If you are a pastor or church leader involved in counseling women and men impacted by abortion it can be frustrating at best to find a basis for addressing the emotional and mental health wounds abortion brings about.
But there are several professionals whose reputations and credentials are above reproach, and who continue the work of researching abortion harms and finding ways to help.
Martha Shuping, MD is a Psychiatrist and author of The Four Steps to Healing
Dr. Shuping has both treated the abortion-wounded and researched the wide range of abortion harms.
Here she joins Host Michael Hernon, panelists Dr. Regis Martin and Dr. Scott Hahn, as they discuss how pastors, counselors, doctors, and the Catholic community can help those women struggling with the aftermath of an abortion. This episode of Franciscan University Presents: Post-Abortion Trauma and Healing first aired in 2015. Though this perspective reflects a Roman Catholic view, there is a great deal which applies for evangelical viewers, as well as for those of no faith at all.
Martha Shuping, MD
Dr. Shuping has also compiled a comprehensive review on the reality of abortion harm in the peer-reviewed literature both in the US and worldwide (available here via Slideshare and summarized here).
Theresa Burke, PhD is founder of Rachel’s Vineyard abortion recovery retreats held worldwide and is a Nationally Certified Psychologist, a Certified Diplomat of the American Psychotherapy Association, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Board Certified Clinical Psychotherapist, and a Diplomat of the American Board of Forensic Counselors. She is also the author of Forbidden Grief, The Unspoken Pain of Abortion, a comprehensive guide to the aftermath of abortion in the lives of those who experience it.
I interviewed Dr. Burke on Faith Radio in 2016 about the ample documentation of abortion’s negative impact on mental health.
More recently Dr. Burke has reported on a 2021 study linking pregnancy loss and mental illness.
Dr. Priscilla Coleman, professor at Bowling Green State University is a prominent researcher who is published in many respected journals including the British Medical Journal. In June 2022 she published research in Frontiers in Psychology which exposed the Turnaway Study as flawed and ideologically driven.
She has published 62 studies and articles, many addressing the negative outcomes abortion may bring.
Teri K. Reisser, M.S., M.F.T., is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has been counseling couples and post-abortive women since 1984. Her articles are published at Focus on the Family, and her book A Solitary Sorrow, Finding Healing and Wholeness After Abortion continues to be relevant twenty years after its first edition. Among her many helpful insights is the encouragement to bereaved parents of children lost to abortion that their grief is common, and a real outcome of a real loss, thus helping them grieve with hope.
David C. Reardon is a researcher who has focused on abortion’s aftermath for decades. This 2021 study finds abortion contributes to subsequent cases of subsequent post-partum depression. He has also published is SAGE journals in 2018 his extensive findings on the abortion/mental health controversy in light of the bias in the psychology community which keeps the public misinformed and uninformed about abortion’s detrimental impact.
There is so much more available that this article barely touches the surface.
But, rest assured, emotional and mental health challenges after abortion are common, well-documented and deserve your time and attention in your preaching, in screening and resourcing the counseling office, and in your heart as a leader of those given into your care.
