Post Abortion Stress Syndrome (PASS) is the name for the emotional pain often felt by women, and sometimes even men, after an abortion. After an abortion, studies tend to show that most women experience a sense of relief after an abortion - at least at first. These studies, however, usually look at women mere months, or even only weeks, after the abortion. It is, however, not uncommon for the symptoms of PASS to manifest after 5, or even 10 and 20 years. Some of these symptoms may include the following: Sadness, Long-term grief reactions, Anger, Sexual dysfunction, Guilt, Difficulty keeping close relationships, Flashbacks, Memory repressions, Anniversary reactions, Hallucinations, Suicidal ideas *, Increased alcohol and drug use. The Abortion industry strongly denies the existence of PASS and claim that any feelings of grief experienced are due to a pre-existing condition, and not from the abortion. They would have us all believe that the realization that you have killed your own child would not be at all traumatic for a mother. Yet, if PASS does not exist, why are there so many stories told, by women and men, of the agony they've experienced after the trauma of abortion? Why do so many need to seek support groups to get through the pain of this supposedly non-existent syndrome. * "The suicide rate after an abortion was three times the general suicide rate and six times that associated with birth.... the rate for women following a live birth was 5.9 per 100,000; following miscarriage 18.1; following abortion 34.7." They note that women frequently get short term "post-natal blues after having a baby, but that this rarely translates into suicide, and that the initial stress of having a child is transitional, the over-all effect having a positive effect on women’s health." M. Gissler, Abortion/Suicide Link, Br. Med. J., Dec. 6, 1996 |