Media Contact: Dustin Siggins media@supportafterabortion.com
Medication abortion is changing women’s abortion experiences
Women report pain, isolation, and shock when experiencing abortions at home
NORTH PORT, FLORIDA—Support After Abortion, which provides research-based training to licensed therapists and lay counselors, says a recent surge in medication abortions means that the mental health community must change how it helps women suffering after abortion.
“During surgical abortions, women are anesthetized, the abortion is fast, and their experience is validated by the people around them in real time,” said Support After Abortion CEO Lisa Rowe, a licensed mental health therapist. “Women who experience medication abortions tell our After Abortion Help Line that they experience significant pain, have little or no help, and are horrified when seeing their baby for the first time.”
“That’s why women who seek our services have changed from older, white, and religious to young, diverse, and secular,” continued Rowe. “They have trauma and grief that need healing now.”
=Many mental health programs don’t address after-abortion care. Others use one-size-fits-all methods, including:
Faith-based programs which focus on in-person group gatherings, Scripture, and short-term programs.
Programs which only affirm abortions.
Social workers who do not ask about or seek to address pregnancy loss.
Therapists whose after-abortion care does not address pre-abortion traumas.
For six years, Support After Abortion has provided research-based after-abortion training to hundreds of therapists and counselors, and connected thousands of women and men to individualized healing resources. Its best practices include providing healing options which are tailored to clients’ needs – ranging from secular to religious, in-person and virtual, and anonymous to group settings.
“One in three women suffer negative mental health issues like grief and depression after a medication abortion, and most of them don’t know where to seek healing,” concluded Rowe. “We are urging the entire mental health community – churches that provide after-abortion healing, social workers and therapists who help families through pregnancy loss, and abortion centers like Northland Family Planning which acknowledge after-abortion suffering and grief – to treat women where they are, not where we wish they are,” said Rowe. “We can most effectively help women become their best selves if we diversify our approaches to helping them heal.”
A woman’s story of after-abortion suffering has gone viral on TikTok with almost 200,000 views since Friday. The story has evoked many similar stories of suffering in comments below the video.
Support After Abortion Special Projects Manager Karin Barbito, who experienced an abortion as a teenager, has released the following statement in support of women who feel that their after-abortion pain is unrecognized:
This woman’s pain and regret mirror my own. Abortion was supposed to fix my problem and be fast, easy, and painless. What happened instead were depression, suicidal thoughts, and years of emotional pain…and the relationship I wanted to save ended as soon as the abortion was complete.
This video has gone viral for a reason: Women’s painful stories about abortion aren’t widely reported, but they are real. They are common. And they can’t be solved by pretending that women only shout their abortions.
After-abortion healing takes time. It takes being offered the right approach that works for each woman’s preference and individual stage of healing. But most importantly, it takes being given a safe space to sort through your emotions, grieve your loss, and find closure.
For me, healing took place in my fifties. I didn’t know what healing was, but it has led me to consider how childhood issues led to codependency, which led to unhealthy relationships, which led to the abortion. Since then, I’ve gone through several healing options because like any other deeply-seated issue, after-abortion healing is a journey, not a destination.
This woman’s story, and the ones below her video, are everyday realities. This video should continue to go viral so that women know that their pain is real – and every woman suffering from after-abortion emotional and mental pain should also know that Support After Abortion is here to help.
Contact us through our After Abortion Help Line for healing options which meet you where you are, and give you the safe space you need.
Media Contact: Dustin Siggins media@supportafterabortion.com
“It’s time to make safe spaces for after-abortion healing,” said CEO Lisa Rowe
NORTH PORT, FLORIDA—As the first post-Dobbs legislative sessions begin, Support After Abortion is urging lawmakers to recognize the reality of after-abortion suffering.
“The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision changed America’s abortion debate. As most attention pivots to the states, this is an opportunity for everyone to expand how they think about abortion,” said Support After Abortion CEO Lisa Rowe. “Pro-life advocates have long believed in after-abortion suffering – but their religious-based approach alienates millions of people. And supporters of legalized abortion often fail to acknowledge that many women aren’t shouting their abortion – but instead are hiding their suffering.”
Founded in 2020, Support After Abortion is the nation’s first organization to provide gold-standard research and support for women and men after abortion. Unaffiliated with the pro-life movement and the abortion industry, but partnering with both, Support After Abortion’s groundbreaking national surveys show that:
34% of women who experience medication abortions suffer adverse impacts.
Only 16% of women who experience medication abortions want religious support.
71%of men suffer adverse effects like depression, addiction, and anger.
Just 18% of women and men know that after-abortion support exists.
“Each year, America spends billions of dollars on mental health research, prevention, and recovery,” said Rowe, a licensed clinical social worker who has worked with families facing abuse, addiction, and other challenges. “Our research shows that millions of women and men suffer from after-abortion healing, but they don’t get the resources they need because the politics of abortion hide the humans behind abortion.”
Support After Abortion’s mission is to elevate abortion healing in the eyes of all Americans. Its work includes:
An after-abortion help line which referspeople to healing resources, including licensed therapists.
Nationally representative surveys to capture how many women and men suffer after abortion – and what can help them heal.
Workshops and webinars which have helped therapists, pregnancy resource centers, and social workers understand how to address after-abortion suffering.
About Support After Abortion
Support After Abortion is an abortion healing organization which promotes compassion, collaboration, and capacity to create gold-standard care for men and women suffering from abortion’s adverse impacts.
This weekend, Support After Abortion CEO Lisa Rowe, LCSW, showed social workers how to navigate challenges associated with helping women who have experienced at-home abortions.
Rowe told attendees of the 2022 North American Christian Social Workers (NACSW) conference that at-home abortions are becoming more prevalent and, based upon recent research, cause significant distress to about one-third of women.
“Support After Abortion’s national study makes clear that medication abortions will increase the burdens on social workers,” said Rowe after the conference. “One in three women suffer adverse impacts from medication abortions; but fewer than one in five women even know that help for those adverse impacts exists. Identifying and addressing these traumas will, as it often does with other traumas, fall on social workers.”
Rowe’s one-hour presentation included a key process change for social workers. She noted that since most women keep medication abortions very private, asking about any child loss and then listing various losses – such as miscarriage, stillbirth, failed adoptions, and abortion – will provide the opportunity for women to open up in a psychologically secure way. She also provided Support After Abortion’s research-based language best practices to help women feel safe in sharing their abortion experiences.
The NACSW conference helps Christian social workers apply their faith to the practical realities of helping homes which are often struggling through brokenness. Rowe said that her presentation was designed to enable social workers to better serve as the front lines of helping women, men, and families find healing after traumas.
“Social workers are almost always under-resourced and overburdened with heart-breaking and difficult duties,” said Rowe. “I was honored to help them be better prepared for this important vocation by sharing how to help the real people suffering after abortion.”
About Support After AbortionSupport After Abortion is an abortion healing organization which promotes compassion, collaboration, and capacity to create gold-standard care for men and women suffering from abortion’s adverse impacts.
As the 35th Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month comes to a close, a diverse coalition of pro-life, pro-choice, and mental health voices are calling upon America’s medical, religious, and political leaders to acknowledge that abortion is also pregnancy loss.
“Each year, nearly a million men and women experience an abortion,” said Lisa Rowe, a licensed clinical social worker and CEO of the abortion healing group Support After Abortion. “We know from the Guttmacher Institute that most abortions happen out of deep fear; and our new research indicates that millions of women aren’t able to fully acknowledge and embrace their loss because abortion healing is not considered a mental health priority.”
“I’m pro-choice,” said Mary Lamia, Ph.D., a doctoral professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California and a Psychology Today contributor. “But as I wrote in a recent post, the research is clear that men often silently suffer after abortion because they feel they do not have a right to grieve. Abortion loss is real, and the mental health community must acknowledge it in order to provide the best care to clients.”
“Grief, anger, and other adverse impacts from pregnancy loss are normal, no matter how the loss happens,” said Dr. John Bruchalski, who founded a pro-life OB-GYN practice after performing abortions in medical school. “I’ve delivered several thousandbabies over the last 28 years, and I’ve never seen anyone pretend like child loss isn’t devastating – except when it comes to elective abortion.”
“It is healthy and helpful to allow parents to express, feel, and name their emotions,” continued Bruchalski, whose book Two Patients: My Conversion from Abortion to Life-Affirming Medicinewas released this month. “And while elective abortion is a different type of pregnancy loss than a miscarriage or stillbirth, it is still a loss which leaves many women and men struggling to reconcile what happened, how they feel, and how to move forward.”
“In over 15 years as a priest doing pastoral work in parishes and schools, I’ve had many men and women come to me about pregnancy loss,” said Father Bjorn Lundberg, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Virginia. “Abortion is a different kind of loss than miscarriage or stillbirth; and it therefore requires a different pastoral approach. But our society does a disservice to women and men by not giving people grieving after abortion the chance to embrace their pain, acknowledge what happened, and heal.”
”Women and men who have lost children through abortion suffer deeply and, too often, alone,” said Arina Grossu a Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. “There are many programs and ministries to offer support after a pregnancy loss from an abortion. We, as the community, must also accompany people in their physical, psychological, and emotional journey toward healing and wholeness after an abortion.”
Support After Abortion’s healing resources are available online for women and men who desire anonymous, compassionate, and individualized healing after abortion.
About Support After Abortion
Support After Abortion is an abortion healing organization which promotes compassion, collaboration, and capacity to create gold-standard care for men and women suffering from abortion’s adverse impacts.
Watch the live performance of Viable, walking in one family’s journey to finding hope and healing after the pain of abortion. This play, recently performed on the capital steps in Jefferson City, Missouri to a crowd of 2,000 is free to attend thanks to the sponsorship of Support After Abortion.
