The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore will launch today at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen a program to offer spiritual and emotional counseling to women traumatized by abortion.
A steering committee for Project Rachel is being selected under a project director named by Archbishop William H. Keeler. The director, the Rev. Blair Paul Raum, 46-year-old pastor of St. Patrick's Church on South Broadway, is a certified counselor who said he works outside the church as a family therapist.
He said yesterday that the archbishop would formally announce the project at the annual Respect Life Mass at 3 p.m. at the North Charles Street cathedral.
In an interview at St. Patrick's, Father Raum said "a very conservative estimate" is that 30 percent of women who have abortions will suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, similar to the experiences of Vietnam War veterans, within 10 years of the procedure.
"With 30 million abortions since 1973, that's 10 million women. There's a lot of folks out there," he said.
He acknowledged that the American Psychiatric Association does not recognize post-abortion stress syndrome, but said he believed the illness will be recognized as more women experience it and seek help.
James A. Guest, president of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, disagreed with that assessment last night, saying that the issue has been studied by the APA, the surgeon general and others "and there's simply no credible evidence that this syndrome exists."
"It looks like a group that's vehemently opposed to abortion in the first place has invented a syndrome that doesn't exist and attached a percentage to it that's totally unsupported."
But Father Raum said that studies showing women suffer no ill effects after abortions have focused only on the first year after the procedure. He added that "generally in the first years, she experiences a great deal of relief, because usually the abortion is had as the result of a crisis pregnancy."
Next comes a period of denial, Father Raum said. "A very powerful defense, and she can move on and function very well."
But, he said, "somewhere within that 10-year period, something breaks the denial: seeing a child that would be the same age; the anniversary of the due date; . . . the sound of a vacuum cleaner [if it was a suction abortion] and all this suppressed emotion begins to surface."
