Study Says…No Link Between Abortion and Depression

If you’ve ever read a scientific paper, you know that it’s easy to just believe everything that’s written in one. The language and science can seem almost too complicated for most people to understand, so the study has to be accurate. Right?

Wrong! It would be great to be able to believe everything we read, but sadly we can’t. Recently, an article in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, which linked abortion to mental illness, was debunked by a separate group of researchers. The issue with the study wasn’t that there was a small error. Instead, the researchers neglected to mention that they looked at all the mental disorders a person had in her lifetime, instead of focusing on disorders that occurred after the abortion. The issue with this is that this analysis can’t say whether a mental disorder was caused by the abortion or was present before the abortion. The claim that there is a connection between abortion and mental health problems or that abortion causes depression is not supported by evidence.

If there is anything to learn from this, it’s that we need to take everything we hear with a grain of salt. It’s easy to believe someone that looks and sounds official, but we can’t always make these assumptions. Being informed about the newest research in the field of sexual health is great, but you should always double-check your facts and make sure you have reliable sources.