would have corresponded to the birth of the aborted child, or one of its anniversaries (birthdays).
–In states of exhaustion or illness.
–When they see other children (especially babies) at the age their aborted child or children would have been.
–When they become pregnant again.
In this case, what is properly called the “post-abortion syndrome” takes place.
2. Symptoms of post-abortion syndrome
Although many physicians and psychologists (pro-abortion) point out that the disturbances women present after an abortion are something merely “emotional and psychological,” a sound psychiatry shows that it is something far more serious, of a pathological order, which can be grouped into three types of problems: first of all, depression and a sense of guilt; secondly, aggression against the child’s father and against society in general; and finally, chronic alterations in the personality, similar to brain diseases.
Specifying more closely, we can enumerate the following symptoms:
1) Symptoms of grief and sorrow. Every loss generates a state of mourning; and it is much more difficult to overcome the pain of an induced abortion than that of a miscarriage produced by nature itself, and this for several reasons: the person knows herself to be guilty of the loss, she has no possibility of visiting the child’s body, and there has been a work of self-persuasion that it was not a human being (curiously, this work of self-persuasion leaves in the person a greater sense of guilt, because she knows that she has had to seek arguments to justify an act to which her conscience did not spontaneously incline her). When the pains are not overcome, they lead to depression. Depression can alter the immune system, and this increases the risk of contracting infections and, in extreme cases, the onset of cancerous processes has even been observed. It has also happened that persons who have fallen into acute depressive states have subsequently developed into psychotic personalities.
2) Sense of guilt. In many studies it has been observed that when there is no sense of guilt, there tends to be a tendency toward alcohol or drug addiction; whereas when there is a sense of guilt, one tends to fall into depressive states, which are manifested in great sadness, weeping, and a negative, pessimistic view of the surrounding world. When the sense of guilt is very great, it leads to feelings of panic and self-destruction.
3) Aggressiveness. One effect of the conflict unleashed by the abortion is the woman’s aggressiveness toward those who took part in the abortion: the physician, the boyfriend or husband, the relatives or friends who pushed her into the act, and even against herself. In some way she thus discharges her sense of guilt against herself and her sense of victimization with respect to others.
4) Affective uncertainty. Part of the hesitations in the decision to abort revolves around the love or natural desire for the child the woman is carrying. She knows intuitively, even if she does not want to make it explicit, that her abortive act contradicts her natural love: her child demands to be loved above all by its mother, and nature predisposes her to love and protect it even at the risk of her own life, yet in order to abort it she must reject it. The very feeling of lovelessness and helplessness that the woman supposes her child suffered at her hands begins to torment her: she feels unloved, rejected, and emotionally abandoned by others. It is one of the “boomerang” effects of abortion.
5) The abrupt interruption of the hormonal cycle. In women there are natural cycles and rhythms related to pregnancy and characterized by modifications in the hormonal processes that end naturally when the whole process of motherhood is completed; that is, they run from the moment of ovulation to the end of the period of breastfeeding the baby. The hormonal changes determine alterations of a physical, psychological, and emotional order. When the process is interrupted abruptly, as happens in abortion, a notable disturbance occurs in the woman, with effects in all those orders: physical, affective, psychological, and relational; these disturbances can range from depression in the emotional order to the medically documented greater tendency to develop breast cancer, passing through problems of social and family integration.
6) The “biological conscience.” It is an observation made by many psychiatrists. I cite the testimony of the psychiatrist Karl Stern: “Not infrequently we see that in cases where a woman commits an artificial abortion, let us say in the third month of gestation, this act appears to have no psychological consequences. However, six months later, precisely when the baby should have come into the world, the subject falls victim to grave depression or even psychosis. Now, concerning this, two curious circumstances are observed. The depression occurs even without the woman consciously realizing that ‘now is the time when my baby should have been born.’ Moreover, the patient’s philosophy is not necessarily such that she disapproves of the act of interrupting the pregnancy. Nevertheless, her profound reaction of loss (which is not necessarily linked to a conscious preoccupation with the failed birth) coincides with the time when it would have taken place… The woman, in her innermost being, is profoundly bound to the bios, to nature itself”[2].
7) The feeling of failure as a mother and related problems. Sometimes, in order to fill the void, there arises a vehement desire to replace the lost child; but this desire is mixed with the suspicion and fear of not knowing how to function as a mother, or of being unable to relate to the baby correctly, or of not knowing how to raise it. It also causes fear regarding future children—for example, fear of mistreating them; sometimes this leads to the decision not to have any more children. Some studies also show that some women who have aborted have real problems in carrying out subsequent motherhood: they have trouble breastfeeding their children, they react with fear or aggressiveness to their babies’ crying, and even a kind of rejection (caused by fear); and since this is instinctively perceived by the baby, it generates in it feelings of abandonment. Sometimes, because they do not want to harm the child and are aware that they do not know how to handle it, they end up sending it, from a very young age and without any need, to daycare centers.
8) Other problems. The studies to which we refer also indicate other symptoms proper to this “syndrome,” such as: alterations of various kinds in sleep (persistent nightmares), identity crises, distrust, a feeling of cynicism (awareness of lost innocence), and even psychosomatic illnesses such as anorexia and bulimia.
For all these reasons, it must be said that the problems caused by abortion are by no means purely emotional and passing, but rather have a real foundation in the voluntary and culpable loss of a defenseless human being for whom one bore the responsibility of motherhood/fatherhood.
3. Three testimonies
The following three testimonies, from women who have had an abortion (without a clear religious or moral formation, nor properly Catholic convictions), show us one aspect of this reality intentionally silenced by the pro-abortion campaigns.
1) First testimony: Judith X. “The pressure from those around me to have an abortion grew ever greater, and I let myself be convinced. My boyfriend went with me to the doctor, and after a few days I decided to have the abortion at a private clinic. The day it was carried out is like a burn: the scar has never gone away. The doctors were kind, but I felt so dreadful, helpless, and alone. When I woke up from the anesthesia, my boyfriend was sitting beside me, but I was no longer the same; I was someone else, and I felt alone. And that loneliness I still have to this day. I let them take the child from me. And just as that child has died, something has died in me. Today I would never do it again, no matter how those around me might react, for I live in continual fear that seems never to end. In my nightmares I see a little girl with her arms outstretched coming toward me and asking me: Why, mommy, why? I wake up drenched in sweat. And that dream has haunted me ever since I let that procedure be done to me. Meanwhile, things are going very well at work, but my private life is destroyed. My baby would be a year old. I am in mourning for my child, because moreover it was through my own mistake, and that mistake cannot be undone. That is why I alone am the one who must be punished, and not my boyfriend, even though he too was responsible. All I hope is that my baby will forgive me this mistake and understand why I did it. Today I am completely alone, since the child’s father walked out on me to regain his freedom. I write this for all the young women and women who find themselves in the same situation I was in: Think very carefully about what you are going to do. The traumas will torture you. You will be alone before yourselves, and the pain will increase when you see a mother with her baby. You will have to bear the consequences of such a procedure, not your partner. He will not be able to help, only to be there, but it is you who will have to suffer it. Your life will be destroyed!”.
2) Second testimony: Rebecca X. “I was 21 when I had the abortion. I was very afraid. Weeping and full of doubts, on Wednesday I went to the place. I saw a woman with a child. The doctor’s assistant was walking back and forth with a plastic bucket. I wondered: will they throw the aborted child into it? I was given an injection; when the doctor arrived, I was weeping inconsolably. The doctor told me not to make such a scene, that if I wanted, we could do it another day. I answered that I did not know what I wanted; that he should give me the injection once and for all, and be done with it. In the middle of it I thought I did not want to wake up again, I wanted to die. When I woke up, about an hour later, my boyfriend was near me. An unfriendly woman came in saying that I should get up, wash my face, and leave, because she was off duty. Once at my boyfriend’s house, he confessed to me that when I had woken up he had hated me. I began to have pains and a terrible depression came over me. The next day I went to work, even though I had a day of rest prescribed by the doctor, because I was afraid to stay alone at home for more than a day. I could not admit that I had aborted my own child. At midday I went to eat at my mother’s house; she was angry with me, and told me I ought to be glad about what I had done, since many women did it nowadays. In the afternoon I saw a pregnant woman; I got home and threw myself on my bed, full of guilt and remorse. It was hell. Every time I went to sleep I saw my baby just as I had seen it on the monitor screen. The little one haunted me. In time I began to drink alcohol at night until I could fall asleep. My boyfriend and I broke up, because every time I saw him he reminded me of the aborted child. I met other men, but the same thing always happened to me. Half a year after the abortion I was psychologically destroyed. My friends too were tired of me, as were my brothers and sisters and my parents. My life was destroyed; I also lost my job. I began to take tranquilizers, I kept up with the alcohol and the continual change of boyfriends. But I could not rid myself of the sense of guilt. I want to warn all women who are facing an abortion: an abortion is easy to carry out; but afterward something breaks inside the woman, and no one thinks about that. Sometimes I think what my life would have been like if I had had my child: surely not as catastrophic as it is now”.
3) Third testimony: Nancy X. “I was five and a half months pregnant, I already had three children, and my husband had abandoned me. I decided to abort, because I could not manage another one. According to the doctor, the solution was ‘to take out a little fluid and put in a little more. You will have some spasms and then we take out the fetus.’ It did not sound bad, but it was not the whole truth. That day, when he introduced the saline solution into me, I wanted to scream with all my being: ‘stop everything.’ Nothing more could be done, there is no going back on the decision. Over the next hour and a half I experienced how my daughter writhed as she was dying, poisoned and burned. I remember how, meanwhile, I spoke to her and told her that I did not really want this, that I would have wished her to live. But she was already dead, and I remember the last jolt she gave on my left side. Then I was given an injection to bring on labor… For twelve hours I was in labor, and on October 31 at 5:30 in the morning I brought my daughter into the world; she had hair and her eyes were open. I was able to lift her, since the nurses had not come in time. When the nurse arrived, she grabbed her and threw her into a bucket. After everything necessary was done, they took me to a room where a mother had just given birth to a beautiful baby boy; that was very hard. After the abortion, shame, remorse, and guilt settled into me”.
In light of all this, one can understand the words which John Paul II addresses, in the Encyclical Evangelium vitae, to women who have had an abortion: “I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. The Church is aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and she does not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To the same Father and his mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child. With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone’s right to life. Through your commitment to life, whether by accepting the birth of other children or by welcoming and caring for those most in need of someone to be close to them, you will become promoters of a new way of looking at human life.”[3].
Author: Fr. Miguel Ángel Fuentes
Source: The Theologian Responds
