|
 artime
and the desire for bipartisanship sometimes make the most unlikely
people do the unlikeliest of things.
Buried deep
in the appropriations bill for the departments of Labor, Health
and Human Services, and Education that passed the Senate last week
is an amendment that recognizes the existence of "post-abortion
depression and post-abortion psychosis."
The amendment
didn't actually do much of anything; it didn't create an agency
or appropriate any money. But it did acknowledge that a condition
exists that heretofore had been denied, dismissed as bogus and nothing
more than a pro-life tactic.
The amendment
implores the National Institutes of Health to "expand and intensify
research and related activities . . . with respect to post-abortion
depression and post-abortion psychosis."
It passed uncontested,
without debate.
Post-abortion-stress
syndrome, as it is often referred to by pro-lifers (who are generally
the only ones willing to give it a name), is usually characterized
by severe depression, guilt, eating disorders, anxiety, anger, and
low self-esteem following an abortion.
The significance
of the amendment's passage is that it is the first federal recognition
that women — other than the ones who actually die or are otherwise
physically injured, by infections or worse, at the hands of abortionists
— can actually suffer from something real: a genuine, medically
recognized depression.
The issue hasn't
been addressed at the federal level since Surgeon General C. Everett
Koop issued a letter to President Ronald Reagan in 1988. A year
after the president asked him to investigate the health dimensions
of abortion, Dr. Koop responded that the evidence for risk of significant
emotional problems after abortion was "minuscule."
The amendment-offered
by Sen. Bob Smith (R., N.H.) — that passed the Senate last
week marks the first sign since the Koop letter of federal interest
in filling the gap in knowledge on the topic.
The House has
yet to take up the issue, but a bill sponsored by Rep. Joseph Pitts
(R. Pa.) would go further than the Smith language, actually appropriating
money for research. When the Labor HHS bill gets taken up in a joint
House-Senate conference, the post-abortion amendment is likely to
get dropped. But its passage in the first place, without heated
debate, marks a first and is worth noting.
Various studies,
domestically and internationally, have found disturbing results
involving women and abortion-including higher suicide rates, greater
chances of breast cancer and miscarriage, and varied degrees of
depression.
In the absence
of a definitive study, check out the moving Post-Abortion
Stress Syndrome site. Started by a woman who has suffered through
abortion and its aftermath, it's an online community for women feeling
the pain of choice — the second class of forgotten victims
of the right to choose. The women on the bulletin boards and the
chat room can tell the feminists — the ones who claim to have
the best interests of women in mind — a thing or two.
And further
recognition is worth pursuing. Just consider the feminist opposition
to it.
In a recent
article in Ms. magazine (yes, it still exists), livid about
the Pitts bill, the author wrote:
Post-abortion
stress syndrome" — PASS or PAS — sounds scientific,
but don't be fooled — it's a made-up term. Not recognized
as an official syndrome or diagnosis by the American Psychiatric
Association, the American Psychological Association, or any other
mainstream authority, it is a bogus affliction invented by the
religious right.
Feminists typically
won't even consider that women who abort suffer physically and mentally.
They fight basic safety regulations at the state level. And they
won't allow that women who have had abortions need help coping with
what they have done to their unborn children — because admitting
there is guilt might mean admitting there is something to feel guilty
about. And that might threaten what's become more precious than
life itself: the right to choose death.
|
