Too late a woman in Nigeria is realizing the tragic consequences of her abortions.
Faith writes to The Pulse’s “Morning Teaser” feature, worried that her eight abortions early in life are keeping her from getting pregnant now.
Her letter to the Nigerian news outlet reads:
… I have been married to a wonderful man for the past 12 years with no fruit of the womb to show. My husband has been very supportive and has stood by me despite pressure from his family to get another wife.
But I am getting worried as I am not getting any younger and my chances of having a baby is growing thin by the day.
We have carried out several tests and the doctors keep saying there is nothing wrong with us but I am afraid the problem could be mine because when I was single, I lived the fast life like most girls.
I had my first abortion when I was in the secondary school and before I got married, I had terminated more than eight pregnancies. I am not sure if this has anything to do with my inability to have a child now that I desperately need one.
The news outlet also published a similar letter earlier this year written by a husband struggling with the couple’s infertility:
… we were both shocked when [the doctor] conducted series of tests and came out with the damning verdict that my wife had a ruptured fallopian tube caused probably by an abortion.
Worried and confused, I asked her if she had had an abortion and, in tears, she told me she had three abortions when she was in the university and that she almost lost her life in the last one which damaged her chances of having a child.
Many women are uninformed about the risks abortion can pose to their health and their future ability to have children.
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Researchers at Tel Aviv University recently found that women who have just one abortion are more likely to have complications in other pregnancies. The study found that women who have one abortion during the first trimester are 30% more likely to have complications such as pre-term birth, vaginal bleeding, low birth weight and placenta complications with future pregnancies.
Tragically, abortion definitely can contribute to infertility in women because the procedure sometimes causes infections or leaves scar tissue. A 2006 British study found that women who have an abortion run at a 60-percent higher risk of having a miscarriage in a subsequent pregnancy, LifeNews previously reported.
This isn’t the first study to show that abortions adversely affect a woman’s fertility. Other research shows that abortion can lead to infertility by increasing the risk of miscarriages.
A 1986 report in the medical journal Epidemiology reveals women with a history of abortion have a greater risk of fetal loss than women who had no previous abortions. Women with two prior pregnancies carried to term and no abortions had the lowest risk, while women with two prior abortions had the highest risk.
Meanwhile, a 1991 British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology article revealed that women with a history of abortion had a 1.5-1.7 times higher risk of ectopic pregnancy than women who had previously carried a pregnancy to term.
