Charles Vignetta E, Polis Chelsea B, Sridhara Srinivas K, Blum Robert W
Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Contraception. 2008 Dec;78(6):436-50. doi: 10.1016/j.contraception.2008.07.005. Epub 2008 Sep 23.
Claims that women who have elective abortions will experience psychological distress have fueled much of the recent debate on abortion. It has been argued that the emotional sequelae of abortion may not occur until months or years after the event. Despite unclear evidence on such a phenomenon, adverse mental health outcomes of abortion have been used as a rationale for policy-making. We systematically searched for articles focused on the potential association between abortion and long-term mental health outcomes published between January 1, 1989 and August 1, 2008 and reviewed 21 studies that met the inclusion criteria. We rated the study quality based on methodological factors necessary to appropriately explore the research question. Studies were rated as Excellent (no studies), Very Good (4 studies), Fair (8 studies), Poor (8 studies), or Very Poor (1 study). A clear trend emerges from this systematic review: the highest quality studies had findings that were mostly neutral, suggesting few, if any, differences between women who had abortions and their respective comparison groups in terms of mental health sequelae. Conversely, studies with the most flawed methodology found negative mental health sequelae of abortion.
声称选择堕胎的女性会经历心理困扰，这引发了近期关于堕胎的诸多争论。有人认为，堕胎的情感后遗症可能在事件发生数月或数年之后才会出现。尽管关于这一现象的证据尚不明确，但堕胎对心理健康产生的不良后果却被用作决策的依据。我们系统检索了1989年1月1日至2008年8月1日期间发表的、聚焦于堕胎与长期心理健康后果之间潜在关联的文章，并对21项符合纳入标准的研究进行了综述。我们根据恰当探究该研究问题所需的方法学因素对研究质量进行了评级。研究被评为优秀（无研究）、非常好（4项研究）、中等（8项研究）、差（8项研究）或非常差（1项研究）。从这项系统综述中可以明显看出一种趋势：质量最高的研究结果大多呈中性，这表明堕胎女性与其各自的对照组在心理健康后遗症方面几乎没有差异（即便有差异也微乎其微）。相反，方法学缺陷最多的研究发现了堕胎对心理健康的负面后遗症。
