I would assume there would be at least a slight link in the other direction, i.e. if you’re depressed and not receiveing sufficient therapy, you’re more likely to view termination as your only option.  Not that that has any clear link to the stupid Post-Abortion Syndrome lie.

And again, wikipedia slays these people.

Mofos, we can look you up. We know what you think and what you said to the prolifers before you started the research, and all your protestations to the contrary after the fact change nothing.

I’m guessing that women who experience depression after an abortion fit the same profile as women who have post-partum depression:  9 times out of 10, there’s either a history of depression or an ongoing depression that gets triggered by the stressful events.

If one third of American women have had abortions and one quarter have some form of mental illness (NIMH number), then you are going to have a fair amount of overlap between the two.

Not to reopen any old battles, but the whole “post-abortion trauma” concept is following a not uncommon pattern.  People have mental illness, but battle it privately or without community support, due to both the stigma of mental illness and the difficulty of dealing with mentally ill people.  Suddenly, a diagnosis appears which presents the illness as having a “cause” and the sufferer as being an innocent victim of an evil world.  People flock to claim this diagnosis as their own.  Sad for what it says about the general compassion of society in general.

This disorder also began appearing suspiciously soon after the publication of legitimate studies showing adverse mental health issues for women who had given babies up for adoption.  But adopting is good!  Aborting is bad!  To keep their heads from exploding, pro-lifers began claiming abortion made women mentally unhealthy.

Lifelong electronic medical records will bring about a revolution in the treatment of mental illness.

As when dealing with creationists, I always wonder: How often is it worth refuting their lies, given that they’re going to carry on lying?

Funny, John Hopkins is usually publishing studies proving that transgendered people don’t exist.

“I predict this will have exactly zero effect on the anti-choice movement.”

Me too.  Look how long that breast cancer thing has clung on.

My personal experience with women who have chosen abortion is that abortion is strongly linked to feelings of relief and expressions of “whew!”. But that’s not scientific, I can only speak for every single one of them who all made the choice with sound mind and all were happy they did it, except for a friend in high school who was filled with guilt due to religious beliefs. Said guilt did not deter her from becoming pro-choice as a direct result of having been faced with the prospect of being a 16 year old mom.

Suddenly, a diagnosis appears which presents the illness as having a “cause” and the sufferer as being an innocent victim of an evil world.  People flock to claim this diagnosis as their own.  Sad for what it says about the general compassion of society in general.

The other thing that happens is that some number of women (I hesitate to say “many,” but I suspect the number is not insignificant either) may go through a difficult time after an abortion because of the other issues in their life surrounding the unplanned pregnancy, and anti-choicers seize on that and turn it into something pathological.

An example might help folks understand what I’m talking about. A friend of mine who grew up in a very conservative evangelical household was going through a rough spot, flunking out of school, drinking and partying a lot and having unprotected sex. She ended up getting pregnant - twice - and having two abortions within a few months of each other. She went through a period of depression afterward - going through the same thing twice in such a short time made her face up to the direction her life was going and she was disappointed in herself. She also felt like she had disappointed her parents and strained her relationship with her mother, to whom she was very close.

But - a very important but - she never felt like she made the wrong decision, and several years after the fact, she is very much at peace with her decision. She says she has no guilt about it and thinks she made the best decision for herself at that time.

If she had answered a survey about her emotions and mental state after the abortion, she would have looked like she was depressed. Because she was. But it wasn’t BECAUSE of the abortion. The abortion was one event in a bunch of stuff going on in her life at that time.

I predict this will have exactly zero effect on the anti-choice movement.

But, at least you and I will now feel more sure of ourselves if we have to explain matters. And if an anti-choicer says, “but I read a study that said there was a link!”, we can say, “go on Yahoo news and read about how Johns Hopkins University showed that there is no link” instead of feeling flustered.

I went mulling around on the site, if you click any of the links under the “Im pro-choice” section you are directed to a page that tells you why you are wrong, under the Planned Parenthood the part about sex quickly delvoles into a “gays are nastee and wrong” argument, and this is what they said about incest:

How does the incest victim feel about being pregnant?

For her, it is a way to stop the incest; a way to unite mother and daughter, a way to get out of the house. Most incestuous pregnancies, if not pressured, will not get abortions. “As socially inappropriate as incest and incestuous pregnancies are, their harmful effects depend largely upon reaction of others.”

For those prone to depression, the ongoing stress of child raising may be harder to cope with than a one-time stressful event. Has anyone done a study on chronic depression and parental attitudes? Which isn’t to say abortion is the answer; antidepressants, support services, and counseling could all help.

My alma mater!  Go Hopkins go!

(Though Crissa is right.  John Money is/was a problem.  Gah.)

hm.  I think anti-choicers have started looking for a link with depression because accusations of hysteria are no longer in vogue.  Saying that someone is clinically depressed is more politically correct these days than blaming a woman’s wandering uterus.
Personally, I have dealt with depression my whole life.  And, I’ve recently had to make the choice to terminate a pregnancy.  However, the depression was around looooooong before I had to abort.  As a matter of fact, I experienced a period of worsening depression symptoms that coincide with the time frame in which I was pregnant.  Since having the abortion, my symptoms of depression have improved a great deal.  It’s just one person’s experience, but it is what it is.  So a giant ‘FU’ to any anti-choicers who know soooo much more about what is best for me, that they get to ‘protect’ me from the mental anguish of an abortion.

well, OF COURSE, women are depressed after they have abortions.  Once they have a chance to detox from those hormones, they realize what sinful horrible sluts they have been and that they were taken advantage of by abortionists and made an accessory to MURDER!  Only a heartless bitch wouldn’t be depressed and traumatized by that experience.

:-o~~~~~

Reality has absolutely no relationship with these people.  They live in their own moral high ground sniping at anyone else who has a different opinion and doesn’t seem frightened or depressed by “bad” choices

LauraB and Crissa- John Money supported the supposition that gender is entirely the product of socialization. I thought that was a check in the “pro column” for feminism.

John Money does not pass basic “not treating people like shit 101.”  Here’s his wikipedia page and a primer on the John/Joan case.  You might also try As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto, but it’ll break your heart.

I’ve read _As Nature Made Him_. That’s where i was coming from.

Did you pick up on the part where Money was completely unethical and insisted that his experiment had worked and that “Brenda” was happily living as a female when in fact “Brenda” was suicidal?

The women I know who had late abortions were very upset and depressed - not because they terminated their pregnancies, however.  They were upset and depressed about the entire ordeal that meant giving up the dreams they had for a child they wanted - a process that began, in one case, with finding out that an unborn child didn’t have a brain, with going to court to get the approvals for a 27th week termination, with carrying around a dead child for several days, with the rather difficult and painful multi-day procedure itself, with the recovery and hormonal shifts, and mourning the loss.

Of course, the termination of the pregnancy itself is not the depressing part of all of that.

Can any thinking, feeling person explain how making this process even more difficult and tortuous will improve a woman’s mental health?

’m amused that few people seem to pick up on that.  It’s true that botched circumcisions are relatively rare, but I figure even one mutilated penis is too many in service of a superstitious tradition.

Exactly!

Not to mention the danger that laws written to make all sorts of exceptions and exemptions for this worthless and primarily superstitious body modification muddy up the whole case law on genital mutilation and parental rights to their children’s bodies.

But what I find fascinating is that while Reimer’s case doesn’t settle the nature or nurture argument definitively, it always definitively settled the “circumcise or not?” argument.

Sure did the trick for me. Aside from the very important issue of body integrity (it’s my son’s body, he should have a say in whether or not circumcision is performed on it), the thought that there was a chance, however slight, that the procedure could be botched scared the crap out of me

But what I find fascinating is that while Reimer’s case doesn’t settle the nature or nurture argument definitively, it always definitively settled the “circumcise or not?” argument.

Yep.  If we ever have a son, he keeps what he comes out with.  It may be a tiny risk that something could go horribly wrong, but why take even a tiny risk for a cosmetic procedure?

this study made me VERY happy… SOME one, with money power and influence was checking the “work” of the fundies…

of course, the fundies will either ignore or try to discredit this, but the POINT is that it was done! the truth is there!

The thing about the David Reimer case is everyone wants to make it about nature or nurture, but to me it always was good evidence that gender and sexual orientation are a matter of genetics plus environmental factors.  I believe both that Reimer felt like the gender he was born in and that people who are genetically male or female but feel like the other gender are right.  Because it’s clearly complicated.

And furthermore, we don’t understand what those environmental factors are, except that they amount to more than throwing a dress on a kid and giving him some dolls.

John Money fell in love with his theory, and he was unable or unwilling to change his theory to accommodate messy reality.  In so doing, he destroyed the lives of several people.  In a scientist, that’s grossly unethical.

It may be a tiny risk that something could go horribly wrong, but why take even a tiny risk for a cosmetic procedure?

It’s not merely a cosmetic or religious procedure - there is a lot of scientific data that circumcised men are less likely to get STDs, including HIV. And that their (female) partners are much less likely to have yeast infections.

Anedotally, the only time I have ever gotten yeast infections (and there were several) was with my uncircumsized BF in college, and he was no slob, those things just get dirty more easily and…yuck. I will sleep with Republicans, but I will not sleep with uncirmcumcised men - I’m with Carrie from SITC on this one.

Ms Kate, I’ve seen several independent studies come to the same conclusion, not just one or two.

And, I’m sorry if “icky” was too vague or offensive, but I don’t like sucking down cock-lint and I didn’t want to get quite THAT graphic, hence the “icky”, but there you have it.

My point is that “religious reasons” aren’t the only reason women like me want circumcision and “cosmetic” isn’t necessarily bad (hell, deodorant is “cosmetic” and yet I approve of it heartily).

Yes, there is the occassional accident. But, statistically, your doctor is far, far more likely to kill or maim your baby through other means. There’s no reason to assume that only religious nutters opt for this for their kids, nor should the risk be over-emphasized - there’s a much bigger risk in driving the baby home, for goodness sakes. (Not that I’m saying that anyone HERE is over-emphasizing risks, just providing a different viewpoint.)

No offense, and sorry if that was a derail.

Ellen - be that as it may, your arguments do not, in my opinion, support the argument that male children should be circumcised at birth.  I have no problem whatsoever with giving a man a choice to circumcise for whatever reason, religious, cosmetic, health, etc.  But in all these cases it is the man’s free choice.  It was not done to him as an infant.

Also I don’t think uncut dicks are gross.  In some ways, I prefer them.

Denise, I’ve known several men who wished they’d been circumcised as infants, but didn’t dare get it done now because they figured it’d hurt.

If a parent believes that circumcision will make a child healthier and happier, why shouldn’t they do it? Parents make millions of choices for their children that influence the child permanently and for the rest of their lives. This is one of many.

I’m not saying parents should / shouldn’t circumcise. I’m saying that it should continue to be their choice to do what they think is best for the infant.

I’m getting unpleasant flashbacks to the transit thread and the “Parents should / shouldn’t drive their kids to school” so I really think we should get back on topic, less we get another “Does being a Liberal mean you enforce your ideas on everyone else?” argument. So, in an effort to get back on topic:

I do not understand why if would be so controversial IF abortions did correlate closely to depression. After all, correlation != causation, and the same underlying causes behind the abortion could cause the depression (poverty, rape, etc.). However, again, IF it could be shown that abortion causes depression, that STILL would not be a good argument against abortion. That abortion depression could easily be the depression one could conceivably get over having birth control fail and then having to submit to a slut-shaming invasive expensive medical procedure to correct it. Hell, I’m “depressed” (go with me here) when I have to shell out money for new car tires, but that doesn’t mean that they should outlaw tire stores. It means we need fewer nails on the road. Or something.

Well, speaking as someone who has a scarred penis due to a less than successful circumcision shortly after birth, I wish all the time that my parents had opted not to have me done.  Or that it was my choice to have it done(I know my parents deeply regret it, although I place no blame on them).  My parents may have thought that the circumcision would make me “healthier and happier”, but it did the total opposite.  I really don’t see what immediate dangers a foreskin poses to an infant.

I just really wish that I had the choice of deciding what would be best for my own penis. You can choose to have your foreskin removed, but if its already gone, you can’t put it back.  Is removing the foreskin so urgent a problem that it must be done as an infant?

Now, none of this compares to the horrors of female circumcision, obviously. Male circumcision isn’t even in the same ballpark. I’m part of a very small minority of men who had it botched, whereas female circumcision is devastating in every single case.  For me, everything is functional and all the sensation is still there(as far I know).  I just have to prepare my partners first, and one night stands are out of the question.

My point is that “religious reasons” aren’t the only reason women like me want circumcision and “cosmetic” isn’t necessarily bad (hell, deodorant is “cosmetic” and yet I approve of it heartily).

So which part of your body should your parents have cut off to make you more attractive to your future sex partners?

There’s no reason to assume that only religious nutters opt for this for their kids, nor should the risk be over-emphasized - there’s a much bigger risk in driving the baby home, for goodness sakes.

I don’t know about that.  See, when you drive a baby home, there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll arrive unscathed, whereas when you circumcise a baby boy there’s a 100% chance that he’ll have the end of his dick chopped off.  But heck, if you like ‘em better cut that’s plenty enough reason to mutilate boy’s genitals without their consent!