A recent study has showed that the ultimate way of abortion, the abortion pills, do not seem to pose great risk for the later pregnancies. The study in the New England Journal of Medicine was authored by Jasveer Virk, M.S., M.P.H., Jun Zhang, Ph.D., M.D., and Jørn Olsen, M.D., Ph.D.

The research, which has been realized by Danish and American scientists, has involved about 12,000 Danish women who had a chemical or surgical abortion and it is considered the major study to date focusing on the later consequences of the new abortion method.

"We identified all women living in Denmark who had undergone an abortion for non-medical reasons between 1999 and 2004 and obtained information regarding subsequent pregnancies from national registries", the authors wrote

Today’s abortion procedures can be divided into the traditional surgical abortions, which are made by the surgeon in the hospital, and the medical abortions, which involve these new pills.

In the case of the traditional surgical method of abortion, which is still the most often choice among women who got pregnant and do no want to keep the baby, is usually done by vacuuming the embryo of fetus out of the womb. The surgeons are usually using an electric pump or a syringe during this procedure.

In the other case, the medical abortion can be made by the women themselves.

The woman who wants to end a pregnancy is taking one tablet of mifespristone - formerly known as RU-486 - followed by about four misoprostol pills a day or two later. The mifepristone destabilize the connecting tissue between an embryo and the uterus, and the misoprostol causes the uterus to expel the embryo.

From its approval in the U.S. in 2000 to 2004, 360,000 women used the abortion drug combination of mifepristone and misoprostol.

Some women prefer this modern method because they can do the abortion in the privacy of their homes, without being intimidated by the surgeon. The pills can be prescribed by any doctor and the method seems simpler than the other one. However, the only problem with the abortion pills is that they are likely to leave bits of the embryonic material into the women’s womb, which does not happen in the surgical abortions’ cases.

But, at least the abortion pills aren’t risky for future pregnancy, as the recent study has showed.

“Our study shows that medical abortion, as compared with surgical abortion, is not associated with an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion, low birth weight, or preterm birth in the first pregnancy after the abortion.” the authors concluded.

“Because our study drew from the entire population of Denmark during the study period and because follow-up was almost complete, the study was not susceptible to selection bias. The large sample also provided sufficient power to detect a small effect, if one truly existed. The incidences of spontaneous abortion (12.6%), ectopic pregnancy (2.3%), and stillbirth (0.3%) in our study population were within the ranges reported in the literature.

The rate of failed medical abortion, defined as medical abortion followed by a surgical procedure (6.9% in our Danish study population), is also consistent with the rates in previous clinical trials and in a hospital-based study in Denmark” the authors added.