Abortions increase the risk of low birth weight in future pregnancies by a factor of three, and of premature birth by a factor of two, according to the largest U.S. study of its kind. The study is hardly perfect; the data is more than 40 years old and doesn't distinguish between medical abortions and "spontaneous abortions," better known as miscarriages. Yet the report, published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (JECH), shows one of the strongest links yet between miscarriage or abortion on premature birth and low birth weight — major risk factors for infant death or sickness.
What makes report significant is the size and detail of data. Some previous, smaller studies on abortion and future birth weight have suffered because researchers were unable to untangle the effects of abortion from, say, the effects of being poor (which also happens to increase a woman's odds of having an abortion). But the researchers behind the JECH study, which evaluated just over 45,000 single-child live births from 1959 to 1966, were able to adjust for an impressive array of confounding variables, including race, age, weight, height, marital status, occupation, the number of prenatal visits, the number of previous children, smoking and drinking habits, drug habits, infant gender and both parents' education levels.
Full story here.
This study only confirms what most people have already observed. An observation that has been swept under the rug by the likes of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood would like you to think that an abortion is nothing more than getting rid of some tissues, nothing to worry about.
Since abortion is so widely available many women are using abortion as a birth control. I wonder if women who are going for abortions for the first time, or for the second or third time for that matter, are going to be cautioned about the consequences of the actions; what the effects of their abortion is going to do to any future pregnancies where the child is wanted.
I don't know if the result of this study is going to lead to less abortions, especially for women who intend to become pregnant in the future and carry that pregnancy to full term.
One can only hope.
0 comments
Post a Comment