On September 29, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing entitled “Improving Women’s Health: Understanding Depression After Pregnancy.”
Subcommittee Chair Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) stated that there are two aspects of depression in women after pregnancy: postpartum and post-abortion. He acknowledged that these are “sensitive issues,” but noted that these important concerns need to be addressed.
Ranking Member Sherrod Brown (D-OH) stated, “Postpartum depression is a clinically proven, alarmingly prevalent women’s health condition. Postpartum depression or PPD is a mental health threat that affects at least 10 percent of new mothers about 400,000 a year.” Rep. Brown expressed his regret that the “topic of abortion” had been introduced to the hearing. “Anti-choice members of Congress have every right to promote their social agenda, but it is a shame they chose to turn this important public health hearing into yet another attack on the reproductive rights of women,” he said.
Defending the inclusion of abortion-related depression, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Joe Barton (R-TX) stated, “I am concerned that some have suggested that it’s unnecessary to even evaluate the impact of abortion and its relationship to depression. We need to know more information about depression, not less.”
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), sponsor of the Melanie Blocker-Stokes Postpartum Depression Research and Care Act (H.R. 846), explained that postpartum depression is “a very real mental illness that afflicts millions of women nationwide.” He pointed out that his bill would “expand and intensify research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) on the causes, diagnoses and treatments of postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, and provide grants for the delivery of essential services to individuals with postpartum depression and psychosis and their families, including enhanced outpatient and home-based health care.”
Highlighting his bill (H.R. 4543) on post-abortion depression, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) said, “Women have the right to know about the long-term effects of abortion on their mental and emotional well-being.” H.R. 4543 would authorize expanded and intensified research through NIH for post-abortion depression and psychosis; establish grants for projects to provide essential services, such as outpatient and home-based health and support services, to “individuals with post-abortion depression or post-abortion psychosis…and their families;” and would authorize annual research appropriations of $3 million for FY2005 through FY2009. Citing his support for “continued research on post-partum depression and miscarriage-related depression,” Rep. Pitts stressed the need “to devote federal resources to the research and treatment of post-abortion depression.”
Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), a co-sponsor of H.R. 846, said that, as a nurse, she has seen the difficulties women and their families experience with postpartum depression. She voiced her support for more research on PPD, but remarked that the hearing seemed “to be equating the documented illness of postpartum depression with that of so-called post-abortion depression. This is unfortunate as there is little if any evidence in the scientific literature that post-abortion depression exists.” Rep. Capps declared, “Like the unsubstantiated claims linking breast cancer to abortion, the claims of abortion causing mental illness are just another weapon in the fight to make all abortions illegal. This is truly unfortunate because there are women who need our help, whether they choose to carry their pregnancies to term or not.”
Carol Blocker, mother of Melanie Stokes, expressed her support for H.R. 846, which is named after her daughter. Ms. Blocker described Melanie as a happily married, successful professional woman, whose life changed dramatically after the birth of her first baby. “Six weeks after my daughter gave birth, at the routine six week postpartum checkups, she said that she felt ‘hopeless’ and retreated to her room. We couldn’t get her back to the doctor, back to her job or back to the world,” Ms. Blocker declared. After several suicide attempts, Melanie killed herself on June 11, 2001, less than four months after giving birth.
Michaelene Fredenburg, president of the Life Resource Network, described her abortion at the age of eighteen. Following her abortion, she said, “I soon found myself in a cycle of self-destructive behavior that included an eating disorder.” Ms. Fredenburg said that “counselors and supportive friends” helped her to “enter a healthy grieving process.” Concerning post-abortion depression, Ms. Fredenburg stated, “There is mounting evidence both anecdotal and in published studies that women suffer emotionally after an abortion. But since abortion is held hostage to politics and special interest groups, there are too few reliable studies that have been done.”
Testifying on behalf of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Nada Stotland, member of the Board of Trustees, defined postpartum depression as “an affective disorder” and postpartum psychoses as “psychotic disorders.” She asserted that “data from the most rigorous, objective studies are clear: abortions are not a significant cause of mental illness,” but added, “The fact that there is no psychiatric syndrome following abortion, and that the vast majority of women suffer no ill effects, does not mean that there are no women who are deeply distressed about having had abortions.” Dr. Stotland identified the “mental health of a woman before she has an abortion” as “the single most powerful predictor of [her] post-abortion mental state,” noting that “scientific literature indicates that the best mental health outcomes prevail when women can make their own decisions and receive support from loved ones and society whether they decide to continue or terminate a pregnancy.” To help everyone “seeking treatment for mental disorders,” Dr. Stotland suggested that Congress “enact a federal law requiring non-discriminatory coverage of treatment of mental illnesses as part of all insurance.”
Focusing on suicides following abortions, Dr. Elizabeth Shadigian, clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School, said, “A number of studies note the association between the termination of pregnancy and either suicide or suicide attempt.” Dr. Shadigian disputed the assertion that the pre-existing mental condition of a woman having an abortion is the main factor in her post-abortion mental condition: “This is an objective outcome which is seen only after the termination of pregnancy rather than before and indicates either common risk factors for both choosing termination of pregnancy and attempting suicide such as depression, or the harmful effects of termination of pregnancy on mental health.” Dr. Shadigian testified that “research on homicide and suicide after pregnancy reveals that women who terminate their pregnancies, as compared to women delivering a term baby, are twice as likely to die from homicide and almost two to six times as like to commit suicide.” Stressing the importance of more studies, Dr. Shadigian said that “research studying only depression after childbirth ignores the difficulties that millions of women in this country are faced with following pregnancy losses depression after miscarriage, stillbirth and termination of pregnancy.”
