Pro-Choice Post-Abortion Counseling Programs

This Listing of Groups and Resources Is Provided 
for Research Purposes Only and 
Does NOT Imply Any Kind of Endorsement or Recommendation 

Significance of Post-Abortion Programs Sponsored by Pro-Choice Advocates

While most pro-abortion groups deny that there are significant emotional risks associated with abortion, that view is undermined by the fact that even pro-choice advocates have discovered a need to address powerful negative reactions to abortion among themselves and their friends and in their communities.

Some pro-abortion advocates, seek to deny on one hand and affirm on the other. For example, Brenda Major was the lead author of the APA position paper denying significant emotional effects associated with abortion, but she is also on the advisory board of Exhale, a pro-choice group that offer post-abortion counseling for women struggling with grief, guilt, substance abuse and other mental health problems following their abortions.

For other information about pro-choice advocates who are addressing the abortion mental health issue with denial or dismissive comments, see Nada L. Stotland

Groups and Resources with a Pro-Choice Slant

• Exhale

• Peace After Abortion

• Missing Pieces

• Being at peace with choices

• Healthy coping after an abortion from the Abortion Conversation Project.

• Project Voice] oral history project

• Inner Healing After Abortion

• Imagine Counseling

• Terra Wise does pro-choice post-abortion work in Santa Barbara, California.

• Emerge: Sharing Our Voices, Supporting Our Choices]

Books on Post-Abortion Healing With a Pro-Choice Slant

Choice Processing and Resolution Therapy Trudy M. Johnson, 2013 - written for therapists

C.P.R.: Choice Processing and Resolution Trudy M. Johnson, 2009

The Healing Choice: Your Guide to Emotional Recovery after an Abortion Candace De Puy, Ph.D., M.S.W. and Dana Dovitch, PH.D., M.F.C.C., Simon & Schuster, 1997

Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women’s Words Eve Kushner, Harrington Park Press, 1997

Peace after Abortion Ava Torre-Bueno, Pimpernel Press, 1997

Articles Related to Post-Abortion Healing from a Pro-Choice Perspective

• The Abortion Counseling Conundrum Dana Goldstein | June 30, 2008

"Pro-choice activists have come to embrace the idea that many women who've had abortions can benefit from non-ideological counseling. So why are the groups that provide such counseling having so much trouble raising money?"

"Since 2002, Exhale has served 15,000 women on its hotline, and while Emerge is a local group that has reached only a few dozen people, pro-choice groups across the country are using it as a model for new post-abortion counseling services, Madsen says."

• Bringing abortion aftercare into the 21st century Trudy M. Johnson. Counseling Today. Jan. 1, 2013

An excellent article from a pro-choice perspective asking counselors to recognize disenfranchised grief issues following abortion and to provide necessary services regardless of political beliefs.

• On Being an Abortion Doula Roc Mortin, the Atlantic.

Annie Robinson is a doula who accompanies women through the abortion experience to give them emotional support. She describes how prior to abortion many women are afraid of connection, even with her supporting efforts: "They just don’t want to be anchored in this moment, perhaps because it’s too much. It gets too real, or it gets too painful. We all have moments in life where we just don’t want to acknowledge where we are right now. To connect with somebody, and to receive what somebody is offering brings you quickly into the present moment, and sometimes people just want to avoid that"

Regarding describes the aftermath of abortion she says: "One of the things that really draws me to this work is that I’m really interested in loss and grief, and that’s what’s happening here. Even if the grief is celebratory, it still is grief and it still is loss. There’s something lost with birth too—loss of pregnancy, loss of the in-utero experience. I had some devastating losses as a very young child and ongoing through life—mostly the deaths of people very close to me. I’ve grown from my exploration of what it is to lose and to understand that life is all about loss. How can we embrace that? How can that be something that shapes us, and colors us, and gives us substance by appreciating what it is that absence offers? I’ve never had an abortion. I have never experienced that loss, but I think there are overarching themes of the loss experience that are communicable."

"Does that communication work in both directions?"

"Absolutely. There’s a reciprocity, too. I gain so much for my own grief process from witnessing how other people experience their loss. I’m touched and fueled by this work, by these courageous people."

The politicization of abortion: And the evolution of abortion counseling. American Journal of Public Health, Joffe, C. (2013). 103(1), 57–65. http://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.301063

• Abortion counseling recognizes that women may have conflicts between their "head and heart" which reflects the "complex and changing political meanings of abortion." The interviewed counselors admit that they are often not given sufficient time to counsel women considering an abortion.

Efficacy of Post-Abortion Treatment

SD Layer, C Roberts, K Wild, J Walters. Postabortion Grief: Evaluating the Possible Efficacy of a Spiritual Group Intervention. Research on Social Work Practice, Vol. 14, No. 5, 344-350 (2004) Objective: Although not every woman is negatively affected by an abortion, researchers have identified a subgroup of women susceptible to grief and trauma. The primary providers for postabortion grief (PAG) groups are community faith-based agencies. Principle features of PAG are shame and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Method: This study measured the efficacy of a spiritually based grief group intervention for women grieving an abortion. Thirty-five women completed the Impact of Event Scale-Revised(IES-R) and the Internalized Shame Scale (ISS) pre- and postintervention along with posttest open-ended questions. Results: Postintervention measures indicated significant decrease in shame (p < .000) and PTSD symptoms (p < .002). More than 80% reported their religious beliefs and the spiritual intervention played a strong to very strong role in the group. Conclusion: Social workers need to screen for PAG with a postabortive woman and when appropriate refer her to agencies offering such groups.

Pre-Abortion Doula Support

The long five minutes: Abortion doulas bring comfort during a complicated time By Monica Hesse, Washington Post, November 28, 2017.

• D.C. Doulas for Choice report many women aborting against their moral beliefs or maternal desires.