Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 15/03/2022
Two Facebook pages present themselves as places where women can turn to for help in case of an unwanted pregnancy. However, these sites publish disinformation about abortion to discourage women who may need this medical procedure.
Glas za zivot and Sara – Mjesto za tebe are two Facebook pages that present themselves as places where women and couples facing an unwanted pregnancy can turn to for help and advice. They are linked to websites of the same name that allegedly offer information on pregnancy, abortion and “counseling and support”.
Despite the kind words, the content promoted on these sites is problematic for several reasons.
Misleading claims about abortion
The Facebook page Glas za zivot states that it deals with “empowering women and families through education and counseling on how to make healthy decisions about pregnancy and parenthood”. However, this page often shares disinformation and promotes negative myths about abortion.
In a post from October 14, 2021, this page stated that it is “an indisputable fact that abortion carries serious health risks” and that it increases the risk of breast cancer and reduces the possibility of a healthy pregnancy later in life.
Is abortion safe? 🧐
Whether you are pregnant or not, this is the question you need to ask. Evidence suggests that induced abortion may be associated with significant long-term health risks.
Obtaining complete information on the risks associated with abortion is a challenge due to incomplete reporting and a lack of documentation linking abortion to complications.
The undeniable fact is that abortion carries serious health risks. Few women know that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer and reduces the chance of a healthy pregnancy after it.
Read more about the possible physical and emotional consequences in the following posts.
An article published in 2019 on the website of Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights, which deals with activism in the field of reproductive and sexual rights and abortion disinformation, states that the claim suggesting that abortion has lasting health consequences is not based on facts:
Opponents of the right to abortion often claim that abortions cause damage due to uterine scarring and cervical damage, but statistics show that complications are rare – only about 0.5% of abortions result in complications, and they are mostly minor and curable, such as an infection. There is no medically accepted evidence to show any link between abortion and any type of disease.
This article also explains that abortion does not affect the ability to reproduce later in life. It was pointed out that in the past, women were faced with potential risks of physical harm and infertility due to unsafe abortions performed by unqualified doctors, which was mainly because abortion was criminalized. Today, as explained, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that abortion is associated with infertility.
The claim that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer is also unfounded. In Healthline’s article published on May 18, 2017, spontaneous abortion and regular abortion are not considered risk factors for breast cancer.
Abortion is not considered one of the risk factors for breast cancer, including age, obesity and family history. Research has not found a link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer. While several studies may suggest a possible association, the vast majority of research suggests otherwise.
In some posts on the Facebook page Glas za zivot, it is implicitly or explicitly claimed that abortion is inherently associated with long-term emotional and mental problems, and in some posts, it is linked with the so-called post-abortion trauma.
A post from November 11, 2021, claimed that abortion is associated with long-term damage to emotional and physical health and that it increases the risk of clinical depression and anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, PTSD and suicidal thoughts.
Although it is clear that different people may have different emotional reactions to abortion, the claim that abortion generally increases the risk of these conditions is unfounded.
The website of the American Psychological Association (APA) states that scientific research has shown that abortion does not increase the risk of depression, anxiety and PTSD.
Research has shown that abortion does not increase the risk of depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder in women. A review of the scientific literature conducted and published by the APA working group in 2008 showed that the relative risk of mental health problems after one abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy does not pose a greater risk to mental health than carrying that pregnancy till the term.
A post from December 6, 2021, mentions the “post-abortion trauma”:
Some men like to deny that the past has any power over the present, but the evidence clearly proves otherwise. What remains hidden and unexplained about the past, lives for itself, haunts us and has the power to diminish the beauty of present life.
There are a number of other symptoms or characteristics that appear in the lives of men who have participated in an abortion.
Some are subtle, and some dominate their lives. These characteristics led counselors and other experts to recognize the reality of post-abortion trauma in men. The symptoms are not harmless, they have the power to rob men of peace and fullness of life.
The term “post-abortion syndrome” refers to the symptoms that a woman shows after an abortion, which some compare with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an article published on June 11, 2020, on the Healthline website. The article states that some claim that this is a real health condition, while others state that it is a fictional phenomenon whose purpose is to deter women from abortion.
It is explained that women often experience intense emotions immediately before and after abortion, but that experts have not found any evidence to suggest that these emotions persist or have a lasting impact on mental health.
In addition, according to Healthline, there is no official diagnosis of “post-abortion syndrome” in the International Classification of Diseases nor in the edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
For the purpose of writing its article, Healthline contacted licensed mental health counselor and women’s mental health specialist Rachel Gabrielle:
She emphasizes that, although people can certainly experience the complex emotions associated with abortion, “trying to pathologize their experiences does not help”.
In her practice, she noted that “every reaction to abortion is different, ranging from complicated to quite simple”.
Opponents of the right to abortion often, as in this post, claim that men can also suffer from the “post-abortion syndrome”. This, however, has also not been scientifically confirmed. A study published in 2019 confirmed that, as is the case with the findings on women, there is no evidence to confirm that men go through the “post-abortion syndrome”.
Compared to Glas za zivot, significantly less content was posted on Sara – Mjesto za tebe Facebook page. However, factually inaccurate claims are occasionally published on this page as well.
A post from January 24, 2022, states the following:
Scientists are still debating to get an answer to the question: Does the fetus feel pain? 🤔
Some believe that the fetus is only capable of an involuntary reaction to pain. However, significant research proves that babies feel pain during pregnancy, and that it affects their development even after birth.
By the twentieth week of pregnancy – early pregnancy, all fetal elements are present for pain perception.
Let us simplify, the fetus/baby feels pain, just like you.
It is true that scientists cannot say with certainty when a fetus begins to feel pain.
The claim that the fetus may feel pain in the 20th week of pregnancy is popular among opponents of the right to abortion. The fact-checking portal Fact-Check also dealt with these claims. As explained in their article from 2015, research on this issue is complicated because pain is a subjective experience, and the fetus cannot show whether something hurts or not. Therefore, research in this area boils down to research into the development of the brain and nervous system.
The article states that the published research mostly supports the assumption that the feeling of pain is possible only later in pregnancy.
Experts from the University of California, San Francisco and other places published a synthesis of available evidence in the Journal of the American Medical Association 2005, and the conclusion of their report was the following:
“Evidence regarding the ability of fetal pain is limited, but suggests that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester”.
The third trimester begins from the 27th to the 28th week of conception.
Finally, the article concluded that a starting point for developing pain in fetuses is essentially impossible to determine and that explicit claims about pain perception at week 20 are unfounded.
Who is behind these pages?
There is no information about the owners of Glas za zivot and Sara – Mjesto za tebe. A telephone number is available on the website that women or couples can call if they need help. However, it is not stated who exactly the callers will talk to, whether the people answering the phone are psychologists and how exactly they will “help” them.
ICANN data showed that Sara – Mjesto za tebe domain was registered by the organization Glas za zivot, while data on who registered Glas za zivot domain is not available.
This website states that the registered mailing address for both domains is located in the United States, in the state of Kentucky. Some ownership information is “hidden for privacy reasons”.
A link to the Heartbeat international website is available on the website Glas za zivot. It is a US-based organization that deals with anti-abortion activism and has more than 2,000 affiliated organizations in 50 countries. In the USA, they also manage the so-called Option Line, a 24-hour “pregnancy assistance” line that answers over 600 calls a day.
Although the website for their Option Line call center gives the impression of a place where women can turn for information on contraception and “all options” in case of unwanted pregnancy, women who end up in one of the “crisis centers” run by this organization are told that abortion and certain types of contraception were murder and that if they decided to terminate the pregnancy, they would experience serious consequences such as PTSD.
In 2020, the media openDemocracy conducted a secret investigation in which the journalists visited 30 “crisis centers” that are linked to the organization Heartbeat International. According to this website, the journalists were exposed to various disinformation about abortion, such as claims that abortion causes cancer and mental illness, as well as the insinuation that abortion can turn a woman’s partner into a “gay” person.
Manipulative tactics
Glas za zivot and Sara – Mjesto za tebe reportedly provides users with information on pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases and similar. However, instead of objective facts, manipulative terms can be found in some sections of this page, which aim to provoke an emotional reaction from readers.
In the “Abortion information” section, on the website Glas za zivot, the words “baby” and “child” are used instead of “embryo” and “fetus”. The potential complications of abortion are also overemphasized, and the site features confessions of unnamed women who were traumatized after the abortion.
Below the “informative” section filled with many manipulative terms and tactics, there are a dozen YouTube videos in English, with a translation into our language, in which women speak about how they were traumatized after the abortion or how they repented of their decision.
The section “Sexually transmitted diseases” cites abstinence from sexual intercourse as a way of prevention, claiming that “delaying sexual activity is a positive and healthy choice”.
Abstinence is also promoted in the “New beginning” section, which implies that if a woman looks forward to a negative pregnancy test, it means she is dissatisfied with her life and unhappy with her partner.
Then women are explicitly advised to abstain from sex until marriage, and it is claimed that with each new sexual partner, they “lose a part of themselves”:
The first thing to consider is abstinence from sex, until you decide on a spouse in whom you will have full trust. This may sound old-fashioned, but it is one of the most important steps you can and should take.
Sex is very important, for both men and women. When you have sex outside of marriage, you are sharing something precious with a person you may not be with for a long time. With each new partner, you lose a part of yourself, your partner is given an insight into your intimacy, which can be abused.
The manipulative narratives featured on this site target women in vulnerable and sensitive situations to influence their personal decisions. Pages Glas za zivot and Sara – Mjesto za tebe present themselves as websites that offer “counseling” but are, in fact, a mask for an organization that uses manipulation to limit the right to abortion.
We assess the claim that abortion carries “serious health risks” as disinformation.
We give the fake news rating to claims that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer and reduces the chance of a healthy pregnancy later in life. We give the same rating to claims that abortion causes PTSD and increases the risk of clinical depression and anxiety.
The claim that the fetus feels pain in the 20th week of pregnancy is assessed as pseudoscience. We give the same assessment to the claim suggesting “post-abortion trauma” in men.