Previous abortion could raise chance of pre-term birth, study concludes

Abortion has been sold to the American people, and to the world for that matter, as a safe procedure. If it isn’t clear enough that abortion is not safe from regular reports by Live Action on women being taken by ambulance to local hospitals from abortion clinics due to a botched procedure, here is another reason to question the validity of the “safe” claims.

According to a report by the Christian Post, a Finnish research study has indicated “a link between the abortion procedure and an increased risk of preterm birth.” Members of the National Institute authored the study for Health and Welfare and the Academy of Finland. The study reports that pregnant women who have had one abortion had a 19-percent increase in the possibility of a pre-term birth in a later pregnancy. The percentage jumped to 69 percent after two abortions, and after three abortions, the increase is 278 percent. Researchers had controlled factors such as smoking and a history of miscarriage, among other factors, as they looked at records of 300,858 first-time mothers who had a single child in Finland from 1996 to 2008. The researchers compared those records with a registry of abortions in Finland from 1983 to 2008.

Despite the researchers’ claims that “abortion is a safe surgical procedure,” they have been forced to admit after their research that “having more than two [abortions] can have consequences, and this information should be included in sexual education programs.” The authors of the study have noted that due to the observational study of their work, the research does not confirm cause and effect. The study’s authors believe that unknown variables could have affected their research.

According to Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life, “this new study is important, not because it alone will shift the debate, but because it adds to a growing body of data.” Forsythe told the Christian Post that this study has added to other studies that have found similar results. In fact, according to Forsythe, “over 130 studies have been conducted from the 1960s to the present that have shown a link between preterm birth and abortion.” These studies are available in the publications Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, Indian Journal of Pediatrics, and Maternal Child Health.

Forsythe also commented to the Christian Post that he believes that the evidence from all of the studies goes against the rationale for Roe v. Wade: “Because the risks address both the Supreme Court’s rationale for abortion (that women have come to rely on abortion as a backup to failed contraception) and the myth in public opinion that legal abortion is a ‘necessary evil.’”

You can read the abstract for the Finnish research study here.