By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
More evidence supporting the link between abortion and preterm birth has been found after a massive German study revealed that women who had one or more abortions increased their risk by 30 to 90 percent of delivering a very premature infant in the future.
According to a report by LifeSiteNews.com, the study was conducted by Dr. Manfred Voight in Germany who evaluated over two million pregnancies between 1995 and 2000, making it the largest study conducted in the last 30 years.
The study found that for a woman with one prior abortion, the chance of delivering a very pre-term baby (under 32-34 weeks’ gestation) is 30 percent higher than for women with no abortion history. Having more than one abortion increases the risk by 90 percent.
Because the study relied on data retrieved from a perinatal data-base rather than on personal interviews, the Voigt team was able to avoid the possibility of skewed results due to women falsifying their abortion history, a factor critics of the abortion-premature birth link have questioned in the past.
Children who are born prematurely have a much higher risk of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, epilepsy, visual impairment, hearing disability, gastrointestinal injury, respiratory distress, and severe infections.
The German study joins a solid body of evidence showing the increased risk of preterm births for children who are brought to term after a previous abortion.
Brent Rooney of the Reduce Preterm Risk Coalition has urged President Barack Obama to suspend government funding of abortion in light of strong evidence for the procedure’s dangerous effects on women and children.
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