Thursday, March 08, 2012

Their facts were flatly wrong

Politicians who link abortion to mental heath problems beware (I’m talking about your Rick Santorum). Per an article in the New York Times called: A study linking abortion and mental health problems is called false, the only published paper that tries to establish the link has been discredited by a critique in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

“This is not a scholarly difference of opinion,” Dr. Steinberg said. “Their facts were flatly wrong. This was an abuse of the scientific process to reach conclusions that are not supported by the data.”

I cannot put a finer point on it. It makes you wonder though. If the original study was flatly wrong, what motivated Dr. Priscilla Coleman? Could it be politics?

Dr. Coleman’s work has been used to support state laws in seven states (Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia) requiring that women seeking an abortion be counseled regarding its negative psychological effects. A similar analysis of data in Denmark (reported last year in the British Journal of Medicine) found no support for the hypothesis that abortion increased the risk of mental disorders.

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