Post-Abortion Syndrome

What is Post-Abortion Syndrome?

Since the early 1980s, an increasing number of women have sought treatment for emotional struggles resulting from a past abortion. Dr. David C. Reardon, a leading post-abortion researcher since 1983, writes: "Abortion is not some magical surgery which turns back time to make a woman 'unpregnant.' Instead, it is a real-life event which is always very stressful and often traumatic." Also, many women cannot resolve the trauma of an abortion on their own. They need help.

Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS) is defined as a woman's struggle to express and work through her thoughts and feelings about her pregnancy and abortion, and her striving to come to peace with herself and others (including God) over her choices and losses.

What makes an abortion profoundly disturbing is that it involves death and loss. A common feeling repeated in the interviews of women before, during, and after an abortion is the sense of a life being taken. "It's killing," responded one woman interviewed in a clinic's waiting room. "But it's justifiable homicide."

Some people are better equipped than others to deal with any traumatic event that invloves death. Some faint at the sight of blood, while others soar into action. Some talk about what happened, while others pretend it never happened. The same is true with abortion.

No matter how people deal with an abortion, everyone is changed by it. After searching in vain to find a way to deal with their abortion, some women shut down their emotions and develop a coping mechanism in order to survive. This shutting down of a woman's heart is the second casualty of abortion.

Fortunately, there is help available. See Testimonial.