David Reardon

David C Reardon, is a pro-life activist, who received his degree in biomedical ethics from Pacific Western University, an unaccredited correspondence school. Reardon is the director of the on-line Elliot Institute. The institute has no buildings or facilities.

Reardon has published numerous peer reviewed studies regarding emotional and physical complications associated with induced abortion. These studies have shown statistical associations between a history of abortion and elevated risks of death, psychiatric hospitalization , suicide , substance abuse , depression , anxiety , sleep disorders , and other sequalae.

A principle thesis of Reardon's work is that the medical issues associated with abortion can and should be analyzed separately from the political and moral controversies surrounding this medical procedure. In short, he argues that in each case where an abortion might be considered the attending physician has an obligation to develop an informed medical opinion regarding the question "Is an abortion likely to produce more benefit or more harm for this particular patient?" This theme is most thoroughly explored in Reardon's review article entitled The duty to screen: clinical, legal and ethical implications of predictive risk factors of post-abortion maladjustment In this paper Reardon argues that advocates of abortion have consistently presumed that the benefits of abortion are self evident, but, he argues, there is actually a remarkable absence of any research that has statistically validated any of the mental, physical, or social benefits claimed benefits for abortion. He argues that this lack of knowledge of when, if ever, abortion contributes to women's health must also be weighed in the context of studies which demonstrate that certain groups of women, perhaps even the majority of abortion patients, have "risk factors" that have been proven to be associated with an increased likelihood of suffering one or more negative effects.

Academic Criticisms
Critics of Reardon include Barbara Major of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Nancy Russo, a psychology professor at Arizona State University.

Barbara Major argues that Reardon's interpretation of his research results, and the conclusions he draws from those results, are mostly informed by pro-life bias and not a search for truth. Major also argued Reardon's methodology of comparing women who have had an abortion to women who completed their pregnancies normally is flawed, asserting that a more appropriate comparison would be to women who wished to abort their pregnancy but chose not to or were not allowed to do so. She explains that a higher incidence of psychological problems among women who have abortions is likely to be explained by higher rates of pre-existing psychological problems among women inclined to have abortions. Another argument raised by Major and others is that evidence of a statistical correlation between abortion and negative effects is not the same as proving causation.

Reardon has generally responded to these criticisms with the counter-charge that his critics arguments and motives are themselves tainted by their own pro-choice biases. In response to Major's commentary regarding his study of psychiatric hospitalization following abortion, Reardon asserts that Major's critique fails to inform readers of her own studies which confirmed that a small portion of women having abortion suffer post-traumatic stress disorder coinciding with their abortions.

In response to the controversy and challenges presented by Reardon's research, a group of New Zealand researchers undertook a study published in 2006 to test Major's argument that psychological differences between women with a history of abortions and those with no history of abortion can be best explained by more pre-existing psychological disorders among the types of women most likely to undergo an abortion. The team, led by Professor David Fergusson, examined data collected from a longitudinal study of 500 New Zealand women between the age of 15 and 25 years of age. The study found an association between women who had abortions and elevated rates of suicidal behaviors, depression, substance abuse, anxiety, and other mental problems. Moreover, after attempting to explain these differences by examining demographic variables and measures of mental health prior to the women's first pregnancies, they concluded that the difference in subsequent mental health could not be easily explained by causes other than exposure to abortion. In the conclusions section of their paper Fergusson's team criticized the American Psychological Association (APA) for its one sided reviews of abortion complications The New Zealand study also cites Reardon four times, using his conclusions to draw similar conclusions of their own. However, the authors of the New Zealand study are careful to not draw a causal relationship between abortion and depression or stress.

Other Criticisms
Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science criticized Reardon in an article titled, "Research and Destroy" in the Washington Monthly

Commentators have characterized Reardon as "controversial" because a case review by Reardon suggesting that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ... precipitated by a coerced abortion three days before their first wedding anniversary" was the underlying cause for Lorena Bobbitt's act of severing her husband's penis with a kitchen knife, in 1993. He describes the event as an "anniversary reaction" to the abortion which occurred almost exactly three years prior to the attack.  To support this theory, Reardon notes that Lorena testified that she had flash backs to the abortion moments before the attack and had "anniversary reaction" cramping and other symptoms.