The incidence of repeat induced abortion in a randomly selected group of women. A retrospective study

Because of the suspected medical complications resulting from repeat abortions and the uncertainty of data from studies of repeat abortion that rely on patients' reports, we examined the records of 403 women who obtained abortions between 1975 and 1980 at an obstetrics-and-gynecology clinic within a prepaid-membership health maintenance organization. We found that: (1) 15.9% of the women had had an abortion in the year prior to the abortion for which they were selected for our study, (2) 45.4% of the women had had at least one previous abortion, and (3) 16.9% had had at least two previous abortions. These results are higher than those reported in other studies of repeat abortions and warrant speculation about the relationship of age, marital status and age combined with marital status to abortion history.