ATLANTA [—] Women who use abortion pills rather than the more common surgical method seem to face no greater risk of tubal pregnancy or miscarriage in later pregnancies, according to a new study.
The federally funded research, based on nearly 12,000 Danish women, is considered the best study to date of the impact of this newer abortion method on subsequent pregnancies.
The vast majority of abortions are called surgical abortions, usually done by vacuuming an embryo or fetus out with a syringe or electric pump.
The U.S. and Danish researchers studied medical abortions. Generally, it involves a woman ending a pregnancy by taking one tablet of mifepristone [—] 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.
Generally, surgical abortions completely remove an embryo or fetus and surrounding uterine tissue but abortions done with pills may leave bits of placenta or other embryonic material. Some doctors have wondered whether that might interfere with subsequent pregnancies, said Dr. Matthew Reeves, a reproductive medicine expert at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
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