Paris, May. 03, 2005 (LifesiteNews.com/CWN) - A new study from France has confirmed that abortion increases a woman's risk of delivering future children prematurely; the risk of very pre-term delivery (less than 33 weeks) increases even more dramatically.

After studying data on 1,943 very pre-term births, 276 moderately pre-term babies and 618 full-term controls, Dr. Caroline Moreau of Hopital de Bicetre and colleagues concluded that women with a history of abortion were 1.5 times more likely to give birth very prematurely (under 33 weeks gestation), and 1.7 times more likely to have a baby born extremely (under 28 weeks gestation) pre-term. Their findings were reported in the April issue of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology , a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Previous research, also conducted in Paris, revealed that the odds of a woman delivering prematurely increase with the number of abortions in her history, with the likelihood doubled in women who have had two or more abortions. Other research corroborated these findings, reporting that "the risk of pre-term birth increased with the number of abortions," according to a 2004 study.

Moreau's group revealed that the pre-term delivery risk resulted from a tendency for mothers to develop premature rupture of the membranes, pre-term hemorrhaging, and spontaneous pre-term labor of unknown cause.

Reduce Pre-term Risk Coalition researcher Brent Rooney and Dr. Byron Calhoun revealed in 2003 that, in women with a history of four or more abortions, the risk of a future extremely early premature birth is increased by eight times. In addition, Rooney related German research that revealed that a history of two abortions caused a five-fold increase in the tendency to very premature babies, while three or more abortions increased the incidence to eight times the norm. This massive 1998 study followed women in the German state of Bavaria.

Pre-term pregnancies contribute to a host of problems, including an increased risk of infant death, and a significant increase in the tendency for the baby to develop cerebral palsy. Rooney cites statistics indicating that "the cerebral palsy risk in extremely early premature birth babies is about 38 times higher than in the overall population of newborns."

In a future article, two medical doctors and Rooney estimate that there are nearly 1,100 excess cases of US newborns yearly with cerebral palsy due to their mothers' prior induced abortions.