- A new study of U.S. women aged 41–45 found that nearly half of those who had abortions report moderate to high emotional distress — even decades later.
- While most post-abortive women reported little or no distress and felt confident in their decision, a “significant minority” — about one-quarter — continue to experience strong negative emotions such as grief or sadness.
- The study found no evidence that emotional distress fades with time, suggesting that for some women, the distress can persist long-term.
Nearly half of women in the U.S. who have had abortions report moderate to high post-abortion emotional distress (PAD) decades after the decision, a study recently published in the International Journal of Women’s Health Care found.
Father D. Paul Sullins, a senior research associate at the Ruth Institute who recently retired from being a sociology professor at the Catholic University of America, conducted the study. He examined the emotional states of 226 women who had undergone an abortion an average of 20 years earlier — women who were part of a nationally representative sample of 1,000 women who were between 41 and 45 years old in 2022.
He hypothesized that PAD does not lessen with time, and found that about 45% of women who had undergone abortions said they experienced moderate (roughly 21%) to high (about 24%) PAD, with the most commonly reported symptom being “frequent feelings of loss, grief or sadness.”
Fr. Sullins compared the findings with previous studies that analyzed women’s depressive symptoms one week, one month, and two years following their abortions. One study found that one week after the abortion, 29% of women reported “negative emotions,” and another study found that 21% of women reported depressive symptoms at that time. After a month, 17-21% reported depressive symptoms, and after two years, 20% reported the same.
While Fr. Sullins acknowledged that the differences in the studies make it impossible to perfectly compare the data, he noted that results seem to indicate that PAD does not either sharply increase or decline in the years or even decades following an abortion, which corroborated his first hypothesis.
He also hypothesized that most women would report “little or no distress regarding their abortions” and that most women would say that having the abortion was the right decision. The research bore out those predictions as well, but Fr. Sullins found that “a significant minority doubt their decision and remain highly distressed by having had an abortion.” Based on his findings, he estimated that of the 31 million U.S. women who have had an abortion, roughly 7.5 million report “serious” PAD and about 3.4 million report multiple symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
Fr. Sullins concluded, “Women considering an abortion should be informed of the possibility that they may experience persistent emotional distress.”
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