French Study Finds Strong Evidence; Abortion Increases Risk of Subsequent Premature Birth.

In 2003, when pro-life Ob-Gyn Byron Calhoun and researcher Brent Rooney published their summary of 49 studies that showed having an abortion increased the risk of subsequent prematurity in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons1 the world didn't give the subject much attention. Now, with the publication of a major study coming out of France in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology2 solidly confirming the link between abortion and subsequent premature births, the evidence and the implications will be harder to ignore.

The study, titled "Previous induced abortions and the risk of very preterm delivery: results of the EPIPAGE study," covered about one-third of all premature births occurring in France in 1997. Dr. Caroline Moreau of INSERM, France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research, and colleagues examined the records for 1,943 very preterm births (born between 22 and 32 weeks), 276 moderately preterm births (born at 33-34 weeks), and a comparison group of 618 full-term births.

The conclusion the French research team reached is that women with a history of induced abortion had a 50% higher risk of having a very preterm delivery than women who had not aborted. The risk was 70% higher for delivering a baby at 22 to 27 weeks gestation, a category which researchers call "extremely preterm deliveries." (This can be confusing unless you understand that the "extremely preterm birth" category is a subset of the larger "very preterm birth" category: 22-32 weeks.)

The idea that abortion might have an impact on future pregnancies is logical enough. Abortion involves not simply the destruction of the unborn child, but an aggressive assault on the woman's reproductive organs.

Any injury, even if undetectable at the time of the abortion, might have consequences when that woman becomes pregnant in the future. In other words, more than one child may die from the original abortion.

Results were even more striking when researchers looked at the association between abortion and specific causes of subsequent very preterm delivery (22-32 weeks).

There was no observable connection between having an abortion and having a subsequent very preterm delivery that is due to high blood pressure, a common cause of prematurity. However, there was a substantial increased risk of premature birth causes that could conceivably be tied to infections or injuries brought on by what the authors refer to as the "mechanical processes" of abortion.