Women who use medications to induce abortions face no greater risk of ectopic pregnancies or spontaneous abortions in future pregnancies than women who have had surgical abortions. The risks of premature delivery and delivering babies with low birth weight were also comparable, according to a *New England Journal of Medicine *study.
Researchers analyzed records of nearly 12,000 women from Denmark's national abortion registry and their birth registry to gather statistics for the study. The incidence of future ectopic pregnancies in women with medical abortions (2.4%) was similar to those who had previously undergone surgical abortions (2.3%). All other measures of future pregnancy risks were lower for medication-induced abortions than surgical abortions, but not significantly so.
The Danish birth registry didn't appear in Google's first 100 results and similar data isn't readily available for American pregnancies after abortions, so I decided to do an unscientific study of Denmark's post-abortion pregnancy risks versus the United States' overall pregnancy risks.
The NIH's National Library of Medicine (NLM) reports that the incidence of ectopic pregnancies among all women in the United States is between 1% and 2.5%, which compares favorably to the Danish numbers reported.
The NLM lists a risk of "approximately 10%" for miscarriages, while the Danish data showed spontaneous abortions occurred at a rate of 12.2% in women with prior medical abortions and 12.7% in women with previous surgical abortions. Preterm births happened at rates of 5.4% to 6.7%, with medical abortions again on the lower end, with the United States reporting a shocking -- to me -- average of 8-10%.
The data from Denmark's registries reports rates of 4.0% and 5.1% for low birth weight deliveries -- with women who had abortions induced by medication again recording the lower rate. The NLM links to the March of Dimes for statistics on babies born with low birth weight. It surprised me to learn that 1 in 13 (7.7%) babies in America is born with a low birth weight, per a 2005 National Vital Statistics Report.
While this comparison is totally unscientific, I am still amazed by the disparity in percentages. I had assumed going into this that the risk factors for future pregnancies after an abortion in America would be at least as low as they are in Denmark -- not higher.
