Multiple Abortions Cause Premature Birth Risk for Women

International   |   Steven Ertelt, Lucia Muchova   |   Aug 30, 2012   |   6:26PM   |   Helsinki, Finland

A new study released from Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare finds women who have multiple abortions have a greater risk of premature birth and low-birthweight babies in subsequent pregnancies.

The study, printed in the peer-reviewed medical journal Human Reproduction, of more than 300,000 women found women who have three or more abortions face a 35 percent increase in health complications in a future pregnancy and also saw an increase in the risk of a baby’s death around the time of birth.

Having just one abortion or more increased the likelihood of giving birth before reaching 37 weeks of pregnancy.

“To put these risks into perspective, for every 1,000 women, three who have had no abortion will have a baby born under 28 weeks,” Dr Reija Klemetti, who led the study, told the Scotsman newspaper. “This rises to four women among those who have had one abortion, six women who have had two abortions, and 11 women who have had three or more.”

A paper printed this summer has listed more than 120 studies that show abortion linked to premature birth in subsequent pregnancies. Dr. Byron Calhoun makes these charges in “Abortion and Preterm Birth: Why Medical Journals Aren’t Giving Us The Real Picture.”

Calhoun, Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the West Virginia University-Charleston and a pioneer in delivering perinatal hospice care to unborn babies and their parents, cites 127 published peer-reviewed articles spanning five decades all showing an increased risk of preterm birth following an abortion. Even so, such studies tend to hide this finding and not report it in the paper’s abstract or conclusion. Not only do these tactics make it harder for readers to see the abortion-preterm birth link, but it also could be a sign of ideological preference for ignoring negative effects associated with abortion.

A case in point cited by Dr. Calhoun is an important Chinese study published in the Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics, which finds that a history of combined surgical-medical abortion is associated with increased preterm birth risk of over 200 percent. It also finds an increased risk of over 360 percent for women who had medical abortion with curettage, 1 in 5 women in the study.

Despite these findings, the paper’s abstract trumpets that the most important conclusion was that “history of multiple first trimester mifepristone-induced abortions is not associated with a higher risk of preterm delivery among singleton births in the first subsequent pregnancy.” The most important results of the study are obscured, requiring the reader to dig deep into the paper to find them.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the existence of the preterm birth-abortion connection, Calhoun writes, “the leading medical organizations for women’s healthcare, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in their online Compendium for 2011, refuse to acknowledge the increased associated risk of preterm labor or the substantial body of literature raising this concern.” ACOG’s disregard of the abortion-preterm birth link coincides with their longstanding pro-abortion advocacy.

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According to the recently published World Health Organization Global Action Report on Preterm Birth, about 15 million babies are born prematurely every year. That is more than 1 in every 10 babies born around the world. Over 1 million children die every year as a result of complications related to prematurity, and many more suffer lifetime health problems and disabilities. The costs of preterm birth, both financial and in terms of human suffering, are high and rising as preterm birth rates continue to increase in virtually all countries with reliable data.

Despite the gravity of the situation, the WHO report concludes that the causes and mechanisms of preterm birth still remain largely unknown. One reason is that medical journals tend to misrepresent the truth about factors associated with preterm birth and bury the findings that show a connection to abortion.