A Pregnant Choice

"Unwanted pregnancy" is a widely accepted term among both laymen and behavioral scientists. It is also widely misunderstood, according to Cornell University Psychiatrist Lawrence Downs and Psychologist David Clayson. In a paper presented to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Downs and Clayson offer convincing evidence that among women who have abortions, pregnancy is initially "more wanted than unwanted." Far from being accidental, it represents a subconscious effort to cope with extreme emotional stress.

Downs and Clayson reached their conclusions after studying 108 patients at New York Hospital. Most of the women were well informed about birth control, and many had sometimes practiced it at some time in their lives. Then why, the investigators wondered, did such women get pregnant?

The answer seems to lie partly in the women's personalities, which proved to be quite different from those of a comparison group of 49 women hospitalized for the birth of their first or second babies. All of the women in the comparison group tested normal on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a much-used measure of emotional health. By contrast, only 21% of the abortion patients were diagnosed as "normal"; 24% were revealed to be psychotic, and 55% were found to have neuroses or related disorders. In fact, more than a third of the abortion patients had sought professional help for their psychiatric problems in the year before they became pregnant.

Besides these inner difficulties, many of the abortion patients had suffered personal losses in the year or two prior to conception. In 47% of the cases, a member of the immediate family had died or been diagnosed as fatally ill. The end of a marriage or of a longstanding love relationship had been experienced by 43%. Some two-thirds of the abortion patients had sustained either or both of these losses, and a striking 85% of the abortion group had suffered either a personal loss or grave psychiatric disturbance, or both, in the months just before conception.

These percentages are the first statistical evidence that most abortion patients have conceived while under exceptional emotional stress. The results seem to support the widely accepted psychiatric belief that pregnancy is seldom a chance occurrence. Thus, Downs and Clayson conclude, the women they studied had unconsciously "chosen" pregnancy as a way of repairing "a threatened or damaged psyche." They needed their supposedly unwanted pregnancies, at least for a while, "to prove something to themselves"--perhaps that they were truly feminine, or that they were whole enough to create, or that they need not be entirely alone.

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