What is Abortion

Abortion is not a done deal!

Because the risks and consequences of abortion continue even after women go through with them, they need emotional and sometimes physical healing.

Be’ad Chaim, a pro-life association in Israel, feels responsible to provide women with the opportunity to receive healing from the trauma of abortion and to educate them regarding its staggering consequences. Women have the right to know!

Much research has been done on the risks and effects of abortion, and most women who choose to end their pregnancies are completely unaware of the long-term risks.

Research has shown that women who terminate a pregnancy before their first birth have a 50 percent higher risk of breast cancer than women who do not. The cancer reportedly appears 10 to 14 years after the abortion was performed.

Women who abort a first pregnancy are also at a greater risk of long-term clinical depression compared to women who carry an unintended first pregnancy to term. The onset of the depression is often not immediate, but 5 to 10 years after an abortion, the woman may begin to experience post-traumatic symptoms. The symptoms of post-abortion syndrome are varied, but include signs such as depression, thoughts of suicide, deterioration of self-worth, interpersonal relationship problems, reliving the abortion, alcohol and drugs and eating disorders.

A 13-year study of the entire female population in Finland released in November 2005 showed that deaths from suicide, homicide and accidents in the year following an abortion were 248 percent higher than for women who hadn’t been pregnant.

Women who have aborted their first pregnancy have a 5 to 10 percent risk of becoming entirely infertile. Of the women who will have difficulty conceiving, 30 percent have conception problems because of damaged fallopian tubes due to the abortion. They also have twice the risk of giving birth to a stillborn child and twice the risk of an extra-utero pregnancy. This risk is increased four times if the woman has had more than one abortion.

This information was shared at a conference sponsored by Be’ad Chaim in Jerusalem in May 2006. The conference was intended to address the topic of Post-Abortion Syndrome.