What Women Really Want

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 08, 2007

In order to preserve our sexual liberties, our legal and medical establishments have striven mightily to keep the nature and consequences of abortion from being widely known. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the consistent refusal of abortion clinics to provide full information on the risks and side-effects of abortion to women thinking of terminating their pregnancies.

Into this deliberate darkness comes a study in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. The study proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that women themselves want all the facts before they undergo any medical procedure, including abortion. Authors Priscilla Coleman, David Reardon and Matthew Lee studied the preferences of 187 largely low-income women seeking obstetric and gynecological services. Ninety-five percent of these women said they wanted to be informed of all possible complications with elective medical procedures, including abortion, no matter how common or uncommon.

Sixty-five percent said they also wanted to be informed of all possible alternative treatments, including those not endorsed by their doctors. Those surveyed also ranked the psychological risks of abortion, such as anxiety, depression, insomnia and suicidal thoughts, as more important than any other risks except heart disease and death. Information on such complications was rated as more important than information about either success rates or cost.

Finally, the women indicated overwhelmingly that they wanted to receive the same information about abortion as they would for any medical procedure. In other words, they did not place abortion in a separate “hear no evil” category, as proponents of abortion frequently claim. This study makes very clear that the assumptions governing the abortion industry are at the least profoundly mistaken. Women want to know about psychological as well as physical risks, and they do not want risks concealed to protect their emotions.