“Sheila” underwent a legal abortion sometime between January 1, 1970 and June 15, 1971 at a facility participating in the Joint Program for the Study of Abortion or JPSA.
Sheila had a history of schizophrenia, making her mental health already at risk before undergoing a saline abortion in the late second trimester. After she expelled her dead child and the placenta, she was transferred to a mental institution.
Sheila never recovered. She was at the institution for a month before discharging herself against medical advice. She then committed suicide.
The study noted that Sheila’s abortion was able to happen because states had recently weakened their abortion restrictions. Ironically, multiple states had legalized abortion under vague “mental health” qualifications (despite the fact that abortion is not a recognized cure or treatment for any psychiatric disorder) so loosely defined that allowed it essentially on demand even for those with no mental health conditions whatsoever. These “mental health” exemptions did nothing to prevent Sheila from the trauma of the abortion itself, which apparently aggravated her pre-existing mental health problems.
The mental health excuse for legalizing abortion becomes even more baffling when you consider that live birth is consistently associated with better mental health outcomes than abortion. STAKES (statistical analysis unit of Finland's National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health) found that after abortion, women were seven times more likely to take their own lives than those who gave birth. Many other studies have also shown the link between abortion and worse mental health outcomes compared to patients who gave birth or even miscarried. There’s also the issue of whether or not some patients who actually did have psychiatric disorders would have truly been able to consent to the abortions they underwent.
Despite all of this, JPSA claimed the link between Sheila’s recent abortion trauma and her suicide was “highly questionable” and downplayed abortion dangers throughout the publication. Given that it was published in Family Planning Perspectives by the Guttmancher Institute (the then-research arm of Planned Parenthood), this bias is probably to be expected.
The exact facility responsible for the abortion is unknown, but the FPP publication included a list of all participating facilities in the back. Sheila’s abortion was done in one of the following states or districts: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington or Washington D.C.
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