Government tries to deny post-abortion trauma

London, 30 July 2002--A British government minister has claimed that the RU-486 abortion drug is less likely to cause psychological damage to women than a spontaneous miscarriage. In a parliamentary answer, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, a health minister, highlighted "the negative psychological impact of miscarriage on a significant proportion of women" and observed that miscarriages at home could be a "distressing, frightening and lonely experience". Then, in a later answer, he claimed that "only a small minority" of women experienced adverse psychological effects as a result of so-called medical abortions, such as those performed using RU-486 (mifepristone) which causes a woman to miscarry her child at home. The British government recently announced that it would be promoting wider use of RU-486 in England and Wales.

Margaret Cuthill of British Victims of Abortion, a pro-life post-abortion support group, commented: "While women do experience feelings of grief and even guilt after a natural miscarriage, the guilt and trauma after a deliberate miscarriage or abortion is far more difficult to bear. The minister's contradictory answers reveal an attempt to deceive women into believing that post-abortion trauma does not really exist, when even the manufacturers of RU-486 have said that the drug puts women through an appalling psychological ordeal."