14 DAY TRIAL // Abortion has always been a controversial issue, conservators opposing on numerous occasions this practice which was first approved in Russia (1920) and Iceland (1935).
Aside from ethical considerations, several of the criticisms spurred from the dilemma regarding the pain experienced by the fetus during the procedure.
In this way, although researchers claim that pain receptors do not exist until the second or third trimester, some activists say that the fetus can sense pain in the first semester.
But the last study on abortions, carried out by Anne Nordal Broen and her colleagues at the Oslo University, left aside the dilemma of fetal pain and focused on the psychical pain felt by women who undergo such a procedure.
According to a study published in the BMC Medicine Journal, women who have had an abortion still experience mental distress related to the abortion years after it happened.
Broen and her team analyzed 40 women who had had a miscarriage and 80 women who had undergone an induced abortion with the purpose of measuring their levels of stress, anxiety and their quality of life.
They concluded that women who had a miscarriage suffer more mental distress up until six months after the event than women who had an abortion, while those who had an abortion, however, experienced more mental distress long after the event, two and five years afterwards, than women who had a miscarriage.
"It has always been considered, and this study also shows, that the decision to terminate may bring with it long-standing feelings of anxiety and guilt," Richard Warren, from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told BBC.