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Abortion and low birth weight, preterm delivery

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There’s an article today in the papers about the birth control pill being linked to low birth weight. (It’s supposed to be here, however, at time of posting this, the National Post web site is down.)

That’s not a study or a link I’m familiar with, and so not having seen the study I’d rather not comment on this link.

However, the article also says:

Babies born with a low birth weight or prematurely — a growing problem in Canada whose cause is not always clear — are more likely to suffer health problems.

It is clear through more than one study that an abortion is linked to subsequent preterm delivery. Read about it here, here or here.

We’re not allowed to talk about any adverse health effects the result of abortion. So it’s important to highlight these things, and learn about them, as they come up.

Not that there are any repercussions to abortion

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This article talks about an increase in pre-term births in Canada and made me think of other studies I’ve read linking abortion to subsequent pre-term delivery. It’s a link I’m sure you won’t hear about in the mainstream media, so I thought I should mention it on this site. A couple of articles on the link between abortion and pre-term delivery for your reading pleasure, here and here.

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Patricia adds: This is not directly on the same subject as Andrea’s post, but bear with me.

An Australian hospital’s pregnancy advisory service has released an analysis of reasons why women using its service are considering abortion.

Victoria’s Royal Women’s Hospital’s Pregnancy Advisory Service is the state’s largest public “pregnancy support service”. Women with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy can contact the service about their options, including abortion and continuing the pregnancy. That said, it sounds like the greatest “service” the PAS provides is abortion referral: The Medical Journal of Australia reported recently that of the 5,462 women who contacted the service between October 2006 and October 2007, 90 per cent were seeking an abortion.

Of the 3,018 women surveyed on reasons for seeking abortion, 34 per cent listed their primary reason as “do not want children now” or “not the right time”. Another 547, or 18 per cent, said they already had enough children, 263, or 9 per cent, said they were caring for a young baby, and 339, or 11 per cent, said they were too young.

Financial, relationship or medical reasons together (together! I would have thought these were the major reasons) accounted for 19 per cent of cases. Rape accounted for 1 per cent.

Is it just me or, with the exception of the rape category (just 1 percent), do these reasons seem somewhat underwhelming? I realize that it’s hard to make statistics compelling but the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement always seemed pitched at the level of “women’s lives destroyed” if access to abortion is compromised in the slightest manner. But does it really seem to you that a woman’s life is “destroyed” if she has three children instead of two (as she had planned)? Or if she has a child a few years ahead of schedule?

I know that such an event can cause hardship and even suffering. But I’m just not sure that any of these reasons indicate that “women’s lives are at risk”.

And do any of these reasons seem compelling enough to risk the kind of repercussions associated with abortion – those mentioned in Andrea’s post and others?

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