By Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles

Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles have assembled a compelling account of the research on post-abortion difficulties, both short and long term. Although they often touch upon technical matters, they write with a humanity and clarity that makes their conclusions readily accessible to the general reader. As this book makes overwhelmingly clear, women who seek abortions in the United States and Canada are not even told of the risks they are running. It is hard to see the intentional withholding of such essential information as a contribution to women's "liberation", much less their dignity and well being.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese , Professor of the Humanities , Emory University, Atlanta

At a time when the Canadian government has thought fit to enact legislation with respect to human and artificial reproduction, the publication of this well-researched book on abortion is very timely. It should be read by all professionals who are concerned with women's health.

Dr. Heather Morris , Assistant Professor of , Obstetrics & Gynaecology , University of Toronto

This book will save lives. I know that with the kind of unresearchable good cheer which sweeps over me every time one of my close-call patients brings a happy baby into my office. Close-call patients need encouragement, sometimes lengthy encouragement, to carry on with a dodgy pregnancy but to their eventual joy, and mine, they trudge onward to the finish line and claim their prize. Anecdotes have their place, but we can now add the distilled conclusions of over 500 relevant research papers and books when counseling pregnant women about the abortion option.

Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles laboured mightily to update the 1985 survey entitled "Abortion's Aftermath" and have produced a handbook readable by anyone who cares about the health of women and children. Recent insights into the risks of breast cancer and future premature delivery are concisely summarized, and the myth that abortion is ultimately safer than completion of pregnancy is laid to well-deserved rest. A high profile (depressed, coerced, very young, and other factors) is described where the psychological morbidity risks alone ought to result in encouragement, even from an abortion provider, to continue the pregnancy.

The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research deserves congratulations for sponsoring a project which helps to close the disclosure gap between women and the facts about abortion. Ideological forces have obstructed women's access to true informed consent before abortion procedures. This situation would not be tolerated for any other medical or surgical act, and there are encouraging signs, this book not least, that this selective denial can be overcome. Dr. Will Johnston , President , Canadian Physicians for Life

Women's Health after Abortion can be ordered from: T he deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research 3089 Bathurst St #316 - Toronto, ON M6A 2A4

Ph. (416) 256-0555 - Fax (416) 256-0611 - Email: bioethics@deveber.org.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) set off a firestorm of controversy when it announced on March 4 it would allow publicly funded scientists to use "surplus" embryos from fertility clinics and the tissue of aborted fetuses for stem cell research. With legislation on reproductive technologies still pending, the CIHR rules are the only parameters governing Canadian scientists in this area.

In response…

"The notion that this particular combination of egg and sperm is so sacred that we can not use it for research is, I think, a form of embryo fetishism. In the real world we seem to care much less about protecting the rights of children when they emerge from the birth canal than we do when they are still at this level of abstraction." Ted Schrecker, associate member of the McGill, University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law (The Ottawa Citizen - March 4, 2002)

"The key issue here is, is there justification to destroy human embryos to obtain stem cells?" asks Michael Coughlin, a bioethics expert with St. Joseph's Health Care in Hamilton. "At present, I think there is not justification. There is a great hope that this research will lead somewhere, but there is not the animal experimentation here to back up the claim that it is time to move on to humans." Mr. Coughlin also argues efforts to obtain stem cells from human skin and blood have yet to be proven unsuccessful enough to abandon them for human embryo research. (The Ottawa Citizen - March 4, 2002)

Maureen McTeer, who sat on the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, says opening the door to using human embryos for research is a bad idea. "You want to talk slippery slope," she said. "That was the argument used in Nazi Germany: These are only Jews. Now we are saying these are only embryos." (CBC News - March 4, 2002

"I'm very surprised that [McTeer] would say that," Rudnicki said. "It's extremely offensive to equate stem cell research to the Holocaust. "That almost suggests that researchers are Nazis, that we're a bunch of Dr. Mengeles. Give me a break." Michael Rudnicki, a molecular geneticist at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CP - March 3, 2002)

"I think it would be fair to say that at least much of that which you find in the guidelines will in some fashion be reflected in legislation ultimately passed by this government." Health Minister Anne McLellan (CP - March 3, 2002)

"These kinds of decisions on such a revolutionary change must be discussed in Parliament. We are talking about the creation, manipulation and alteration of human life in the laboratory and we must ensure there are sanctions in place for those who abuse this. This is the worst of all worlds, science going off on its own with public money, deciding what it wants to do without Parliament's okay." Maureen McTeer (Toronto Star - March 5, 2002).

Canadian Physicians for Life
4 March 2002
P R E S S R E L E A S E

The Canadian Institutes for Health Research announcement today that federal funding is available for research on human embryos is appalling.

This is not a compromise. It is naive to assume that "surplus" embryos will not be created with experimentation purposes in mind. The embryo researchers and fertility doctors must, of necessity, work hand in hand. It is realistic to take note of the incentive to create surplus embryos when fertility clinics will be the only source for these commodified human beings.

It is illogical that the permissibility of experimentation up to 14 days on any one embryo relies on it not having been created for that purpose. If there is something wrong with a proposed action, surely it cannot be justified by recalling that one initially meant to do something else.

Treating a human embryo in this way is a declaration that it is not a good in and of itself, but that it has to be destroyed to yield good, moreover that its destruction must proceed while it is healthy and viable because its continued existence is not so useful to others as its destruction.

An arbitrary 14-day age limit is proposed to restrain this philosophy from being applied to older human beings. There is no logical reason or historic precedent why this restraint should be expected to hold. No distinct biological marker supports the creation of a 14-day limit for permitting the destruction of a unique human being. The 14-day rule is capricious and unscientific.

The Canadian scientific community has limitless fields of exploration open to it which do not require the breach of this particular bulwark of principle. Such ethical firewalls are much easier to maintain than to rebuild in a crisis, and it would seem prudent and wise to expect this new technology to provide us with unforeseeable crises.

We recommend that all research on human embryos as well as any treatment that is not for their specific benefit be prohibited and not simply regulated as proposed. We clearly set out our position in April 2001, when comment was invited by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The request for public guidance on the embryo destruction issue has satisfied the etiquette of consultation, but it appears that Canadian scientific restraint with human embryos will continue to reflect technical limits in preponderance to ethical ones. We question whether the Canadian media are aware of even one CIHR decision maker who is opposed to embryo research.

Our position paper can be viewed at www.physiciansforlife.ca

Will Johnston, MD - President, Vancouver, BC.

by Sean Murphy

Presented at the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Conference New Developments - New Boundaries in Banff, Alberta (Nov 9-12, 2001), sponsored by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Alberta, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Misericordia Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta.

The theme of this conference , New Developments - New Boundaries , reminds us that developing technologies will probably force you to deal with increasingly frequent or complex conflicts of conscience in your work. It is becoming more important - not less - to talk about freedom of conscience in health care.

Consider the problem of apotemnophilia - the overwhelming desire to become an amputee for purposes of sexual gratification or to conform to one's self-image.

In 1998 Ronald Brown amputated the healthy lower leg of apotemnophiliac Phillip Bondy, whose desire to become an amputee arose from a sexual fetish. Brown explained that he was doing only what any good doctor would do; he was responding to the needs of his patient. Unhappily, Brown was an incompetent butcher, and Bondy died of gas gangrene two days after the operation.

Was Brown - a defrocked practitioner with dubious qualifications as a surgeon - correct in his judgment that amputation is an ethical response to apotemnophilia?

That was the view of Dr. Robert Smith of Scotland. The year after Bondy's death, he disclosed that he had performed single leg amputations on two apotemnophiliacs. Dr. Smith described this as "the most satisfying operation I have ever performed," and it is clear that he derived his satisfaction from his perception that he had met the needs of his patients.

If we take the view that one is obliged to address patients' needs regardless of one's beliefs, and if we accept Dr. Smith's view that the amputations did just that, does this not imply that health care practitioners may be required to perform or assist in such surgery? Should the medical profession, if it advocates a policy of non-judgmental harm reduction, not ensure that apotemnophiliacs have timely access to safe amputations?

The principles of bioethics seem to support this conclusion. Clearly, Dr. Smith respected the autonomy of his patients. Nor did injustice arise from the imposition of additional costs on the public health care system, since the patients paid for the surgery. The patients themselves would argue

that the principle of non-maleficence was not offended. On the contrary, they would assert that the amputations had a beneficent effect.

It appears, then, that voluntary amputation of healthy limbs is not inconsistent with the World Health Organization's definition of health, nor with bioethics principlism. This was, perhaps, why professional and regulatory authorities in the United Kingdom supported Dr. Smith. Yet all of this was quite lost on the doctor who learned, at the last moment, that Brown wanted him to assist in amputating a healthy limb. He told the patient (in a fit of 'strong paternalism') "This isn't right! You don't want this!" and stormed out of the room. Conscientious objection in the raw, one might say. Or was he, as others would have it, "imposing his values on the patient"?

Now, I am not asking you to accept this or that view of the ethics of voluntary amputation. But I am directing your attention to the way in which the definition of "needs" controls subsequent ethical discussion, and - more important - that our definition of needs depends entirely upon what we believe to be conducive to human well-being.

This brings us to the essential point. What is conducive to human well-being is determined by the nature of the human person. We cannot agree upon what is good for the patient without first agreeing upon that. That is what determines not only how we define the needs of the patient, but how we approach every moral or ethical problem in medicine. When we cannot achieve a consensus about the morality of a procedure, it is frequently because we are operating from different beliefs about the nature of the human person. Disagreement is seldom about facts - the province of science - but about what to believe in light of them - the province of philosophy and religion.

Unfortunately, this is frequently obscured in ethical scenarios which demand that everyone accept the hidden philosophical or religious faith-assumptions of the presenter in order to reach the "correct" ethical conclusion. And if they refuse to abandon their own philosophical or religious convictions in favour of those of the presenter, they are likely to be accused of "imposing their morality."

Sean Murphy is Administrator of The Protection of Conscience Project.

The full text of this presentation plus end notes can be ordered from our office or from: consciencelaws.org.

By Cal Thomas

The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that creating human clones is unsafe and should be outlawed. However, the NAS would permit cloning from human embryos for the purpose of conducting research on possible cures for diseases.

How appropriate in the 29th anniversary month of Roe vs. Wade, which effectively declassified human beings as unique compared to other living things, that an influential scientific body should take one more step away from a model of humanity based on intrinsic value and toward a utilitarian model which says that humans, like everything else, have only the value assigned them by society.

The language used by the NAS in a report released January 18 reveals the group's moral emptiness. Cloning for research is referred to not as "therapeutic cloning" but "nuclear transplantation to produce stem cells." Perhaps "cloning" was not testing well in focus groups, so advocates had to come up with more acceptable words. This is nothing new. The Third Reich employed euphemisms to anesthetize any latent German moral consciousness. "Transportation Company for the Sick" was a sign placed on trucks that rolled through German streets carrying human cargo to their final earthly destinations. America long ago moved from "abortion" to "pregnancy termination." It sounds nicer.

The NAS opposes reproductive cloning not because of any moral consideration, but only because it is "unsafe" at this time. "Human reproductive cloning should NOT NOW be practiced," the NAS report states (emphasis mine). With no moral compass, science may well approve the procedure in the future when what is "safe" will be redefined. Abortions are "safe," according to official medical doctrine, but they are never "safe" for the baby being killed and are frequently unsafe for the mother, considering the physical, psychological and spiritual harm many women say they suffer from the procedure.

Again, the NAS deifies public opinion when it says the issue of reproductive cloning should be revisited within five years if new scientific and medical literature indicates cloning people would be safe and if "a broad national dialogue on the societal, religious and ethical issues" suggests that reconsideration is warranted. One can always find people - especially clergy - to endorse and justify anything. The late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, when he crafted the ruling in Roe vs. Wade, found clergy to give him what he thought would be moral cover.

Most members of the new President's Council on Bioethics strongly oppose any type of cloning, a position endorsed by President Bush. Members of both parties in Congress have indicated they would like to see restrictions on cloning.

Council member Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College, argued at a meeting of the panel on Friday (Jan. 18) that research scientists should regard human embryos the way doctors look at organs they intend to transplant. One "harvests" organs from a patient who is brain dead, and because an embryo also lacks a brain, there is no difference, Gazzaniga said.

Dr. Leon Kass, council chairman, said that analogy bothered him.

"Doesn't bother me," replied Dr. Gazzaniga.

"Should it?" asked Dr. Kass.

"That's just something you're comfortable with or not comfortable with," Gazzaniga shrugged.

Dr. Gazzaniga perfectly reflects our imprecise and shifting morality. One's comfort level is now the standard by which people determine moral truth. "If it feels good, do it" was unsophisticated and sounded self-centered. "Nuclear transplantation" sounds scientific, trendy, even ennobling. Those developing humans who are about to die salute you, Dr. Gazzaniga.

In Roe and subsequent court decisions sired by this illegitimate and immoral ruling, the final legal protection of human life was removed. People who now seek distinctions between reproductive cloning to copy one's self and therapeutic cloning to cure diseases engage in ethical hairsplitting. Unless humans are seen as created in God's image and endowed by Him with the right to live, there will be no stopping the scientists and doctors from doing whatever they wish to whomever they will. Their only obligation will be to make us comfortable. Sufficient psychological, pharmacological and media assistance will help them achieve these ends.

No wonder the ancient writer warned of the consequences of proceeding as if we are our own God: "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit" [Judges 21:25].

January 23, 2002 ©2002 Tribune Media Services - Reprinted with permission

Prohibiting human cloning is being debated not only in the United States but across the world, as I've seen firsthand after spending a week in Europe discussing the issues of cloning and stem cells. Recently, the British government received a shock when a lawsuit brought by Bruno Quintavalle of the Pro-Life Alliance exposed the fact that a British law did not really regulate human cloning. Immediately cloning entrepreneur Dr. Severino Antinori proposed setting up a laboratory in Britain for the purpose of producing cloned babies for infertile couples.

The British government has rushed to try to cover this deficit, introducing a one-line bill in the House of Lords to prohibit implantation of a cloned embryo into a woman. But this haste has produced an inadequate fig leaf - numerous legal flaws exist in the bill and the lack of deliberation has angered many in the British parliament. The end result will be more egg on the face of the British government…

As the British experience demonstrates, a total ban on human cloning is the only way to go.

Dr. David A. Prentice,, Indiana Univ. School of Medicine, Nov. 27, 2001, National Review

"There is increasing evidence that therapies based on cloned embryo cells would be so difficult and expensive to develop and so utterly impractical to bring to the bedside, that the pie-in-the-sky promises which fuel the pro-cloning side of the debate are unlikely to materialize. Not only is human cloning immoral but it may have negative utility - in other words, attempting to develop human cloning technologies for therapeutic use may drain resources and personnel from more useful and practical therapies."

Wesley J. Smith: The false promise of 'therapeutic' cloning., March 11, 2002, Weekly Standard

By: Jonathan Imbody

If you've ever questioned a parent's love as conditional on achievement, you can sympathize with Adam Nash. Baby Adam's first words won't likely be "eugenics," but as he grows older he's liable to question the basis of his parents' love. That's because Jack and Lisa Nash carefully chose Adam as an embryo solely on the basis of his genetic blueprint. Thanks to the first acknowledged application of a scientific process known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), Adam was allowed to be born for the purpose of saving his sister.

Adam was only one of 15 embryonic siblings who were engineered in test tubes in order to prevent a second Nash child being born with Fanconi anemia, an inherited and fatal disorder. Scientists verified through genetic screening that Adam was free of the syndrome and thus eligible as a blood cell donor for sister Molly, who is afflicted with the disorder.

So it was that Adam passed through the eugenic star-chamber and arrived in time to hopefully save his sister. While the media now focuses on that undeniably wonderful prospect, few observers are anxious to contemplate the fate of Adam's other 14 siblings. If those tiny human beings receive the sentence handed down in most multiple embryo ventures, they will never live to see the light of day.

While each of us can sympathize with the desperate parents, we must ask ourselves, "Is this the kind of utilitarian society we want to foment? Do we really want to live in a society that views children not as inherently valuable and worthy of our love, but as something akin to a commodity weighed on the scales of potential productivity?" As hematologist and ethicist Chris Hook, MD observes, "With PGD, the explicit point is that if you don't have the right genes, your young life will end. It is the true commodification of children and human life. This commodification is a natural consequence of the dominant view of reproductive medicine: The child is the product, and we scientists will do what ever we can to fulfill the parents' desire to have offspring-and now, even to have offspring of their own choosing."

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Embryonic stem cell research. Human cloning. Intuitively, we recognize that these brave new procedures reek of ethical peril. Yet discomfited by our technological ignorance, we hope in vain that somehow enterprising scientists will self-police. Yet in the absence of public scrutiny and legal boundaries, genetic science can evade ethical sonar like an elite nuclear sub. Only clear legislation and ethical guidelines to protect the most vulnerable members of our society will keep this sub from running aground-or launching a missile of heartrending destruction.

Jonathan Imbody is Senior Policy Analyst for the Christian Medical Association (U.S.) Reprinted with permission. To receive the CMA Washington Bureau News and Views, visit: www.cmawashington.org.

A report in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy shows evidence that morning-after pill drug regimens may sometimes fail to prevent ovulation and rely instead on a postfertilization effect.

The article points out that regardless of the personal beliefs of the physician or providers about the mechanism of these drugs, it is important that patients have information relevant to their own beliefs and value systems. Therefore, for women to whom the induced death of an embryonic life is important, failure to discuss the possibility of this loss, even if the possibility is judged to be remote, would be a failure of informed consent.

The report concludes, "Based on the present theoretical and empirical evidence, both the Yuzpe regimen and Plan B likely act at times by causing a postfertilization effect, whether used in the preovulatory, ovulatory, or postovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle. These findings have potential implications in such areas as informed consent, emergency department protocols, and conscience clauses."

Chris Kahlenborn, MD, Joseph B. Stanford, MD, MSPH, Walter L. Larimore, MD, "Postfertilization Effect of Hormonal Emergency Contraception," The Annals of Pharmacotherapy , March 2002. PDF

By: Mark Pickup

Back in 1961, "progressive" liberal "thinkers" advocated abortion as the panacea for solving all sorts of societal problems and inequities. One liberal luminary of the day, Dr. P. L. McGeer of the University of British Columbia, stated that abortion would eventually become a scientific question rather than a moral one. Wrong. If the status of abortion in Canada had been dictated by science, the issue would have been settled decades ago. The "blob of tissue" argument would have been laughed to scorn as soon as uttered. Either liberal "thinkers" didn't know, wouldn't say, or intentionally suppressed what science knew: Life begins at conception.

Back then, UBC Professor Michael Wheeler felt that "the chances of getting agreement on [abortion] in Canada are about as good as for the re-unification of Germany." Professor Wheeler was dead wrong about the future of Germany; I can only hope he's equally wrong about the chances for agreement on abortion in Canada

The real future arrives: Culling the herd

The National Post recently carried a commentary by Jeff White called "Don't suffer the little children: Our Society appears undecided on the ethics of infanticide." White's muddled thinking seems to advocate marching backward into the barbarism of ages past when infanticide was practised on handicapped babies and a sort of graduated human moral worth was based upon the consensus of mob rule. I read White's commentary from my wheelchair and shuddered to think of what sort of hostility his "new ethic" has in store for people like me who have made it past infancy. White's "new ethic" comes on a foundation of 30 years of abortion's dehumanizing, demoralizing and denigrating effects on humanity

Abandoning morality for a "New ethic" (aka bioethics)

White's "new ethic" would create a crab-like world, clawing its way toward darkness rather than advancing from it. Should I embrace his throw away society's "new ethic" or even exploit it to my own advantage before the throes of unwanted childbirth?

Earlier this year, the National Post reported that German and American researchers had used embryonic stem cells in animal models to arrest debilitating diseases. The scientists termed their findings a "critical breakthrough" for the treatment of diseases like Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. Other scientists have speculated that stem cell research also has the potential for developing therapies for Alzheimer's, diabetes, stroke, spinal cord injuries and bone diseases. About fifty stem cell transplants have been performed on people with multiple scleroris. Amid this flurry of speculative research and experimental treatment, Dr. Margaret Sommerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, has called for a moratorium on embryonic stem research until moral and ethical issues can be addressed.

Really? I have chronic, degenerative multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis. I might benefit from stem cell research! For years, I have lived with the fear that my next address may be a nursing home, that I may become one of those sad lumps of humanity propped up in wheelchairs, passing monotonous days staring out windows of nursing homes, hoping for a visitor. The terror of such a future torments me at night before sleep comes to give me an escape from the images

Looking a gift horse in the stem-cells

I am dazzled by a dizzying array of promising developments that could alleviate or deliver me from a disease that is slowly destroying me. Dare I entertain thoughts of walking on my own without relying on contraptions for mobility - or that cursed MS fatigue? Pardon the pun but I could flesh out the "new ethic" and increase my own internal deformity. I could be released from the risk of breaking bones or continued deterioration from multiple sclerosis by feeding on unwanted human life. To gain my freedom from disease, I would become more wretched by accepting the fruits of robbing another of life, existence and a place in the world. No! The cure would only increase the torment. My hopes dash

Drawing a line in human sands

Pivotal to morality is believing in the equal moral worth of all human life. Life begins at conception. Since early childhood I was taught to seek truth , then live by it. Is truth arbitrary? Are morals fluid? Are ethics situational? Shall I abandon integrity, principles and what the Americans call "self-evident truth" for personal gain? No!

Sadly, I must turn from a hideous therapy that capitalizes on unwanted life. It is better to remain in a half-lead body than to resurrect function and lose my humanity. It can not be. My misfortune has its own illumination.

I am not an island entire unto myself. My decisions must not be solely self-centred; my decisions must take into account possible ramifications on others, society, and even implications for posterity. Autonomy is a myth. All humanity is interdependent as part of the Human Family. My decisions affect others, whether directly, remotely or merely by inference.

Silver Linings?

The good news is that adult stem cells can be treated with drugs to mask the immuno-response to a foreign substance. Better yet, stem cells from patients would by-pass the problem of immuno-incompatibility. So maybe there is an acceptable application for me. Imagine regaining lost function without searing my conscience. Imagine, dancing with my wife or walking my daughter down the aisle at her wedding (without canes or crutches) and sleeping at night.

Mark Pickup is an articulate disability rights advocate living in Beaumont, Alberta. His video on assisted suicide, "To be, or not to be -- the Human Family (a disabled man's plea)," can be ordered on his web site www.humanlifematters.com or by calling 1-877-205-4602.

Letters: European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology 96 (2001) 239-240.

In their excellent review of cerebral palsy (CP) history, Schifrin and Longo end with the words, "We need to let the truth take us where it will." 1 This letter assumes that there is the courage to do exactly that. Although the etiology of CP has many uncertainties, preterm birth and incompetent cervix are considered to be risk factors. 2 A preterm new-born is much more likely to be Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW: birth weight under 1500 grams) than a full-term newborn. A Swedish study of 19 year-old boys reported 55 times the normal risk of CP for boys with VLBW. 3 From a 1991 CP-VLBW meta-analysis: "If one assumes the incidence of cerebral palsy in the general population to be 2/1000 live births. then the relative risk for cerebral palsy among surviving VLBW infants would be 38 times that in the general population." 4

Elective Surgery and Preterm Birth risk

If there were a very common elective surgery that increased risk of a subsequent preterm birth, would medical researchers put a high priority on seeking the truth as to the identity of this procedure? If there is such a procedure, then the VLBW-CP risk "kicks in." There are at least seventeen studies that have found that previous induced abortions increase preterm birth risk (with statistical significance.) 9-25 The latest of these studies reported about over 61,000 Danish women and is one of the largest studies ever linking "terminations" to later prematurity. 9 The relative risk of a very preterm birth (before 34 weeks' gestation) for Danish women with one previous induced abortion is 1.99. The relative risk of a pre-term birth for women with two previous "evacuation" type abortions is 12.55. 5 The RR for one previous "evacuation" abortion is 2.27. 9 Why the silence about the abortion-prematurity risk and cerebral palsy from medical researchers? Let's have the courage to explore this credible risk with the definite possibility that what is learned may help reduce the cerebral palsy rate and the heartache that it causes the affected infants and parents.

Is it biologically plausible that abortions can increase risk of a subsequent preterm birth?

Highly regarded obstetric expert, Barbara Luke (PhD), has identified one mechanism that explains abortion causing prematurity risk. "The procedures for first-trimester abortion involve dilating the cervix slightly and suctioning the contents of the uterus (see Figure 3).The procedures for second-trimester abortion are more involved, including dilating the cervix wider and for longer periods, and scraping the inside of the uterus. Women who had had several second-trimester abortions may have a higher incidence of incompetent cervix, a premature spontaneous dilation of the cervix, because the cervix has been artificially dilated several times before this pregnancy." 5 Is there a second biological risk that helps to explain higher prematurity is infection risk? Yes, infection risk. "Our findings indicate that an abortion in a woman's first pregnancy does not have the same protective effect of lowering the risk for intrapartum infection in the following pregnancy as does a live birth." So wrote researchers from the University of Washington in the journal Epidemiology in 1996. 6 Infection is a leading cause of death from induced abortion (if one ignores breast cancer and suicide from abortion). Infection is often mentioned as a risk factor for premature birth. In 1992 Dr. Janet Daling and colleagues reported that if the previous pregnancy ended in induced abortion, the risk of intra-amniotic infection increased by 140%. 7 "One possible mechanism is that cervical instrumentation can facilitate the passage of organisms into the upper part of the uterus, increasing the probability of inapparent infection and subsequent preterm birth," wrote Judith Lumley in 1998. 8

In the "mean time," informed medical consent is a must to reduce prematurity risk.

Over the past two decades, the rate of cerebral palsy has been increasing in the United States and other developed countries. If there is an elective medical procedure that increases prematurity risk, then potential patients of that procedure must be made aware of subsequent preterm birth risk and the associated cerebral palsy risk. Since it is conceded by abortion practitioners that induced abortion is normally an elective procedure, full information about serious possible risks must appear on consent forms. Informed medical consent is a legal right of all women. Let's stop denying them this right at abortion clinics. "We need to let the truth take us where it will." 1

B. Rooney
Reduce Preterm Risk Coalition
Vancouver, Canada
Email: stopcancer@yahoo.com
References available from our office. Reprinted with permission of the author