Jonathan Haidt’s analysis at The Free Press (first appearing on his Substack After Babel) of why the mental health of liberal teen girls “sank first and fastest” offers an urgent lens for understanding how our culture is shaping young women—and, by extension, the pressures and choices they face when an unexpected pregnancy occurs.
Haidt is the author of The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind, which was co-written with Greg Lukianoff.
In his essay, Haidt traces a sharp rise in anxiety and depression among Gen Z, with left-leaning girls leading the trend after 2012. This was the year smartphones and image-driven social media went from novelty to necessity during the crucial teen years of many young women.
Compounding the rise of influential social media, Haidt references early research that Lukianoff discovered and describes as a “reverse CBT [Cognitive Behavioral Therapy]” environment. Here institutions and social media teach young people to engage in distortions of reality: to catastrophize, to treat feelings as facts, and to see the world as oppressors and victims. That devastating cocktail, combined with online communities that reward fragility rather than resilience, produces a loss of agency—a shift from “I can” to “I can’t.”
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Apply that to abortion.
A young woman scrolling through curated perfection and ideological outrage is told, implicitly and explicitly, that she is fragile, that missteps are catastrophic, and that her worth is precarious. In that headspace, an unexpected pregnancy can feel not just difficult but impossible to navigate.
An abortion becomes framed as the single “sensible” option that will restore control. But the irony is stark. If social and institutional messages have already eroded a young woman’s sense of agency– from “I can” to “I can’t”– the decision to abort may feel less like a “choice” and more like surrender.
On top of all that, most times she faces pressure from a boyfriend, financial strain, and/or the expectation that a woman cannot let children “get in the way” of her goals. In a society that already whispers, “you can’t,” the overpowering temptation is to abort.
Haidt’s story is about the change in how the locus of control—who captains the ship, so to speak—is perceived, especially among young liberal women, and it matters here. The more our culture trains girls to externalize control, the more unexpected pregnancy looks like a crisis to be eliminated and her baby as an “oppressor.”
And when our campuses, media, and authority figures reinforce the message that words, ideas, and ordinary adversity are “harm,” we shouldn’t be surprised that many young women conclude that motherhood—especially unexpected motherhood—is an injury from which they must be “rescued.”
Significantly, the young woman who already suffers from depression and feels that outside forces are in control of her life, may suffer horribly following an abortion. A May 2025 article in Issues in Law & Medicine addressed the issue of depression following an abortion. The author, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, noted
There is…substantial empirical evidence that abortion worsens mental health outcomes for at least some women, particularly those with pre-existing mental health conditions.
Dr. Kheriaty pointed to several studies including one that was published in 2013, where the study’s authors hypothesized that abortion may reduce mental health issues when compared to live birth. Instead, the study authors found
abortion was associated with statistically significant increases in the risks of alcohol misuse (2.3 times higher), illicit drug use/misuse (3.91 times higher), and suicidal behavior (1.69 times higher), as well as elevated risks of anxiety (though this was not statistically significant)—findings which supported a link between abortion and poor mental health outcomes. In disconfirming the authors’ hypothesis that women might benefit psychologically from abortion, this study also confirmed the finding of every other review or meta-analysis of the issue of abortion and mental health: abortion is not therapeutic from a mental health perspective. Research on this issue has never found abortion to confer mental health benefits and has often found it to confer mental health risks. [emphasis added]
A pro-woman, pro-life response begins by rebuilding agency—from “I can’t” to “I can.” That means surrounding young women with practical help and honest information. It means telling them the truth:
- you are stronger than any algorithm says you are;
- you do not have to choose between your future and your child; and
- you are not alone.
We should champion policies that expand resources for student-mothers, ensure meaningful informed consent, prevent coercion, and connect women to community-based support—housing, childcare, health care, and mentoring.
When a young woman learns to reinterpret adversity—when she replaces catastrophizing with problem-solving—her choices change dramatically. She can see a path where none seemed possible. That’s the heart of the pro-life movement: to meet a young woman where she is and offer courage, compassion, and practical love.
If we want better outcomes for women and their children, we must challenge the culture that whispers “you can’t” and build a culture of life that says, and shows, “you can.”
LifeNews.com Note: Laura Echevarria is the Director of Media Relations and a spokesperson for the National Right to Life Committee.
