Abortion, Motherhood, and Mental Health: Medicalizing Reproduction in the United States and Great Britain (Social Problems and Social Issues)

Centering on the claim that abortion can result in Post Abortion Syndrome, the author examines the "medicalization" of the abortion problem on both sides of the Atlantic. Lee points to contrasts in legal and medical dimensions of the abortion issue that make for some important differences, but argues that in both the United States and Britain, the PAS claim in fact constitutes an example of the limits to medicalization. She contends that examination of contests over PAS points not so much to demedicalization as to the construction of its alternative—motherhood—as a psychological ordeal. Centrally, Lee makes the case for looking to the social dimensions of mental health problems to account for and understand debates about what makes women ill.