THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

In their desperate desire to completely dominate women, anti-abortion zealots have a habit of loudly proclaiming gross lies as their god's own truth. On of the more pernicious ones was that having an abortion led to serious mental health problems later in life. The latest medical study has shown this to be absolute bullshit.

Some states require women seeking abortions to be counseled that they might develop mental health problems. Now a new study, considered to be the most rigorous to look at the question in the United States, undermines that claim. Researchers followed nearly 1,000 women who sought abortions nationwide for five years and found that those who had the procedure did not experience more depression, anxiety, low self-esteem or dissatisfaction with life than those who were denied it.

The findings come as the abortion debate intensifies in the United States, with President-elect Donald J. Trump promising to nominate an abortion opponent to the Supreme Court after taking office next month. The question of the effect of the procedure on women’s health, both physical and mental, has been an effective argument in recent years, used by states to enact a number of regulations and restrictions, and is likely to be a continuing part of the debate.

The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, found psychological symptoms increased only in women who sought abortions but were not allowed to have the procedure because their pregnancies were further along than the cutoff time at the clinic they visited. But their distress was short-lived, whether they went elsewhere for an abortion or delivered the baby. About six months after being turned away from the first abortion clinic, their mental health resembled that of women who were not turned away and had abortions.

“What I think is incredibly interesting is how everyone kind of evens out together at six months to a year,” said Katie Watson, a bioethicist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

“What this study tells us about is resilience and people making the best of their circumstances and moving on,” she said. “What’s sort of a revelation is the ordinariness of it.”

I can imagine women having an abortion and then living among anti-abortion activists and suffering mental health problems, but that kind of poisonous environment would make anybody crazy. For everyone else, their mental health is not dependent upon their reproductive health.