The mental health of adults born of unwanted pregnancies, their siblings, and matched controls: a 35-year follow-up study from Prague, Czech Republic.

This study tested the hypothesis that being born of an unwanted pregnancy is a risk factor for poor mental health in adulthood. Self-report and objective data were collected at ages 28 to 31 and 32 to 35 years in a cohort of nearly 200 "unwanted" subjects born after their mothers had been twice denied an abortion for the same pregnancy. The same data were collected in a sociodemographically matched control cohort of "accepted" subjects whose mothers had not requested an abortion, and from siblings of both the unwanted subjects and the accepted control subjects.