Politics and ideology Have long battled -and often trumped - the scientific evidence surrounding the safety of abortion. This has been particularly true of the issue of abortion and mental health. Although major organizations, including the American Psychological Association, have been firm in their assertions that abortion does not harm mental health, anti-choice activists have used questionable science to push the concept of "post-abortion syndrome" into both clinical practice and law. For years, this specious claim has been fueling attempts in the United States to legislate that women be informed of this "risk" or denied access to abortion to protect them from "risk". The U.S. Supreme Court cited the possibility of women experiencing "regret. .[which can be followed by] severe depression and loss of esteem" after abortion in its decision to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (Gonzales v. Carhart), all the while acknowledging that there are "no reliable data to measure the phenomenon" [1].
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