Just One Abortion Could Lead To Women Having Premature Births Later In Life

The scientists based their findings on pregnancy outcome data on more than 620,000 women in Scotland, recorded between 1981 and 2007.

Study leader Professor Siladitya Bhattacharya, from the University of Aberdeen, said: ‘Many women start their reproductive life with an abortion in their first pregnancy.

‘Abortion is common; most people know somebody who has undergone an abortion. The statistics for Scotland are compelling. In the last five years, 12 to 13,000 women have had abortions every year, and 40 per cent  of those are women under the age of 25.
‘We found that women who had a previous induced abortion had a higher risk of spontaneous pre-term birth in their next on-going pregnancy, compared to women who had never been pregnant before.’

Women with a history of three or four abortions were not significantly more at risk of delivering a baby prematurely than those who underwent just one abortion, the study showed.

The findings were presented today at the British Science Festival being held at the University of Aberdeen, and reported in the online medical journal BMJ Open.

Professor Bhattacharya pointed out that about 70 per cent of abortions in Scotland were now drug induced – a higher proportion than in the rest of the UK. Medical abortions were common during the first nine weeks of pregnancy but performed less often at later stages.

The study appeared to make a case for more medical terminations, the professor said.

‘What we think is if there is a greater degree of trauma involved with an abortion procedure that’s probably more likely to damage the cervix and allow for pre-term birth later,’ he added.

‘A medical termination is less traumatic than a surgical termination.’

Compared with drug-induced abortion, surgical abortion not only raised the risk of premature birth, but also increased the chances of other complications such as miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy.

Culled From Daily Mail