Koop Backed in Call for Research on Abortion Effects

Both sides of the highly volatile debate on abortion agreed with Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s decision that the evidence on so-called “post-abortion syndrome” is inconclusive and that more research is needed, but they split on the extent of the problem and what the findings ultimately will reveal.

“There have been 20 million abortions performed legally in the United States--by now you would know if you had a . . . population of troubled women,” Jeannie Rossoff, president of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research and education on reproductive biology, said Tuesday. “And nobody is running berserk in the streets.”

But Olivia Gans, director of the National Right to Life Committee’s American Victims of Abortion program, said that the problem is widespread in this country but remains unrecognized among mental health professionals and among many of the women themselves.

“The anxiety, the grief, the sense of loss do not surface right away,” said Gans, who had an abortion in 1981 and said that she suffered serious psychological aftereffects.

Koop, who was asked by President Reagan in 1987 to prepare a report on the mental and physical effects of abortion on women, told the President in a letter Monday that it was impossible to reach clear conclusions based on existing evidence and proposed that the federal government sponsor a long-term study of the subject.

In an interview, Koop insisted that he remains an ardent foe of abortion and said that he knows of many instances of women “who were (psychologically) damaged by abortion.”

Most medical experts have agreed that the physical risks of abortion are minimal, but there has been considerable controversy over the psychological effects.

Dr. Henry P. David, a clinical psychologist and director of the Transnational Family Research Institute, said he believes that some women suffer severe psychological effects but that “the proportion of those women is not of public health significance.”

With 1.5 million abortions every year, he said, if there were large numbers of women experiencing mental problems, “we would know about it.”

“The mental health clinics are not filled with women coming in after abortions,” he said. “The right-to-life people hold--and I agree--that there are women who do not have effects until quite some time after the abortion. I don’t argue that--but we don’t know whether that is the result of the abortion or of other intervening life factors. Even so, the number is quite small compared to all the abortions occurring in the country.”

David is the author of reports on several major studies conducted outside the United States that examined the psychological impact of abortion.

One, in Denmark, found that there is no significant rise in admissions to psychological hospitals within three months of abortion or childbirth among women who are part of intact relationships.

But, he said, the number of admissions is “significantly higher” among women who became widows or were separated or divorced, suggesting that “the conception originally was wanted” and that the problems that ensued were more likely to be associated with the end of the relationship, rather than the outcome of the pregnancy.

Dr. Louise Tyrer, vice president for medical affairs for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that the scientific literature indicates that the incidence of depression after abortion “is far less than the incidence of depression after a full-term delivery.”

“The women most likely to be affected (by post-abortion depression) are women who have had depression problems in the past,” she said.

But Dr. Wanda Franz, associate professor of family resources at West Virginia University and vice president of the National Right to Life Committee, disagreed. “Until these problems are actually researched, it’s hard to pin down whether you really have a problem,” she said.