§ Mr. AltonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what follow-up studies concerned with physical complications associated with abortion have been undertaken or funded by her Department;
(2) what information she has regarding abortion as a cause of (a) infertility in women and (b) spontaneous miscarriage in subsequent pregnancies.
§ Mr. SackvilleThe Department has funded a major long-term study of the short and long-term sequelae of 807W abortion. This has been undertaken by the Manchester research unit of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
In an article published in the "British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, October 1991", volume 98, pages 1015–24, the researchers concluded that
Overall, induced abortion was not associated with any important effect on the three measures of adverse outcome in the subsequent pregnancy".The three main outcome measures were: non-viable outcome—spontaneous or missed miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or stillbirth—birthweight and length of gestation.In their study on the effect of induced abortion on subsequent fertility, the researchers concluded that
Induced abortion was not related to future fertility".