Actually, from 1987 through 1994, the APA did take a position, a medical one, though not on abortion’s mental health benefits. They included induced abortion as one of the psychosocial stressors that can cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the APA’s DSM-III-R, a book that was the diagnostic tool for psychologists and psychiatrists nationwide for seven years.

You can get a used copy on Amazon, as I did.

Then when the DSM-IV came out, they simply had removed abortion from the book altogether, without a single research study or review of such studies to warrant doing so.

That just isn’t how anything is entered or removed from that manual.

If you’d like to read extensive excerpts without having to buy your own copy, I wrote an article on this here:
http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2004/05/you-might-recall-my-recent-comment.html

Actually, from 1987 through 1994, the APA did take a position, a medical one, though not on abortion’s mental health benefits. They included induced abortion as one of the psychosocial stressors that can cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the APA’s DSM-III-R, a book that was the diagnostic tool for psychologists and psychiatrists nationwide for seven years.

You can get a used copy on Amazon, as I did.

Then when the DSM-IV came out, they simply had removed abortion from the book altogether, without a single research study or review of such studies to warrant doing so.

That just isn’t how anything is entered or removed from that manual.

If you’d like to read extensive excerpts without having to buy your own copy, I wrote an article on this here:
http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2004/05/you-might-recall-my-recent-comment.html

Ok — roll back a few years when gay to straight therapy was heavily promoted and forced on people.

Do you imagine anyone doing it even cared that it caused harm?

None of the therapists cared. They never bothered to properly assess their current clients, let alone ones that had fled or cracked up. No, they blamed the client and moved onto another victim.

R.I.P. Rado, Hatterer, Socarides.

I’ll make another suggestion: after you’ve got to know some gay couples — and not just by email, or in passing — ask them to direct you to a few of an older generation that took the brunt of that callous indifference by previous therapists. Ask those older men and women about harm, and publish what you find.

Actually just ask Jack Drescher.

They have taken a position on the mental health benefits that comes with people being able to determine their own intimate lives based on their needs and values. It’s not specific to it, but that self-determination extends to abortion.

Regarding the back-alley outcome of making abortion illegal or difficult — what study would you suggest the APA should have conducted before deciding abortions would best occur in proper medical facilities rather than some tin shed with a deregistered doctor (or worse)?

Do you need to study such things?

And perhaps you don’t particularly care that someone would be so deceitful about academic qualifications, but I do. They say nothing about the quality of a research paper, but they say an awful lot about the quality of the individual.

Reardon has piggybacked on people with real qualifications. He’s been promoted by people aligned with his views, but who should know better. And he’s hence been actively sought to provide any anti-abortion viewpoint, you know — for “balance”.

But science isn’t a democracy, and there’s no jury to be out. Reardon is not accepted by the academic community, regardless of how appealing his campaign is to others.

I know nothing of his pedigree but I do know he has peer reviewed publications beyond the BMJ. I think the jury is out on the mis-coding issue.

Regarding the back-alley stuff, you know that the APA took the position it did before there was research.

But to be fair to Russo, if the evidence were all sweetness and light, it would not change religious opposition to abortion.

The point is that the APA is a scientific organization, not a religious one. Taking a position on abortion is to choose moral sides. I don’t want them to say abortion should not be a civil right because some women are harmed by it – that would not be appropriate either. I just want them to stay out of defining what is psychologically sound public policy about political/moral matters.

You are anti-abortion on religious grounds. That much we can all understand — but this type of thing is undignified.

This is a puff piece from Elliot Institute about their own director. The Elliot Institute is an ANTI-abortion outfit, funded by god knows who. They are not a research institute. They were established with one goal in mind — to make abortion illegal.

Reardon himself is an engineer (if I recall, electrical), and his Ph.D. (in ethics) was BOUGHT from Pacific Western University with that one goal in mind — to make abortion illegal.

PWU itself is a notorious correspondence diploma mill in California. PWU is (or should be) well known to anyone in academic and business recruitment circles because it is occasionally used by fraudsters to inflate resumes with utterly unearned qualifications.

The piece also neglects to mention one salient bit of info — Russo gutted Reardon in the BMJ (if I recall) in a follow-up to a paper that Reardon had submitted. Reardon had miscoded the data. Russo correctly coded it, and found something very different.

The comment from Fergusson about one of Russo’s concerns (in your Washington Times piece) — “It’s true we did not take into account specifically whether a pregnancy was wanted or not. However, this limitation is not sufficient grounds for dismissing the results.” — is of further interest because (if I recall) it was one of the very factors that Russo specifically examined following Reardon’s publication. She found to be significant.

Perhaps Fergusson is unaware, or this history between Reardon and Russo has slipped his mind.

In any case, nowhere — other than Fergusson’s telling and continued pro-choice position — do I see any consideration for the outcome for all those women who have abortions if they were instead to be compelled to carry to term or seek out an illegal back-yard abortionist.

I was just yesterday reading through a UN report on Africa (where abortion is illegal in most countries). The results? 4 million abortions a year, and 40,000 dead women. Who knows how many others were physically or mentally damaged. Those are some mental health problems for you to get your teeth into — and all due to the fact that abortion is illegal.

While you and Reardon may chose to deem it “a civil rights approach not based in scientific evidence” the APA stands on solid ground. The APA recommends a proper and informed decision. The APA does raise the issues that may affect some women. If heightened or additional concerns to be established, the APA would adopt them.

But the APA is also very clear that the best outcomes are arrived at by allowing women to make that informed decision. That some may later regret that decision, or even be distressed having made it, does not alter that basic and well-founded premise. It has nothing to do with the APA (let alone Russo) denying the evidence for some political end.

I again note your complete lack of irony regards the contrary positions you take on abortion and exgay therapists. But there’s actually nothing ironic about it afterall, is there?

PS: at least the Fergusson study did have one fascinating finding. The mental health of teen girls who get pregnant and have a baby is on par with those who don’t get pregnant. I guess I won’t be seeing a piece from you at Abstinence Clearinghouse on that finding… 🙂