Women who abort have higher death rates

Within the first 180 days, the risk of death from any cause is over twice as high following abortion compared to that following delivery. The risk of early death remains elevated for at least ten years.
Both abortion and miscarriage are linked to elevated mortality rates, but the effect is more strongly associated with induced abortions.
 
The largest portion of premature deaths following pregnancy loss are due to suicides, accidents, homicides, and some natural causes, such as circulatory disease, which are known to be associated with stress. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2050312117740490

Labor Day 1963—Monday Memories

Fifty years ago Labor Day was also September 2  and I went into labor—I remembered that today reading Abby Johnson’s account of a medication abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol), her second. She and her husband were getting a divorce, and she was a volunteer at Planned Parenthood, and “chose” this option based on what counseling she received and thought it would be easier than a surgical abortion (she’d already had one of those).  She was lied to about the amount of pain and bleeding she should expect, and she was afraid she would die as she bled and passed clots for hours.  Alone.  She returned to PP later and asked why she hadn’t been warned and was told that the pain and bleeding is played down, or no one would choose it (I suspect that medication abortions are much more lucrative, and don’t require qualified medical people to be on hand).

After 50 years, I’m a little vague on the details, but I do remember that my second pregnancy had been uncomfortable from day one. . . like someone were pressing needles into my abdomen.  In this photo I was about 6 weeks pregnant and not feeling good at all.  I can remember a few weeks before the miscarriage having sudden bleeding, going to the hospital in a taxi accompanied by a nice man (don’t remember his name) who worked down the hall in the communications office (University of Illinois), and he stayed with me in the emergency room being mistaken for my husband. But after a few hours the bleeding stopped and I was sent home only to have it happen again on Labor Day week-end when I was home.

My first clue that something was terribly wrong was that the stabbing needle pain I’d had for three months was completely gone when I woke up in the morning.  I think now the pain ended because the baby was dead and my body was no longer trying to reject it, for whatever reason.  After some hours on the couch, talking on the phone with my sister in Indiana who was an RN and my OB, we decided to go to the hospital.  I don’t remember if I was given drugs or not, but after a few hours of fairly mild labor pains, the nurse came in to check, and then showed me what looked like a bloody softball in the bed pan.  She pressed all over my abdomen to make sure everything was expelled and examined all tissues carefully before sending it to the lab. She hugged me, too.

Like Abby, I bled a lot too with my miscarriage, but was in the hospital, so although I knew I’d lose the baby, I didn’t fear for my life and I wasn’t lying on the bathroom floor covered in blood, urine, feces and vomit, violently ill from powerful drugs that induce a miscarriage. And I wasn’t alone.

For Abby’s account of her “safe, legal, and quick” medication abortion check her story.

Miscarriages

In 1963 I had a miscarriage. The doctor told me then, almost 50 years ago, that about one third of all pregnancies end in miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and had for as long as medical science had tracked it. Incompatible with life, was his explanation. Apparently, that figure hasn't changed much according to this article on thyroid problems and the risk of miscarriage which uses the figure 31%.

The high cost of utopia

For every three “imperfect” children (in our stunted minds, not God’s) we may be losing two “perfect” children.

“Two healthy babies are miscarried for every three Down's Syndrome babies that are detected and prevented from being born, research has suggested.

The losses are down to the invasive methods used to test for the condition, which affects approximately one in every 1,000 babies conceived, the researchers claim. They also cast doubt on the advice and risk assessment given to the 6,000 women each year who are offered screening and subsequent testing to assess the health of their unborn baby.

If an expectant mother is deemed to be at risk of carrying a Down's baby following a blood test, she will then go on to undergo an amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS) test, which involves inserting a fine needle through the abdomen to either withdraw amniotic fluid or take a tissue sample.

The NHS cites a miscarriage rate of between one and two per cent following the tests, but the researchers, from the charity Down's Syndrome Education International, point out that only the number of Down's babies terminated, miscarried or born are recorded, not the number of healthy babies lost.”

What’s really ugly about this report is that the writers and researchers believe killing the unborn non-Down’s child is a tragedy--the other not so much. From Catholic Physician’s blog citing the Telegraph .

Stress, work and health--of your baby

It's been a lot of years since I was pregnant--over 40, in fact. I do remember it being a time of some stress, although not from being employed. It wasn't all that easy to get or keep a job back in the 60s if you were pregnant. Some of the protectionist employment laws (there were special lounges and required work breaks for females--thinking I guess that men and women were different, something the feminists have tried to disprove) probably saved a lot of women. I do remember running the cash register at the Green Street Pharmacy and that my legs got really tired from hours of standing. However, emotional stress is probably just as damaging. I came across the following in "Take control of your aging," by Dr. William Marlarkey of Ohio State (Wooster Book Company, 1999). He did a lecture series at our church a few years back, but I didn't go--maybe didn't want to know? But this week I checked his book out of the church library.

"A study of pregnancy in attorneys noted that working a great number of hours during the first trimester of pregnancy was associated with a greater risk of miscarriage compared with lawyers who worked fewer hours. This study of 584 attorneys compared those who worked more than 45 hours per week with those women who worked less than 35 hours per week. The more hours a woman worked, the more likely she was to report feeling stressed. Those women who were partners or associates in a law firm were more likely to report stress, as were those involved in criminal law and litigation. Facts inducing stress were political intrigue, backbiting, lack of opportunity for promotion, advancement not determined by the quality of work, and lack of respect from superiors. Working more than 45 hours a week was associated with a three-fold increase in the miscarriage rate when controlling for other factors as age, smoking, and alcohol intake. Women who drank seven or more alcoholic drinks a week in the first trimester were five times more likely to have a miscarriage." p. 128-129

I don't like the bibliography in this book. Like many books that are written for a lay audience but contain technical material, there is a bibliography at the end, but no references to it in the text. So I had to go to Google to find the source of this article--in fact, as near as I can tell, his staff missed this one for the chapter on Stress, Emotions and Health. Here it is with the abstract, just so you know Dr. Malarkey isn't full of malarkey.

Self-Reported Stress and Reproductive Health of Female Lawyers.
Original Article
Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine. 39(6):556-568, June 1997.
Schenker, Marc B. MD; Eaton, Muzza PhD; Green, Rochelle MS; Samuels, Steven PhD

Abstract:
We studied the prevalence and relationship of stress and working conditions with adverse reproductive outcomes in a cohort of female US law-school alumnae. A total of 584 female lawyers (74% response), aged 25 to 63, responded to a mailed questionnaire. Job hours per week was a strong predictor of job stress. In a logistic regression analysis, women working >45 hours/week were five times as likely to report high stress as those working <35 hours/week. Marriage and length of time on the job showed a small inverse association with stress. Women who worked more than 45 hours/week during their first trimester of pregnancy were more likely to report high stress at work during pregnancy. After being adjusted for confounding factors, weekly job hours during the first trimester of pregnancy showed a strong independent association with spontaneous abortion risk (odds ratio [OR], 3.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4 to 6.6). Seven or more alcohol drinks/week was also independently associated with spontaneous abortion risk (OR, 4.8; 95% CI, 1.5 to 18.1). Self-reported stress during pregnancy was positively but not statistically significantly associated with spontaneous abortion (OR, 1.4; 95% CI 0.8 to 2.3).

I mention this report because we think that being unemployed or having hours reduced is stressful, but based on what the workplace does to your emotions and body, perhaps it might be a blessing in disguise--especially if you are pregnant. But even if you're not pregnant, many things that happen in the workplace are not good for you. This layoff, cut back, job change just might save your life, or at least give you more years to enjoy your retirement when you've packed away the briefcase, locked the meeting room door, and sumitted your last report.