Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

by David C. Reardon, Ph.D.

Women with a history of abortion are three times more likely to suffer from bipolar disorders, according to a new study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

The researchers’ findings were based on a comparison of reproductive histories of women treated for bipolar disorders with a control group of similar women without a history of bipolar disorders. They found that 42.4 percent of the women with bipolar disorders had a history of abortion compared to only 13.5 percent of the control group. There was no significant difference in pregnancy rates or use of contraceptives.¹

These findings are consistent with a 2003 record linkage study of 56,741 low income women in California that I conducted with my colleagues. In that study we found that the rate of first-time psychiatric admissions for bipolar disorders was three times higher after abortion compared to childbirth during the four years following the pregnancy.²

Unfortunately, additional research into the link between abortion and bipolar disorders is often obstructed by ideological considerations.

For example, a 2012 recent record linkage study of 120,378 Danish women examining risk of bipolar disorders following childbirth conspicuously excluded any analyses related to bipolar disorders following other pregnancy outcomes, specifically abortion or miscarriage, even though this data was available to the researchers.³ Indeed, when I pointed this omission out in a letter published by the journal and asked for publication of the results of bipolar disorders associated with abortion, the lead author, Trine Munk-Olsen, simply refused my request.

Burying the Truth

Why would she refuse?

There are only a few possibilities.

First, she may simply have no academic interest in abortion and mental health.

Or, second, she may desire to avoid any involvement in abortion and mental health research because of its controversial nature.

Or, third, she may know or suspect that complying with my request for additional analyses may undermine some belief which she values more than scientific objectivity.

While the first two options may apply to many academics, they don’t apply to Munk-Olsen.

Munk-Olsen’s bipolar disorders study actually uses the very same records she used for two highly publicized studies she had already published on abortion and mental health. In both studies, she asserted that a single first trimester abortion has few, if any, effects on subsequent mental health.^6,7 (Methodological flaws in these studies are outlined at this link.)

The rest is here