One of the anti-abortion groups mentioned by MediaGirl (see post below) is CareNet of Texas. Their Web site offers a check-off box online screening test for “post-abortion syndrome” - you check any feelings or issues you may be having after having had an abortion, and they tell you your risk of exhibiting this “syndrome”.

Aside from the dubious professionalism of offering an anonymous, online questionaire of vaguely-worded generic items as a real pyschological exam, it is especially odd to see a screening test for a “condition” that doesn’t actually exist. The “post-abortion syndrome” nonsense has been floating around for decades now, repeatedly debunked, but never eliminated from the armamentarium of the quacks and propagandists who seem to gravitate to the anti-choice brigades. Famously, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated decisively that there was no such “syndrome” detectable in the clinical literature after President Ronald Reagan practically ordered him to find one. The American Psychiatric Society’s official policy position is that abortion rights are an important aspect of mental health; even a splinter group of psychiatrists opposed to abortion officially holds that it is simply not an issue for psychiatry, not that it is psychologically dangerous. The American Psychological Association has officially published a book on the sociology and psychology of the abortion conflict that concludes - citing recent research - that abortion is not a mental health threat.

But why heed longstanding and documented research results? Apparently, if you really, really believe something, you can just claim it is true - even down to the level of naming and testing for psychological illnesses that no one but your ideological compatriots even believes exists.

And the test?

The “Post-Abortion Stress Test” consists of a panel of 42 check-boxes labeled with a grab-bag of feelings, behaviors, or things you might “feel unc0mfortable with”, including such highly specific diagnostic predictors as “guilt”, “disappointment”, “trouble sleeping”, “helplessness”, “hopelessness”, “avoiding sex”, “having multiple sex partners”, “weight gain/loss”, and “crying” (as well as a host of more specific “symptoms” specifying various terrors of having an abortion, such as “fear of harming my other children” and “fear of God’s punishment”). Apparently, you’re crazy after having an abortion unless you are neither hopeless nor helpless, have neither gained nor lost weight, and have had sex with exactly the right number of people (whatever number that might be); you might still, of course, go whacko and kill all your kids, or God might do it for you, so you’d better watch out for those just in case.

Having checked off whatever among this list of common feelings you personally might have experienced (no timeframe is specified), you can click a button to “Take the test” and receive your diagnostic score: a pop-up box appears telling you how many of the checkboxes you marked, and what the mental health implications of this might be. In every case, the box reads:

You have checked X symptoms, and may have a ______ form of post-abortion stress.

The “X” corresponds to the number of your check-marks, and the blank is filled - in every single case - with either “mild”, “moderate”, or “severe”. Checking even a single box prompts the “diagnosis” that you “may have a mild form of post-abortion stress.” Checking anywhere up to 5 boxes gives the same result; check 6-15, inclusive, and you are told you may have a “moderate” form of post-abortion stress; anything over 15 puts you in the “severe” category. (The different “symptoms” do not appear to be weighted for relative seriousness.)

Of course, some people have no adverse effects at all following abortion. Surely having no symptoms would be a sign of health, right? What if you leave all the boxes blank and just push the “Take the test” button?

You have not checked any symptoms, but may still have a mild form of post-abortion stress.

Yes, post-abortion stress syndrome is stranger than you thought! It’s not just a non-existent illness - it’s a non-existent illness that it’s impossible not to have! (And why not? In view of the crying, sleeplessness, helplessness, and completely unsatisfactory sex life, it’s obvious that I have post-abortion trauma syndrome, certain disconfirmatory biological pre-requisites notwithstanding.)

To be fair, these “diagnoses” are, strictly speaking, accurate: you may have almost any condition, so I suppose you may have this one too (if we indulge a bit of metaphysical stretching to imagine that you may be the subject of a predicate that doesn’t actually apply to anyone). But if we are to take this diagnostic nonsense seriously - if we are to take these CareNet people as seriously as they ask us to - we can’t believe this is anything but the most idiotic manipulation. And that of course is precisely what it is - the continued insistence on bogus “psychology” that has been repeatedly denounced even by anti-choicers, the pseudo-scientific “screening test”, the absurdly vague “symptoms” and a diagnostic standard that it is impossible not to meet, coupled with the pervasive stereotypically anti-choice language (”child”, “baby”, “victim”, and repeatedly negative images of abortion, sex, and non-motherhood) makes it clear that this is no more than a propaganda tool intended to create discomfort with abortion. After diagnosing every person who takes the “test” as mentally disturbed, the pop-up boxes in every case give the phone number of the anti-choice center, for further information. The test is simply a recruiting tool for their real anti-choice suasive pressure - but they never drop the guise of actual psychological legitimacy.

This is a compounded fraud - fraudulent information packaged in a fraudulent professional setting for misleadingly manipulative purposes. So much anti-choice information is of this kind, but there seems to be no accountability for it.

Mediagirl does an excellent job surveying ongoing coordinated campaigns to propagandize against abortion, and the links many of them have to aggressively proselytizing Christian groups (often taking advantage of federal funding).

I don’t usually do “link only” posts, but this is an important topic and she covers it better than I could. Go look.