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Abortion Linked to Disproportionately High Rate of Black Premature Births

Article says dangerous suction abortions violate international code of research ethics

By Kathleen Gilbert

TUCSON, Arizona, December 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A report published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons links the disproportionately high rate of preterm births (PTB) among black babies to the high rate of abortion among the black minority.

The article, written by Dr. Brent Rooney et. al., notes that since PTB "has a serious adverse effect on children's health, with a disparate impact on black children," it is "crucial to discover the cause of the disparity."  Rooney is the research director of the Reduce Preterm Risk Coalition.

The report notes that black American women are at three times higher risk for giving birth prematurely, and four times higher risk for giving birth extremely prematurely.  Infants born extremely premature suffer a 129 times higher risk of cerebral palsy than infants born full-term.  PTB also increases risk of mental retardation, autism, epilepsy, visual impairment, hearing disability, gastrointestinal injury, respiratory distress, and severe infections.

Six studies were cited to show consistent evidence that women who had undergone induced abortions displayed a significantly increased risk of PTB.  As the abortion rate in the black community is 4.3 times that of non-blacks - nearly one out of every two black American children is killed in utero - abortion was pinpointed as the likely cause for PTB. 

Other confounding factors, including maternal age, parity, history of PTB, were excluded in the control methods of the report's cited studies.  Rooney noted that PTB rates in Poland dropped drastically after abortion was banned.

The article cites prominent abortion advocate Malcolm Potts, who conceded in 1967 that, “There seems little doubt that there is a true relationship between the high incidence of therapeutic abortion and prematurity."

Accordingly, Rooney concludes that because of a failure to test the procedure on animals or small human trials prior to widespread use, vacuum aspiration, or "suction" abortions violate the Nuremberg Code of ethics.  The code, which was implemented in reaction to Nazi human experimentation, requires the safe validation of a medical procedure before being made available to the public. 

"Millions of women have been subjected, without safety testing, to a procedure for which there is substantial evidence of serious health risks both to women and their future offspring," concludes the article.  At the very least, it says, the risks "need to be explicitly included in consent forms."

The report was co-authored by Dr. Bryan Calhoun of West Virginia University, and Lisa Roche, president of the Women's Investigative Network.

African-American pro-life leaders have frequently expressed outrage that Planned Parenthood has concentrated abortion clinics in black communities, facilitating the deaths of approximately 15 million African-American children.  Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider, was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who explicitly pursued the subjugation of blacks and other poor ethnic groups.

To view the article, go to: http://www.jpands.org/vol13no4/rooney.pdf

See related LifeSiteNews.com articles:

New Study Claims Abortion Rate Has Dropped: Minority Rate Still Disproportionately High
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08092308.html

Abortion Increases Women's Mental Health Problems: New Study
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/dec/08120102.html

One Quarter of Black Population Missing from Abortion Genocide Says Dr. Alveda King
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07082406.html

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