The effects of abortion on a marriage

A small proportion of patients seeking help for their troubled marriages at the Institute of Marital Studies speak of a past abortion. This paper draws on their experience of the event and its aftermath. Their identities have been concealed. Sometimes, apparently having been unable to mourn the loss of the child at the time of the abortion, they show a delayed grief reaction. It may be mild but persistent, or it may occur in more extreme form only many years later when a subsequent loss of a different nature triggers off repressed and conflicting feelings relating to the earlier loss of the baby. The therapeutic works needs to concern itself with that earlier loss. Sometimes the husbands are more affected than the wives. Husbands and fathers are much neglected in the British follow-up studies of abortion, except (rarely) through the subjective reports of the women. It is suggested that, when a relationship exists beyond the act of intercourse, the fathers would benefit from as much or more attention from counsellors than the women, for whom the disturbance occasioned by the actual experience of abortion may be mitigated by the sympathetic care of hospital staff.