4. Discussion
This study shows that women with a history of MDs in
general experience the unintended pregnancy and the abortion
as more burdensome; they experience more preabortion doubts
and postabortion negative emotions, report lower postabortion
self-efficacy and use more emotion-oriented and avoidanceoriented
coping strategies than women without this history. Our
results indicate that psychiatric history strongly affects how
women experience the period before and after the abortion.
Doubt or ambivalence in the abortion decision process is
common, but most women feel they are making the right
decision [3,5]. In line with this, we also found that most women
stood behind their decision; even when preabortion doubt was
high. Decision uncertainty was low in general and not affected