Teenage girls who opt for abortion might experience less psychological, economic and emotional distress than girls who choose to carry their pregnancy to term.

The study, written by Laurie Schwab Zabin, Marilyn B. Hirsch and Mark R. Emerson said women who had abortions were better off economically than women who carried the pregnancy full term and who were not pregnant at all.

A group of 350 black teenage girls who tested for pregnancy in 1985 and 1986 took the survey two years later.

“Women who have abortions feel extreme depression, guilt and anniversary (of the abortion) grief,” said Patricia Palmer of the Northern Illinois Crisis Pregnancy Center in Rockford.

The Zabin, Hirsch and Emerson study said some of the psychological effects include depression, guilt, regret and anxiety, but also might include feelings of happiness.

Palmer said women who have abortions might feel temporary relief because “they are told abortion is legal, then they feel guilty and need forgiveness.”

The study said when negative psychological effects were reported, they appeared to be related to other factors.

The women’s emotional condition plays a major role, the study said, as well as marital status.

Unwed mothers are more likely to feel negative side effects, perhaps because they lack the emotional support given by a husband, according to the study.

The study stated when a “significant other” opposes the woman’s decision to end a pregnancy, her emotional well-being might be adversely affected.

The woman’s decision also is affected by whether or not the pregnancy is wanted, according to the study.

“The feelings the girl experiences depends on her concept of what has happened,” Palmer said. “It depends on whether or not she realizes that the baby is a baby or if she feels that it is just a clump of tissue,” she said.

“What you’re dealing with when a teenager is pregnant is a teenager who thinks about her situation and makes a decision. She does not let life just happen to her,” said Diane Wilbenson, a counselor at the Crossroads Abortion Clinic in Elgin.

In addition, the study showed teenagers who had abortions experienced no more stress or anxiety than other girls at the time of the pregnancy testing and were also no more likely to have psychological problems following the abortion.

According to the study, women who ended an unwanted pregnancy might have found the abortion more psychologically beneficial than having a baby which might have created more emotional distress.

A woman who wanted a child and ended the pregnancy is more likely to have experienced more serious and prolonged psychological effects, the study said.

The study also said the women who had abortions and reported unhappiness generally found it was short-lived and that the usual feeling following an abortion is relief.

“Well you know, some women use abortion as birth control,” Palmer said.

The regularity and effective use of birth control increases after a woman has an abortion, according to the study.

The need for contraceptive support is strong for all three groups, the study said.

However, the need is greater for the women in the childbearing group, the study researchers found. But they also said the need for contraceptive education and counseling is important for those who ended their pregnancies.

The study said women who had abortions appeared to be doing well at the time the survey was conducted. The positive position relative to the position of the other two groups is due to three factors.

First, the women who had terminated their pregnancies were slightly better-off than those in the other two groups from the start, the study stated.

Secondly, the study said, the women who had terminated their pregnancies had no reason to deteriorate economically or educationally, and they had no reason to experience negative change.

Finally, any bad feelings following the abortion were triggered by a subsequent pregnancy. Women in the other two groups also experienced negative feelings with a subsequent pregnancy.

The study said women who had terminated their pregnancies had experienced an improved status following the abortion because they had fewer future pregnancies.

Negative feelings experienced by the women who had children after having abortions compared to the women who had children as teenagers were because of motherhood, not a result of the previous abortion, according to the study.

The study also states teenagers who decided to have abortions were “far more likely” to have graduated from high school or to be in school and at the appropriate grade level than were those who decided to carry their pregnancy to term or those whose pregnancy test had been negative.

The study reported that two years after the original pregnancy testing 18 percent of the group who had abortions had either left school before graduation or if they were still in school, had failed to progress to the next grade level.

However, the study also stated 37 percent of the childbearing and negatively tested teenagers had either left school or failed to advance to another academic level.

Of the teenagers who terminated their pregnancies, 73 percent expected to continue their education after high school whereas 53 percent of the childbearing and negatively tested teenagers expected to continue their education, the study said.

Grade point averages for all groups were extremely close. Teenagers who had abortions reported GPAs five tenths higher than the teenagers who had a child and three tenths higher than those who tested negatively for pregnancy.

The study’s researchers found 100 percent of the teenagers who had abortions, 90 percent who carried the pregnancies full term and 88 percent testing negatively for pregnancy returned to school the following semester.