Wednesday, September 05, 2007

A misleading conclusion has been reached on the long term effects of RU486

Study: Abortion pills don't boost later miscarriage risks - CNN.com

"In the new study, researchers used a national abortion registry to identify all women in Denmark who had abortions between 1999 and 2004, and then got information on later pregnancies from national patient and birth registries.

Denmark is the only country with an abortion registry, said study co-author Dr. Jun "Jim" Zhang of the National Institutes of Health.

They looked at tubal pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus -- usually in the fallopian tubes. Such a situation fails to nurture the embryo and endangers the mother.

The new study found tubal pregnancies occurred at the same frequency -- about 2.5 percent of the time -- in both the medical and surgical groups. The rates of miscarriage, early deliveries and low birth weight babies also were similar.

Researchers were unable to take into account mother's history of smoking, previous tubal pregnancies or other factors not detailed in the registries. But they believed it did not affect their results."


The authors of the new study in the New England journal have reached an interesting but misleading conclusion. What the study actually shows is that the risk of a tubal pregnancy after a medical abortion is about the same as that of using another method that is probably a lot safer to the woman's health in the long term. The conclusion is misleading because the study has shown that the risks of low birth rate, miscarriage and early deliveries are the same. What this study shows in truth is that there are no benefits in using RU486 because the no matter what type of abortion a woman's hormones have been messed up as a result of the abortion.

The writer makes some other illogical observations over the alleged convenience of using RU486 and the risk of dying as a result of using this drug is overlooked.





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