Psychosocial consequences of therapeutic abortion King's termination study III

Abstract

A follow-up study is reported of a consecutive series of 360 women who underwent termination of first trimester pregnancies by vacuum aspiration. Each patient received brief counselling before termination. Follow-up examinations were carried out by means of detailed, structured interviews at three months and between 15 months and two years (mean: 18 months) after termination. Outcome was assessed in terms of psychiatric symptoms, guilt feelings, and adjustment in marital and other interpersonal relationships, sexual responsiveness and work record. Compared with ratings of psychosocial adjustment before termination, significant improvement had occurred at follow-up in respect of psychiatric symptoms, guilt feelings and interpersonal and sexual adjustment; there was no significant change in marital adjustment. Adverse psychiatric and social sequelae were rare.

PIP: A consecutive series of 360 women underwent termination of first trimester pregnancies by vacuum aspiration. Prior to the procedure patients received brief counseling. Psychological and social adjustment after abortion were evaluated. Follow-up examinations consisted of detailed, structured interviews at 3 months and between 15 months and 2 years (mean, 18 months) after termination. Psychiatric symptoms, guilt feelings, and adjustment in marital and other interpersonal relationships, sexual responsiveness, and work record were evaluated. Significant improvement had occurred at follow-up with respect to psychiatric symptoms, guilt feelings (p less than .00001), and interpersonal and sexual adjustment (p less than .00005) compared with ratings before the procedure. Significant change in marital adjustment was absent. Few adverse psychiatric and social effects were observed. These results indicate that legal abortion performed in the first trimester via vacuum aspiration and accompanied by brief counseling carried only minimal psychosocial risks up to 2 years afterwards.