Do Abortions Risk Future Babies?

It is too early to know whether this report is reputable or merely a semi-scientific study to prove a preordained conclusion. But it if it is true, it appears to substantiate a claim made by anti-abortion protesters for some time - that abortions do not merely risk the life of the mother at the time of the procedure, but also risk her ability to bear healthy children in the future.

Having an abortion almost doubles a woman's risk of giving birth dangerously early in a later pregnancy, according to research that will provoke fresh debate over the most controversial of all medical procedures...A French study of 2,837 births - the first to investigate the link between terminations and extremely premature births - found that mothers who had previously had an abortion were 1.7 times more likely to give birth to a baby at less than 28 weeks' gestation. Many babies born this early die soon after birth, and a large number who survive suffer serious disability.

Reader of this page know I am unapologetically pro-life and anti-abortion. However, I am always cautious about immediately embracing information like this. Abortion is one of those issues which tend to polarize people, and tend to bring out extremists who use any scrap of data that they fell will prove their point. It requires some time in the harsh spotlight of public scrutiny before we'll know how trustworthy this report really is.