While the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) insists that lack of abortion access causes mental health issues, a new study confirms what AAPLOG has long stated, citing multiple studies: induced abortion itself harms women’s mental health.
An important retrospective cohort study published in the July 2025 edition of the Journal of Psychiatric Research looked at 28,721 induced abortions and 1,228,807 births in hospitals in Quebec between 2006 and 2022. Their findings revealed that mental health issues are more than twice as high after induced abortion as after delivery. The paper highlights the following important results:
- Risk is elevated for psychiatric disorders, substance use, and suicide attempts.
- Patients with preexisting mental illness or age <25 years are most at risk.
- Risk of mental disorders is greatest within five years of abortion.
- Risk of most mental disorders disappears 17 years after an abortion.
Dr. David Reardon of the Elliot Institute created a video that breaks down and highlights the significance and strength of this groundbreaking study. What makes it stand out is its unprecedented scale, analyzing more than 1.2 million pregnancies across a wide population over 17 years. Even more impressive is how the researchers identified and isolated mental health risk factors before or during pregnancy. By using Hazard Ratios (HRs), they more accurately measured the specific risks linked to abortion, giving the study even more credibility.
While many studies have already shown that women deserve comprehensive and compassionate medical care, not abortion, this new research could be a turning point. It’s time that the medical community at large relied on evidence-based research when it comes to women’s health.
These findings challenge ACOG’s claims that nearly all women have no abortion regrets five years later, a conclusion based largely on one 2020 study from the Social Science & Medicine Journal, which finds “no evidence” of “negative emotions.” However, this study was yet another re-analysis of a single data set from the Turnaway Study – a data set that is inherently flawed for many reasons, not the least of which is that its data is based on a non-representative sample with a high dropout rate. (You can read a thorough discussion of the flaws of the Turnaway cohort here).
Pro-abortion propaganda has no place in medical care. Our patients deserve fully informed consent when contemplating abortion, just like any other interaction in healthcare. And they deserve medical treatments that protect and improve their mental health.
