3 Sep 2011

Who Controls What Gets Published?

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I’ve been thinking about the British Journal of Psychiatry article I wrote about yesterday, which outlines the increased risk of mental health problems in women who choose abortions. Specifically, I’ve been wondering why it wasn’t published in America. The author is American, works in Ohio, and 15 of the 22 studies included in her meta-analysis were done in America. Around 1.2 million abortions are performed in America each year, so surely the message needs to get to the U.S. medical community, and then to trickle down to the women they are advising, that abortion doesn’t relieve emotional stress, at least in the long term.

I say I’m wondering, but I’m really not. As I wrote yesterday, abortion is a highly politicized topic in America. That politicization (I guess that is a word) extends into the hallways of academic medicine. I don’t know whether Priscilla Coleman, PhD, the author of the paper, tried to get it published in America before she sent it to Britain, but I highly suspect she tried, and tried hard.

The British Journal of Psychiatry is a highly respected medical journal, worldwide, and, before a paper can get published in it, “peer reviewers” must read it and make sure the science is reliable. The same is true of the best journals in America, but unfortunately these peer reviewers can act as gate-keepers, keeping out good science that doesn’t fit with their philosophical bent. 

But it’s timely that Dr. Coleman’s study was published in Britain just now. Hotly debated in Parliament is a proposal to require a woman seeking an abortion to receive independent counseling first. You would think abortion providers would be happy to have women receive counsel on the risks and benefits of abortion beforehand, but you would think wrong. The member of Parliament who proposed it, Nadine Dorries, apparently has been receiving “constant vilification and near-daily death threats” over her stance on abortion. There is something seriously wrong, here.

If most abortions are performed, as I believe they are, to avoid emotional distress, then the news that they do not needs to be made public, and needs to be widely discussed.