Researcher: Abortions Double Risk of Premature Birth

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Having an abortion doubles the risk of having a premature birth in a subsequent pregnancy -- that is the conclusion of a European researcher at a medical conference. Several previous studies have shown that abortion hurts women and future children by upping the chance of premature delivery.

LifeNews is, as usual, full of sh!#. First of all, the study looked at correlation, and did not look for or find any evidence of causation. Furthermore, the study primarily looked at miscarriages and other complications in past pregnancies, and found those to correlate more strongly than abortions with various adverse outcomes in future pregnancies. Example: *one* previous miscarriage significantly elevated the risk for perinatal *death* in a subsequent pregnancy, while *two or more* previous abortions only significantly increased the risk of very preterm delivery in a subsequent pregnancy.

The published abstract is here:
http://humupd.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/dmp009

It’s hardly surprising that multiple abortions would *correlate* with very preterm deliveries, both in previous and subsequent pregnancies. Women who are having repeat abortions are overwhelmingly women who are irresponsible and don’t plan ahead or take precautions. They can’t be bothered to use contraceptives regularly, and they also can’t be bothered to get regular prenatal care, take prenatal vitamins, monitor and control their blood sugar even after they’ve been told they have gestational diabetes (and some would have had uncontrolled diabetes even before getting pregnant), eat properly, lay off the smoking and drinking, etc. All of these behaviors will greatly increase the risk of very preterm delivery, regardless of whether the woman has had any prior abortions or not.

LifeNews (and LifeSite) rank right up there with Al Gore in the scientific comprehension department.

If that was the case, then routine D&Cs would also cause premature births, and I haven’t heard of any evidence to that effect. Though since D&Cs are most commonly done following miscarriages, that could perhaps partially explain the correlation these authors found between preterm births and perinatal deaths with miscarriages. However, other factors are clearly important with the miscarriage correlations, since it only took one miscarriage to show strong correlation with subsequent pregnancy complications.

Also keep in mind that early abortions are often done via a suction method requiring almost no dilation of the cervix (probably a lot less than a D&C). And a lot of miscarriages are caused by an incompetent cervix, and if there’s a subsequent pregnancy, steps are taken to stabilize the cervix (including stitching it shut), but this often only partly solves the problem, keeping the pregnancy going only long enough for a premature birth — that would be part of the explanation for the correlation between miscarriages and subsequent premature births (including non-viably premature ones that would end up classified as perinatal deaths).

Any medical research is complex, and that’s why it’s so idiotic of outfits like LifeNews to jump on a few random details of studies like this and then claim “A researcher found that abortions cause subsequent premature births”. This researcher found nothing of the sort, and LifeNews is simply lying when they say he did. Just like Al Gore’s favorite researchers didn’t find that human activity causes global warming — just because Al Gore says they found that, doesn’t mean they did — he just likes to say they did, because it helps gather more suckers into his fan club, from among those people who are predisposed to believe any variation on the theme “capitalism and Westerners are evil”. Likewise, LifeNews caters to a crowd that hasn’t the slightest interest in science, and is just eager to believe and promote any preposterous claim that supports their belief that abortion is bad. But people sure look mighty foolish when they cheer on the sort of rubbish LifeNews puts out, and then turn around and howl about how global warming alarmism is based on “junk science”.

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