No surprise in my view. Women don't get abortions for the hell of it, and when they do, it is after a great deal of thought. After they go through it, the most common emotion is relief, certainly not regret.
In my view, it would depend on the circumstances leading up to the decision.
This passage is interesting:
In 1987, President Reagan asked the surgeon general at the time, a man named Everett Koop, to prepare a report stating that abortion was psychologically harmful to women.
Koop was morally opposed to abortion, but he was also a scientist. He found that there wasn't any data to back Reagan's claim. In 1989 the New York Times reported that Koop told Reagan there was insufficient evidence to create the report and quoted him saying he was concerned the president's advisors thought "it was a foregone conclusion that the negative health effects of abortion on women were so overwhelming that the evidence would force the reversal of Roe v. Wade."
Koop, by the way, was an anti-abortion activist, not just somebody who was personally opposed to abortion. The fact he was was one of the reasons Reagan appointed him as surgeon general in the first place. However, Koop wasn't going to lie. He was a public servant first and foremost. This refusal to kowtow to Reagan on abortion, his antismoking campaign, and especially his stance regarding AIDS made him admired by millions of people. Koop in my view was the best surgeon general this country ever had.
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