I keep praising God and standing in awe of what He has done for me through the Hope Alive training process.  I want to thank you and Luci for your love and acceptance.  I am so glad that it was you guys who I could journey with through this time of healing.  God knew what was needed and because of who you both are, my journey was made possible.  I am especially thankful when it came to the healing concerning my dad and the Catholic priest.  I have been richly blessed and I am experiencing a deep joy and freedom from the healing that has taken place.

So I send my love to my first Catholic friends.

Lyn, Australia

About 1 in 50 infants in the U.S. has been neglected or abused, according to the first national study of the problem in that age group. Nearly a third of the victims were one week old or younger when the maltreatment was reported, government researchers said yesterday. The study focused on children younger then one. Most of the cases involved neglect, not physical abuse. In the case of newborns, experts said drug abuse by the mother may have been the cause for reported neglect, but they couldn’t be certain. Maternal drug abuse is often discovered through blood tests while newborns are still in the hospital.

The researchers counted more then 91,000 infant victims of abuse and neglect during the study period of Oct. 1, 2005 to sept. 30, 2006. About 30,000 of those cases were newborns no more then a week old. The information came from a national data base of cases verified by protective services agencies in 45 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The results mirror what a study in Canada found, said study co-author Rebecca Leeb, and epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We were certainly distressed” by the study’s results, said Ileana Aries, director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “It’s a picture you don’t want to imagine - that this number of infants is being mistreated,” Arias added.

Only about 13 percent of the newborn cases were counted as physical abuse, meaning the large majority involved neglect. Federal officials define neglect as a failure to meet a child’s basic needs, including housing, clothing, feeding and medical care.

The counted cases did not include new parents stumbling their way through breast-feeding or making other rookie mistakes. “Things like abandonment, and new born drug addition would also qualify as neglect, not things like parents learning to be parents,” Leeb said. Medical professionals identified about 65 percent of the cases of maltreated newborns to protective services staff.

David Finkelhor, who directs the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, said the cases might in part reflect households that don’t have adequate health insurance to seek all recommended care for an ailing child. The study’s authors said they have information to verify that speculation.

Both Finkelhor and Dr. Hward Dubowitz, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, have worked with the same data base the researchers used. Dubowitz pointed to the data showing that most of the neglect cases in newborns were reported in the first two days of life. That is the time when results from blood tests of mother and child come back and are often shared with protection services. Such tests would indicate drug abuse, but that kind of information was too skimpy in the data base to draw conclusions, he said.

The research was published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Article by Mile Stobbe, Associated Press

“Abortion Evidence Mounts. Major Study Sees Psychological Harm”

Byline…LONDON-Emma Beck hanged herself on the eve of her 31st birthday. The note that the talented British artist left revealed the depth of her grief. “Living is hell for me. I should never had an abortion,” she wrote. “I see now I would have been a good mum. I told everyone I didn’t want to do it. even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it’s too late. I want to be with my babies; they need me, no one else does.”

Beck’s suicide in 2007. six months after aborting twins, and the inquest that followed in February this year 2008, have intensified the controversy about the risk to women of psychological harm from abortion.

On March 14, 2008 Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists issued a surprising statement that women could be at significant risk for psychiatric disorders following abortion. To give formal consent, the college added, women must be more clearly informed of possible risks to their mental health. This new statement challenges the decades old consensus among professional mental health bodies that the psychological risks are less then those of a continued pregnancy. The college’s previous statement said” there is no evidence in such cases of an increased risk of major psychiatric disorder or of long standing psychological distress.” Even for women identified at high risk of psychiatric disorders and undergoing later abortions, the college previously said aborting was “the least detrimental alternative.”

In Great Britain, as much as 90% of the nearly 200,000 annual abortions are officially done to preserve the mother’s “mental health.” But the college of psychiatrists’ new statement calls the current research base “inconclusive” and suggests that abortion information leaflets may need updating and abortion staff may need new training about potential psychiatric problems. “It is certainly a move in the right direction,” said Margaret Cuthill of the Glasgow based British Victims of Abortion. ” We see the women who are dealing with physical and emotional problems after their abortions. They are traumatized.”

In Scotland where the early abortion pill RU-486 is the leading abortion method. Cuthill said she sees women who “have been told that they will be expelling a blob of jelly and they go home and miscarry a tiny baby. They are very overcome with unexpected grief and guilt. For many, many years these women have been told that their grief is not real,” Cuthill said.

British Victims of Abortion fields calls from only about 40% post abortive women each month, but Cuthill expects that number to grow. Project Rachel, one of the first post-abortion healing groups in the U.S. grew from 18 week-end retreats in 1999 to more then 600 annually in 47 states and countries.

Recent Studies

More then grassroots movements, recent studies have likely influenced the Royal College of Psychiatrists turnabout. A large Finnish study published in the British Medical Journal in 1996 found a sixfold increased risk of suicide rates among women who had abortions.

Another study published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry in 2002 examined 173,000 California state health records and found that women were 63% more likely to receive mental care in the first 90 days following an abortion than giving birth. They are also significantly more likely to be treated in four years the study followed for mental illness including neurotic depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

In 2006, a major longitudinal study at the Christchurch School of Medicine in New Zealand, found that women at 25 years of age who had an abortion were subsequently more likely to suffer “depression, anxiety, suciedal behaviors and substance abuse disorder.” “This evidence is not yet strong enough to conclude that abortion has harmful effects on mental health,” David Fergusson, lead researcher of the Christchurch Development Study said. “Equally it would be premature to dismiss this possibility.” The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ statement, he thinks, fairly “acknowledges the possibility of harmful effects without drawing dogmatic conclusions.”

For it’s part the American Psychiatric Association has held the same policy on abortion since 1977. It states that an “unwanted pregnancy” can cause long term mental harm to a woman and her unwanted child and so the Association opposes all efforts to restrict any abortion and “affirms that the freedom to act to interrupt pregnancy must be considered a mental health imperative.” The Association did not respond to the register’s questions about the Royal College of Psychiatrist’ new statement.

The American Psychological Association is releasing a new report on abortion and mental health this Summer. “Well defined studies must distinguish the impact of abortion per se from the stress of unwanted pregnancy,” American Psychological Association spokeswoman Kim Mills said. “Research conducted by our members and others has shown that for most women, abortion, in and of itself, is not associated with negative mental health consequences. Furthermore, an APA policy resolution adopted in 1969 identified access to abortion as a mental health issue.”

Philip Ney, a psychiatrist in Victoria, British Columbia, who has written extensively on post-abortion mental health, says that the British college may well be motivated by another concern - liability. “Precedents have been set in successful suits brought against abortionists for lac of informed consent,” Ney said, adding that “Medical bodies that authoritatively dismiss risks may find themselves in future lawsuits.”

“There have been three cases of post-abortion mental health damages brought forward in the U.K.,” says Ellie Lee, a pro abortion senior lecturer on social policy at the University of Kent in Canterbury. “Each case has been dismissed and future claims would stand very little chance in Britain,” according to Lee. Lee is dismissive of the idea that abortion can traumatize mothers of unborn children. “To say that because some woman regrets her abortion later on in life means that she would have been better off to have been made to have the baby at that point is just stupid,” says Lee. “Abortion is messy business. That’s life. The fact is most women just have their abortion and get it over with.” Lee claimed that organizations like Marie Stopes International, Britain’s largest abortion agency, ensure that the women are fully informed about all the potential consequences of abortion. I think that the Marie Stopes and British Pregnancy Advisory service who provide more then 50% of the abortions in the UK do a fantastic job informing women,” said Lee. “They are very, very careful and have procedures in place to identify women who are pressurized or otherwise at risk. I just wonder if the Royal College members have even seen their literature?”

In fact, mental health effects of abortion are scarcely alluded to in patient leaflets or on these group’s websites. Marie Stopes International’s patient leaflet does not even mention mental health risks and states “there is no evidence at all that a straight forward abortion has any effect on future fertility or any other aspect of general health.”

Helping Women

David Reardon, a leading American researcher on post-abortive health at the Elliot Institute in Springfield, Ill. said “the key issue for the medical community should be to extend help to women who clearly are at risk of suffering from abortion. If we can identify the woman who is most at risk of psychological damage from abortion-and we can- we have a duty to make sure that she has all of the relevant information and she is truly consenting. Before long, advocates of abortion-on-demand everywhere will have to follow the British psychiatrists’ lead and acknowledge the evidence that abortion can cause grave psychological trauma to women,” Reardon predicts. Said Reardon, ” You can only go so far dismissing post-abortive women’s experiences before you start to look really cold and uncaring.”

Article by Celeste McGovern, Register Correspondent