Back in the late 1960s when abortion was a headline topic for everyone from politicians to religious leaders, I was a reporter with The Long Island Catholic. As a Catholic mother of seven, I plunged deeply into reporting the pros and cons of this deeply important issue. I did extensive research on the effects of abortion in countries such as Sweden, Hungary, Romania and Japan; these had liberalized abortion laws.

The picture was alarming. Prestigious publications like the World Medical Journal were reporting a rarely mentioned fact: the extensive "mental injury" experienced by women after abortion.

"In the clamor for liberalization of abortion laws, 'side effects' of the procedure are sometimes overlooked," said the World Medical Journal in 1966. "Both physical and mental injury may result from legal as well as illegal abortion."

The following year I interviewed Dr. Mary Calderone, then executive director of the Sex Education and Information Council of the United States. She was talking openly about the "mental condition of woman post-abortion," and told me, "Aside from the fact that abortion is the taking of a life, I am also mindful of what was brought out by our psychiatrists --- that in almost every case abortion, whether legal or illegal, is a traumatic experience that may have severe consequences later on."

Now, exactly 40 years later in an era of legalized abortion, we still are debating the negative effects of abortion.

The Jan. 21, 2007, issue of the New York Times magazine ran a hefty article that asked, "Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?" While the article maintained that abortion is not "at the root of women's psychological ills," it did focus on what is definitely a growing movement, the abortion-recovery ministry.

While the Catholic Church "runs abortion-recovery ministries in at least 165 dioceses in the United States," according to the article, "abortion-recovery activists go one step further to make people aware of a simple truth: "Abortion doesn't help women. It hurts them."

This is the same message I heard from the research I did four decades ago!

Recently Cathy Trowbridge, an Illinois mother, sent me a copy of a manuscript she wrote that came from the depths of her own long-term pain following an abortion. Her book, she said, was "about my life in sin and return to our Lord."

Trowbridge was forthright in explaining that she had an abortion when she was a teenager in the wrong place at the wrong time. She turned away from her Catholic faith then. Now she is convinced that her "special angel" child has brought her back to God.

Trowbridge wrote: "It has been a long journey ... and I have scars that will remind me of my mistake, and although it is forgiven, it is not forgotten.... I have now returned to the church with a hunger for knowledge about my faith, and I seek to deepen my relationship with our Lord."

I remember back in the 1950s when I was a young mother of four. I had gone to a restaurant with a friend. An older man and woman were at the next table. The woman accused, "You made me kill my baby." She kept saying this.

The man quietly countered, "That was 25 years ago."

But she didn't stop, and so we left.

Discarding a baby. Can that ever be forgotten?

I had seen firsthand the everlasting trauma of abortion and never forgot it.

Antoinette Bosco is a columnist with Catholic News Service.