Someone wiser than I once described the Fox News motto of "fair and balanced" as the presumed moral obligation to balance every truth with a lie. I reflected on that when reading about a recent bill that Congress has passed to give more money towards the research of postpartum depression. Surely the only people out there wigged out by the idea of further research into this affliction that affects, to various degrees, a fifth of new mothers are those who think it was a good idea for Tom Cruise to hop all over Oprah Winfrey's couch. But of course, the idea of women receiving real help smells like blood on the water for anti-choicers and they dove in to mess with it.

In a compromise reached with Rep. Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., an anti-abortion leader, the bill also includes a nonbinding sense of Congress endorsing studies into mental health issues related to abortions and miscarriages.

Pitts said that while postpartum depression is a real and serious disease, "I believe it is just as important to know the effects of adoption, miscarriage and abortion in order to properly help women."

Even though he used weasel words, we all know that Pitts means to push the idea that scientists should research "post-abortion syndrome," but of course the resolution had to be non-binding. You can't ask researchers to waste their time investigating non-existent phenomenon, like "post-abortion syndrome" or whether or not a murderous old queen will appear in your mirror if you say "Bloody Mary" three times in the dark. In general, scientists react with hostility to requests that they waste time and money that could be spent exploring real world phenomena and actually helping people. Investigations into "post-abortion syndrome" have resulted in the conclusion that there's no there there, and you can't continue to throw money at it, hoping that enough cash will create a syndrome out of thin air.

Certainly there are women who claim to be suffering from post-abortion syndrome. However, it appears that more than just having an abortion goes into developing this syndrome. Since most and quite possibly all women who claim to suffer from this have not only had an abortion but subsequently joined an anti-choice organization that needed them to feel really bad about their choice, it appears that the major cause of "post-abortion syndrome" is joining such an organization. So if you'd prefer to avoid this syndrome that American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association have both determined does not exist, your best bet is to avoid anti-choice organizations and guilt trips, not to avoid abortion.

None of this is to say that women can't be sad, depressed, or have mixed emotions after an abortion, but those are much different things than "post-abortion syndrome," which is based around the idea that the sadness, depression, or mixed feelings would be absent but for the abortion, and that a woman's mental health would be fine or at least improved if she'd chosen to have the baby. Some anti-choicers go even further and insinuate that motherhood itself is the great salve--how could it not be? A woman's entire life duty is motherhood, and in their view, filling your duty is the key to mental health, or an adequate replacement for mental health anyway. (Cue "Mother's Little Helper" by the Rolling Stones.)

"Post-abortion syndrome" isn't real, but postpartum depression most certainly is. Unlike "post-abortion syndrome", postpartum depression has been well-documented and firmly linked to the childbirth process. It's not like new mothers are joining up with anti-child organizations in large numbers and succumbing to postpartum depression to demonstrate that they're really, really sorry they had a baby to their new friends. In fact, basically no one clamoring for more research into postpartum depression has a political agenda in trying to deter women from giving birth. They like mothers--they usually are mothers. They just want women to be able to be mothers without so much mental health danger.

It takes a mind bent by ideological sexism to react as strangely to calls for more research into postpartum depression as Rep. Pitts did. You get the distinct impression from anti-choicers who tout "post-abortion syndrome" that if they did manage to prove that this syndrome exists, and a cure was found, they'd probably end up opposing the cure. So why ask for more research? Well, it's a bit of legalistic superstition, I think. Pitts and his anti-choice crew hope that by simply injecting the words over and over again into bills and court documents, they can make this non-existent syndrome real by repetition. In fact, it's a lot like saying "Bloody Mary" out loud in the mirror with the belief that eventually she'll appear.

I suspect part of it is hostility to the existence of postpartum depression, and not for the obvious reason that one would oppose the existence of depression. It's less a concern for those suffering and more a concern that the existence of postpartum depression exposes the lie at the heart of the belief that abortion hurts women. If you think that childbirth has the magical power to turn every woman from a bad, forsaken, sexual being into a beaming, haloed symbol of innocent and pure baby-cradling joy, the reality that some women (even though they love their children) plunge into despair and tears puts a few cracks into the anti-choice wall. Childbirth may not be the great mental health salve it's touted to be by anti-choicers pushing the "post-abortion syndrome" line. The gravity of having children makes the necessity of choice all the more evident.