Increased public attention and legal action are actively changing the abortion situation. The authors arranged short-term group therapy with single and married women who had obtained therapeutic abortions. Women that had been operated on in the local hospitals were contacted by mail and provided the patients for the group. They were generally women from high socioeconomic backgrounds, and educationally sophisticated, but they showed a wide variety of differences in personality and in their individual psychological disturbances. Their ability to participate in the group was markedly influenced by marital status and age, with older and more socially established women more able to view the experience in perspective and to discuss their own values and reactions to termination of pregnancy. Younger, single girls seemed to have more trouble in separating the event from their current interactions with men and their present social insecurities and emotional lability. They also felt intimidated by the older women even though the married women were scrupulous about neither being judgmental or patronizing. The groups discussed attitudes toward surgery and hospitalization, the search for someone to perform the abortion, and the attitudes of internists, psychiatrists, and surgeons with whom they had dealt. Religion, sexuality, personal guilt, and the rights and meaning of femininity in this and other cultures were all examined, and the idea of killing a living thing received a heavy emphasis. The groups served to reduce guilt, to enhance assimilation of the experience, and helped put the experience into proportion for its members. It adds to the mounting knowledge that properly conducted abortions, outside of the shadow of illegality, and with the support of the medical care system, have a temporary emotional influence upon women and do not lead to psychiatric disorders. The groups indicate a considerable potential for approaching women for information about their experiences in these circumstances and helping in managing short-term responses. Group approaches offer a great opportunity for intervention with pregnant adolescents and women in poverty areas who rarely have adequate information or a chance to discuss these issues. A combination of older and married women in such groups is important to stabilize and sustain the groups.