British Woman to File Suit for Abortion Distress

By Liz Townsend

A British woman told the BBC's Radio 4 program Today that she is preparing a lawsuit against the National Health Service (NHS) for trauma she suffered after an abortion four years ago. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that she wants the NHS to give women more information about the effects - - including psychological - - they may suffer after an abortion.

"I just want to make the NHS aware of the approach they have on the wards, just to let them know what women are going through, how serious it is and I think they should do something about it," she said on the June 12 radio show.

Pro-lifers pledged their support. "Women are deliberately not being told the whole truth," Nuala Scarisbrick, trustee of the British pro-life group LIFE, said. "They are not being given the chance to make informed decisions. They have a right to know."

The woman has a long road to travel before her lawsuit reaches court. The BBC reported that she and her lawyer have just begun to gather medical evidence about the link between her abortion and her mental distress. The suit would be the first of its kind in Britain.

The woman told the radio audience that she received no counseling before her abortion about possible mental trauma. As soon as she had the abortion, however, she knew what she was doing was "wrong." She said she tried to deny her feelings for three years, until she gave birth to a son. "I realized what I'd lost," she said. "I just felt near a nervous breakdown then."

She began to see her doctor for counseling. "Probably the first six sessions I spent in tears while she listened," the woman explained, "and since then we've been working through things like guilt and forgiveness. It helps a bit but I won't ever be the same."

National guidelines published in 2000 by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG) state that women should be informed about hemorrhage, uterine perforation, infection, and other physical effects before they have an abortion.

RCOG officials insisted that doctors do not have to tell women about the mental health effects of abortion. The BBC reported that the RCOG believes that "psychological problems following abortion are rare and that in fact abortion is good for women's mental health," according to Dr. Gillian Penney of the RCOG's Guideline Development Group.

Penney told the BBC that "far more problems follow unwanted pregnancies than abortions," and that "in most cases where women do experience adverse reactions they are found to have had psychological problems that pre-date the termination."

Pro-lifers and mental health experts quickly challenged such statements. LIFE issued a press release that refuted the studies that underlie the RCOG's position.

"Most of the evidence used by the RCOG comes from a handful of studies published in the 1970s and 80s which has far too short follow-up periods - - sometimes only a few weeks - - to be of any value," LIFE's Scarisbrick said. "It is disgraceful that the RCOG should persist in peddling all this outdated, misleading material."

Liverpool psychiatrist Dr. David Kingsley also said that the RCOG's position is simply wrong. "It is patently untrue to suggest that women who suffer psychiatric distress after an abortion probably had a previous history of psychiatric disorders," he told the BBC.

Kingsley said that the RCOG guidelines are part of an "atmosphere of denial" that surrounds that abortion process. "Firstly, in the clinic itself when both mothers and staff in order to do what they are doing have to deny the reality of a baby that by four weeks has a beating heart and by eight weeks has fingers and toes," he told the BBC. "And later both organizations and women themselves because of what they have done find it very hard to admit the effects that the abortion would have.

"One could argue that at the present time based on the current guidelines women are not really able to make an informed decision about whether to go ahead with an abortion or not."