Abstract:

Many previous studies of men and abortion fail to fully capture their emotional reactions to their partner's abortion because they measure conscious, self-reported emotions about the loss and only examine men at the time of the abortion. Furthermore, men may not directly express their feelings about the abortion, but instead suppress their feelings about the abortion or react unconsciously: To address these methodological limitations, this qualitative investigation retrospectively examined eight men's conscious and unconscious reactions to the abortion experience. Participants' partners had from 1-4 abortions, and these ranged from 3 months to 28 years prior. Participants were interviewed extensively and administered several cards from the Thematic Apperception Test (T.A.T.) and the Children's Apperception Test (C.A.T.-H.). The interview assessed the conscious, self-reported reactions while the projective tests examined the unconscious or unacknowledged reactions.

Findings indicate that men had both negative and ambivalent emotional reactions to the abortion including anger, relief, and regret. Perceived lack of power during the abortion experience caused the men to feel helpless and in response they tended to take on a supportive role for their partners. More specifically, these men focused on their partner's well-being, hid their true feelings about the abortion, and tried to remain stoic. Also, the participants transferred feelings onto their partner, possibly as a way of protecting themselves from the emotional content of the abortion. All participants described changes in their relationships with their partner as a result of the abortion. Interestingly, the amount of conscious versus unconscious feelings towards the abortion experience varied among the participants. Their emotional reactions also varied depending on how much time had elapsed since the abortion(s).

Since this was a qualitative study of eight men, it is inherently limited by its small sample size, retrospective design, and possible researcher bias. Clinical implications of this study suggest that men may respond better to individual psychotherapy than couples therapy following an abortion and that they may project the illusion that they are coping better than they really are. Future lines of research would benefit from larger sample sizes, and quantitative methods, to further reveal the range of reactions and impact of the abortion process on male partners.