In the article, Rooney and co-authors Byron Calhoun, M.D. and Lisa Roche, J.D. pointed out that even when an “adverse risk from a medical treatment is merely a potential or plausible one, the patient must be warned of it.”
But that certainly does not seem to be the case when the “treatment” is a surgical abortion. For example, in a recent e-mail to me, Rooney said that 99.784261 percent of researchers are “smart” enough not to even pose the question regarding whether or not induced abortion can lead to an elevated risk of autism in future newborns.
Being among those who had never heard that such a relationship existed, I reviewed the material he sent and was astounded at what I found.
In a 1999 article entitled “Prenatal and perinatal risk factors for autism,” the scientists used five variables. The study was conducted with 78 individuals who had been diagnosed with autism. Among the variables examined was the “termination” of a prior pregnancy (Page 447). The scientists concluded, among other things, that the risk of autism in a future pregnancy among those who had a previous abortion was 23.6 percent.
In 2008, Norwegian researcher Dag Moster co-authored a study that found that an “extremely premature newborn (under 28 weeks’ gestation) had 9.7 times the autism risk of [a] full-term newborn (at least 37 weeks’ gestation).” Research has already indicated that one of the negative effects of surgical abortion is that subsequent pregnancies are premature.
Other scientists including William W. Eaton have linked autism and mental retardation to children born subsequent to an abortion. Yet the government does not follow through with larger studies to prove or disprove the findings and ignores the very fact that the potential relationship between autism and surgical abortion exists. There is much talk about the reasons why the rate of autism among young children has escalated. Still the question of surgical abortion as a possibility remains unmentioned.
A previous abortion and a subsequent live birth can be the cause for premature and low birth-weight babies with serious birth defects including cerebral palsy, epilepsy, blindness, deafness and more.
In his online book, Justice for Kids, Rooney delves into the question of why a new surgery or a new drug has to undergo trials to indicate the possibility for serious side effects, and yet when it comes to the surgical killing of a preborn baby by abortion, no such evaluations are made. Large-scale, publicly funded studies are simply not done. There could be a number of reasons for this, of course, but the most obvious is that because abortion is allegedly a protected “right” under the Constitution, it is not subject to the same scrutiny one would expect if complications were reported as a result of any other type of major surgical intervention.
Rooney’s research, along with that of David C. Reardon, Ph.D., Focus on the Family’s Carrie Gordon Earll and others, collectively point to a failure on the part of official government agencies, the medical establishment and women’s rights groups to be honest and upfront about the serious complications of abortion, not only for the woman herself but for her preborn baby and subsequent children who are fortunate enough to be born.
Freedom of information stops short of being forthright when it comes to abortion—be it chemical, medical or surgical. Until this situation changes, preborn babies will continue to die, expectant mothers who have their babies killed will continue to suffer and future progeny will experience untold difficulties. This sad state of affairs will persist simply because “a right to know” does not apply when the subject is abortion.