Third month of your pregnancy is crucial in many ways. As you already know, it is the end of your first trimester of pregnancy so basically you will be moving from the first phase to the second phase of your carrying term. This includes a plethora of physical and emotional changes in you and your baby so to break your pregnancy week by week now gives you clear idea of what to expect and when. Here is a week by week pregnancy break down when you are in the third month of pregnancy.

Third Month Pregnancy: Week 9
You are probably at your worst when it comes to nausea and morning sickness. If your case is bad then you will repel the sight of food but you need to keep eating lots of iron and calcium in your food.
Your baby will now be connected to you via the umbilical cord that is connected to the placenta, firmly in its place now.
Now that your baby is has lost its tail, it looks less like a tadpole and more human.
Weight gain is still minimum and there is no reason to fear that you are 'showing'.

Week 10:
Now that you are ten months pregnant your baby is a fetus from just a cluster of cells. It now has a name of its own. Its limbs and fingers are getting longer though they are still webbed. You have not felt your baby kick (it is still too small to make its presence felt) yet but you can see its natural movements in the ultrasound scans. Genetic disorders or congenital defects will not develop after this week so in a way the hard part is over. But any tests like amniocentesis or anomaly tests need to be scheduled by your gynecologist this week. Termination of pregnancy gets tougher by the day do the test as soon as possible.

Week 11:
Your pregnancy broken up week by week gives an insight into the last month of your pregnancy in the first trimester. By now your baby has gender and it is visible in the ultrasound. You need to be on a diet rich in calcium because your baby's bones will start hardening in this week. The third month of your pregnancy will show on your waistline but you can still hide it with loose clothes. Start massaging cocoa butter lotions on your stomach, breasts and hips to minimize stretch marks.

Week 12:
You can now be slightly relieved because you will enter a slightly less risky period of your prenatal stage as far as miscarriages are concerned. Your baby's kidney's are mean while producing urine that is being removed via the umbilical cord. You need the first vestiges of sweat glands, skin and fingernails. You may have bleeding gums due to excess blood flow from your hormones. Dental health is on your priority list.

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The average age of women becoming mothers has risen in the United States, and in the last 20 years, a few women have even entered motherhood in their 60s. By implanting embryos produced by in-vitro fertilization using egg cells donated by younger women, women who have passed menopause can become pregnant and give birth.

A new study of 101 women age 50 and older who had children using donated eggs reveals that pregnancy at this age carries about the same risks as similarly induced pregnancies in younger women. The study is the largest one to date looking at pregnancy in post-menopausal women.

"These women do really pretty well," said Dr. Mark Sauer, senior author of the article and chief of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Columbia University Medical Center, where all the women in the study received IVF.

"If they're well-screened and well cared for, they really should do O.K.," Sauer said. The study found women over age 50 had similar rates of complications, such as gestational diabetes and preterm labor, as women under age 42 who became pregnant after receiving donated eggs.

And although the older women had slightly higher rates of high blood pressure, that difference was small, and may have been due to chance. The study is published in the February issue of the American Journal of Perinatology.

Pregnancy at older ages
While Sauer said the results of the study were surprising in terms of how well older mothers did, he noted that the women were highly screened and highly motivated. "These are smart, educated, well-off people that are doing this," he said, and pregnancy after 50 is not common — the 101 cases in the study were collected over a decade.

One 49-year-old woman in the study died while pregnant (she was included in the study because she would have been 50 at the delivery). She had concealed from the doctors that she smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, which the doctors said likely contributed to her heart attack.

In general, carrying a pregnancy is much easier for an older woman's body than producing the egg needed to conceive one. "The uterus is a very different organ than the ovaries," Sauer said. Under a microscope, Sauer said, the uterus changes very little with age. Given adequate hormones, an older woman's uterus can sufficiently nourish a growing fetus.  Eggs, however, are a different story.

A 2009 study from the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv concluded that age 43 seems to be a cutoff point for IVF with a woman's own eggs, which is viable with only 5 percent of women at that age. While individual cases have been reported of natural pregnancy at older ages, the very fact of their publication suggests how rare such events are.

Sauer said celebrities who have given birth in their late 40s almost certainly used donor eggs, though they may not be acknowledging it. This may be preventing greater public acceptance of egg donation, he said.

In fact, a major challenge in infertility treatment is convincing women in their 40s and older to use donated eggs rather than their own, Sauer said. With donated eggs, the success rate is about 50 percent.

But how old is too old, and who decides?

Public attitudes towards older women having children have changed since research on such cases was first published. Dr. Richard Paulson, who worked with Sauer in the 1990s on research at the University of Southern California and is currently the director of USC Fertility, said he has noticed a shift in acceptance.

"I think society has become comfortable with [alternative] parent situations," Paulson said. Sauer believes women should have a choice as to when they have children, but said he understands the concerns.

It was in Sauer and Paulson's research group at USC that a 63-year-old woman became pregnant in 1996. Paulson said she misrepresented herself as 10 years younger.

"We tend to require ID now," Paulson said, noting that many IVF clinics restrict whom they give donated eggs to, with a cut-off age of 50 or 55. Fifty-year-olds can expect to live another 30 years, and so will be able to raise their children.

"I lose my own personal comfort zone when you get over 60," he said, citing the physical, emotional and financial cost of raising a child, particularly for someone entering retirement.But the doctors agreed that age alone should not be a deciding factor in whether a woman should be treated.

"Of course IVF should not be denied solely based on age," said Dr. Sherman Silber, in Saint Louis, Mo., director of St. Luke's Hospital's Infertility Center.

Paulson said the new study provides more reassurance to doctors offering a reproductive option to older women. "It points out that it is a relatively complicated pregnancy…but as you can see, most of them get through it just fine," he said.

"But before doing donor-egg IVF on a woman in her late 40s or 50s, you should ascertain that she has a good family support system to take care of the child if she should die before the average age for women in the U.S. of 84," Silber said.

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The government’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices released its updated 2012 immunization schedule for older kids and adults today based on changes that were approved at its annual meeting last October. The schedule was published in the latest issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. Among the changes:

1. Pregnant women should receive a Tdap booster after 20 weeks of pregnancy. This will boost their body’s defenses against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis and is given during the last half of pregnancy to specifically pass along antibodies against pertussis to the fetus before birth.

Outbreaks of pertussis, or whooping cough, throughout the country have led to newborn infections and several deaths in recent years. Infants remain unprotected against pertussis until they’re two months old and aren’t fully immunized until six months of age. Newborn caregivers (fathers, grandparents, and babysitters) should also be vaccinated to keep from getting infected and becoming contagious.

2. Boys and young men should receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. This protects them against the virus responsible for genital warts, throat cancer, and anal cancer, as well as from spreading the virus that causes cervical cancer in women. Boys should ideally be vaccinated at age 11 to 12, but catch-up shots can be given to males aged 13 to 21.

The vaccine is also recommended for men aged 22 to 26 who are immunocompromised, test positive for HIV, or who have sex with other men.

3. Hepatitis B vaccine for those with diabetes. Anyone under age 60 who has diabetes, type 1 or type 2, should get vaccinated against hepatitis B if they’ve never been immunized. That’s because they’re at twice the risk of contracting the liver-damaging virus than those without diabetes. Those age 60 and older haven’t been shown to be at significantly increased risk.

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A recent study published in the Lancet by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organisation shows that reductions in overall abortion rates have stalled. Simultaneously unsafe abortion rates are increasing while contraceptive uptake is plateauing.

These findings have prompted some of the most critical debates in recent times, at the centre of which is ensuring that there is adequate investment in reproductive health services that have been proven to save women's lives. Such investments are in line with Australia's commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goal to improve maternal health.

However, a more troubling narrative emerging concerns the level of predictability in the research findings. The stalling contraceptive prevalence rate and rising unsafe abortion rate are, according to many, unsurprising. Despite real progress in scaling up access to contraception, 215 million women still want access to family planning, but cannot access it. An unprecedented increase in both young women of reproductive age wanting to avoid pregnancy and women in their late 30s and beyond (with already large family sizes) wanting no more children represent the face of many in this group.

An inability to meet this demand for services has been a key reason why reducing maternal mortality remains the most off track of all the Millennium Development Goals.

To meet the needs of these most vulnerable women we need to reposition health services within a human rights focus, to ensure every single woman is able to manage her own reproductive life. Ultimately, it is about greater attention to 'what works'. Targeted investment in the prevention of unintended and unwanted pregnancies and scaling up the number of reproductive health services will reduce up to 70 per cent of all maternal deaths.

Whilst preventing unnecessary death and disability of women must remain a primary motivator, we also know that access to voluntary contraceptive options and safe reproductive health services for women not only represents the best value for money in terms of aid spend, but also helps the poorest families better mitigate the dehumanising effects of systemic poverty and natural and manmade disasters, including war and famine.

For these reasons, increased investment in sexual and reproductive health services is increasingly at the heart of global development efforts, and has also been highlighted as a priority budget recommendation for the Australian Government by the Australian Council for International Development.

This increasing support from major donor governments is very good news for women. Despite this, most discussions on investing in reproductive health care as a strategy to reduce maternal deaths are invariably reduced to a moral panic about abortion by a small, but vocal minority. Such debates can stall progress and because of this, women continue to die unnecessarily.

Australia's commitment to improving maternal health outcomes will likely increase this year, as part of a much larger social movement beginning to gain momentum across the globe. Donor governments are now increasingly unapologetic about evidence-based interventions, and we know that as long as investment is focused on responding to service needs, we will continue to yield the results women deserve.

Without this focus, we will struggle to contribute our fair share to the UN sanctioned maternal health goal. The Australian public also has a role to play and must show support for investment in health services that save women's lives and prevent the 220,000 children who are orphaned every year because their mother's only choice was an unsafe abortion.

This global commitment to reducing maternal death will ultimately see big gains in women's health if we can meet the expected levels of demand in the coming years. Evidence for successful interventions continues to be amassed and advances in public health modelling mean that measuring the impact of our services, such as maternal deaths averted, by simply tracking routine service delivery data is possible.

Promoting innovation and harnessing new ways of working will ensure we can demonstrate the quality of results we expect from Australia's growing aid program. We must also get better at doing more for less, and be open to pioneering different delivery models, including advancing good social business practices so that we can weather inevitable economic downturns and fluctuations in aid priorities.

To do this we will need to move beyond an outdated and narrow vision of what global health really looks like. Global health systems in the 21st century include partnerships across and between the public and private health sectors and coordination amongst donors and civil society organisations. Engendering a commitment to increased service delivery as the ultimate goal for women across the complex and multi-layered global health infrastructure is as much of a challenge as it is an imperative. This is particularly important in countries where women's human rights are seriously threatened by restrictive government policies, ultimately resulting in the high rates of unsafe abortion we are now seeing.

If we truly want to see better outcomes for women, we need to go back to the evidence. What saves lives is sufficient access to safe, legal and non judgemental sexual and reproductive services to meet the needs of the poorest women and men. Donor and national governments – as well as aid and development agencies - must continue to be held accountable and evidence-based programs must be underpinned by a commitment to gender justice. Until these elements converge we will not see the changes that women deserve.

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Becoming pregnant at age 47 wasn't a worry for Robin Brussel. "I enjoyed every minute of being pregnant," she said. Still, it was a surprise. "I thought I was going through pre-menopause," she said. "It just happened."Brussel, now 48, gave birth in December to a 6-pound, 10-ounce boy named Noah she carried for 39 weeks. He was a cesarean birth, as were her four older children, ages 18 to 28. Noah was the first child born to her and her husband, Mark Brussel, 56. They've been married nearly four years.
Their family includes Robin's children, plus Mark's two children; his oldest is 36. "When Noah came home, all the kids were there; everyone wanted to hold him," she said. "He was very welcome."

She chuckled that the new baby already is an uncle to the couple's grandchildren who are in their mid-teens. Noah's arrival wasn't the most trying part of her recent life. In recent years, she has had surgery to remove a vascular condition, similar to a brain aneurysm, and surgery to remove an abdominal tumor that cost her one kidney. During the pregnancy, she developed gestational diabetes and a rapid heartbeat. She has chosen not to breast-feed because of the medications she's taking. "None of that was a threat to the child," said Dr. Raul Artal, Brussel's physician during her pregnancy. "We just kept a close eye on her, and the child was healthy throughout.

"I think we met every week and she followed every instruction to the letter," said Artal, head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology and women's health at St. Louis University. "She was an ideal patient."Artal called Brussel's case unique. Any pregnancy over 35 is defined by the National Institutes of Health as high-risk. But, "All pregnancies are risky," Artal said. As a woman gets older, the risk increases for issues such as genetic disorders and miscarriage.

Brussel's pregnancy passed all of the tests trouble-free, he said. "I can't say this happens a lot, but I have seen a few in my career," he said. Artal is a specialist with risky pregnancies. Many pregnancies later in life tend to be through in vitro fertilization, he said. But statistics are vague because record keepers often don't distinguish between natural and assisted conceptions such as in vitro fertilization.

The National Vital Statistics Report, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the number of women having children after age 45 is the only U.S. birth rate that has increased, trending upward since 1992. Other ages for birth rates have decreased.

Births to women ages 45 to 49 rose 3 percent from 2008 to 2009. In context, however, that still amounted to only a few hundred total births. In 2009 the younger age groups accounted for 4.3 million births.
"When she told me she was pregnant, I said, 'Unbelievable. It's gotta be a mistake, you gotta go to the doctor,'" Mark Brussel said.

"My concern was that they were healthy," he added. "When the doctor said that, I was excited about it."
Being a dad at this age will help keep him young, he said. Teaching Noah how to throw a baseball and other sports, "I'm sure gonna try," he said.

He is looking forward to fatherhood duties despite his age. "I like it," he said. "... I lost a daughter when she was 18 years old in a car accident. Maybe this is God's way of repaying me."Robin Brussel said she realizes that when she's 60, baby Noah will be 12. "But with the way our children are with him, I know he's going to be loved and cared for no matter what happens to us," she said.

"The children, they think it's great," Mark Brussel said, "especially my oldest daughter. "It's like a new beginning, another chance. Enjoy it. That's all I can say."At Noah's one-month doctor visit, he weighed more than 8 pounds. "I love him. I'd do it over again," Robin Brussel said. Still, she says that she and Mark have taken precautions to prevent another pregnancy. "Why push it?" she laughed.

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Can you play mas if you are pregnant?
According to obstetrician/gynaecologist Dr Sherene Kalloo, there is no easy yes or no answer to this question but a combination of factors that moms-to-be should be mindful of when partying on the road. From your choice of footwear to your choice of costume, expectant mothers need not fear about having a good time during the Carnival season but must exercise extreme caution and common sense when faced with large crowds, she said.

As a mother herself, she said, “It will depend on the patient and how far along they are in their pregnancy, what complications they may have and how high-risk the pregnancy is. In other words, it will be based on the guidelines given by your obstetrician. If they have gotten the all-clear by their doctor, then pregnant mothers must also expect some limitations.”

“If the sweet sounds of the music trucks entice you to move, wave a little and wine a little, but avoid jumping because it can cause trauma to the foetus and lead to a miscarriage,” she said. “If you decide to play mas while pregnant, women that are earlier in their pregnancy are at less risk compared to those who are later on in their pregnancy. This is so because expectant mothers within their second and third trimesters are carrying more weight, which puts further strain on the back and abdominal muscles,” she said. Hoping everyone has a safe Carnival, Dr Kalloo had some additional guidelines for pregnant women.

Stay in a group
Make sure and be in the company of two or three friends, which can form a barrier around you of sorts to prevent trauma to your abdomen. If someone hits your belly accidentally, it can cause separation of the placenta. This can lead to premature labour and haemorrhaging, which can cause death to the baby.
Infection

Do not hold up your urine. You can get a bladder infection, which can also lead to premature labour. Find a clean toilet to do what you have to do. Avoid stopping at the side of the road; the risk of infection is very high.

When to rest
If you experience any cramps, pain or spotting —stop and rest. If spotting continues, see your doctor immediately. Being in direct sunlight for hours can put pregnant women at risk for headaches. Panadol and paracetamol are safe to use for headaches and all types of pain while pregnant.

Type of clothing
No tight clothing. Thongs, which are common around Carnival time, should not be worn for a prolonged period of time. This can put you at risk for bacterial and yeast infections, as well as irritation to the vulva and chafing. Try to choose a costume that is not heavy and gives you more coverage. When you are pregnant, you are more at risk for injury since your balance is off during this time. Pick a costume you can control.

Shoes
No high heels. Flats and flat boots are fine, but try getting one bigger than your natural foot size. You would be on your feet a lot and they can swell during the day, so having a bigger size would make you more comfortable.

Sanitise
Walk with hand sanitiser.

Water
Drink a lot of water to prevent dehydration.

According to the US website consumerreports.org, everyone should use sunscreen when heading out in the sun, but pregnant women might want to choose ones that don’t contain retinyl palmitate, an ingredient that could possibly increase the risk of birth defects. They noted when checking the labels, the ingredient is sometimes spelled retinol palmitate.

According to Dr Kalloo, if a woman has had a miscarriage, there is no need to panic because there is a 90 per cent chance of having a full-term pregnancy in the future.

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Nine months after revealing to classmates that she had faked her pregnancy for a senior-class project, a Washington state teenager is promoting a new book that details the experience and explores her reasons for taking on the project.

Gaby Rodriguez, of Toppenish, Yakima County, earned international headlines last April when she announced at a high-school assembly that she had worn a faux baby bump for months to explore stereotypes about teen pregnancy.

Only a handful of people, including her mother, boyfriend and principal, were in on the secret. The rest of the Toppenish community, where buildings are adorned with Western-themed murals in Central Washington's agricultural Yakima Valley, had no clue.

The local newspaper, the Yakima Herald-Republic, published a story that was then picked up nationally by The Associated Press, and the project drew both praise and criticism. Some people credited her for selflessly committing to her idea and addressing such a serious topic, while others lashed out at her for lying for a school project.

Rodriguez said in a recent interview that critics who don't understand why she took on the project in the first place should find answers in her book: namely, that as someone from a family with a long history of teen pregnancy, she wanted to get people — especially in the Hispanic community — to start talking more openly about a prevalent social issue.

The book, "The Pregnancy Project," was written with a ghostwriter. A movie about the experience, starring "Spy Kids" actress Alexa Vega, premieres Jan. 28 on the Lifetime movie network, and Rodriguez is making numerous television and radio appearances to promote her story.

The book details her mother's first pregnancy, at age 14, and marriage to the baby's father — a 16-year union troubled by allegations of abuse that produced seven children. Their three daughters got pregnant as teenagers and two sons got their girlfriends pregnant.

Teen pregnancy was practically a family tradition, Rodriguez said. "It's hard to understand why they didn't learn from each other; I guess they all needed to make their own mistakes," she wrote in the book. "They have great kids, but it's never easy to have children before you're even fully grown yourself."

Her mother, Juana, said it was difficult to share her story so openly. "There are a lot of women who go through stuff like that and they prefer to try to forget it, but sometimes it's better to get it out," she said, adding that the story was an important part of understanding Gaby, who was born later and has a different father.

"A lot of people were making comments, 'How could she do that?' without really knowing. They needed to know."The experiment took on particular significance in Toppenish, which is about 75 percent Hispanic. Latinas have the highest teen pregnancy and birthrate among any major racial or ethnic minority.

In the top 5 percent of her class, Rodriguez participated in a leadership class and lectured her friends about safe sex. But she still heard the refrain — often from members of her own family — that she'd end up just like her sisters.

"Being a Hispanic girl from a family full of teen pregnancies meant that my odds of also becoming a teen mom were way higher than average," she wrote. "If I gave people what they predicted, how would they react?"

The profile of teen moms has changed in recent years. Kids on shows like MTV's "Teen Mom" and "16 and Pregnant" have taken spots alongside movie stars on magazine covers. Now 18 and a student at Columbia Basin College studying psychology, Rodriguez said she doesn't condone teen pregnancy.

"It's something we have to be very aware of. I wish we could have more information on that in schools — and if parents don't want that, they should be more open about it," she said.

"In my home, my mom was always open with me about it, and I'm absolutely glad that she was."After Rodriguez's revelation, a student who was pregnant told her she was glad about the project.  "She was so proud of me," Rodriguez said of the girl, now a senior. "Because it showed how much she had to struggle and I gave her the inspiration to move forward and inspire her child now."

If anything, Rodriguez believes that should be the biggest message from her experience: Things will definitely be OK. "It's not the end of the road for them," she said. "It's going to be harder, but it's not the end of the road."

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This is an Denmark official News from Researchers about that Pain Relief Medicine Is Dangerous During Pregnancy Period.Paracetamol or other Pain Relief Medicine use for long period of time is dangerous specially affect upon health of Children as well as on young generation.

In this regard, experts forbid Pregnant women for using such kind of medicines during Pregnancy Period. After conducted this research they briefly says that New birth after such pregnancy Period are lead to faulted testicle among those births. Experts says that In the second half of life those persons may be having Cancer affected. In common practice, doctors suggest women during pregnancy to avoid such Medicines. The edition of Oxford Journal of Human Reproduction’s experts of European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology prefer to do work on such research. In addition to this research,during Pregnancy headache is common. Usage of Pain Killer off and on is not so dangerous.

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Grand Rapids Twp, Mi (WZZM)- It's an exciting year for the Chinese as they celebrate the year of the dragon. It only comes around every 12 years and has many Asian mother's trying to get pregnant in 2012.

At Meadowbrook Elementary School, the students in the Chinese Immersion program are just learning about the Chinese New Year and why 2012 is extra special. "I heard on the news there is a baby boom already. Hospitals are busy this year," says Yi Ling Cummings. She's an Assistant Teacher and is expecting a baby girl this spring. "We believe the dragon is magic, bring good luck to people.

For Cho Ling Chezem, another Assistant Teacher at Meadowbrook, her pregnancy was a surprise. She wasn't sure she was ready for it. "Then my family mentioned it will be the year of the dragon. I was thinking not bad, it's good." The news was even more exciting when she found out she was having a boy. The dragon is the mightiest of the animals on the Chinese zodiac calendar. But, regardless of what sign they are, Cummings and Chezem just hope for healthy babies in 2012. "Yes, people prefer a boys in China, to carry on the family name," says Cummings.

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The numbers of abortions performed annually worldwide has held steady in recent years, but the proportion of abortions that are considered unsafe is rising, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization. The study also found that about one in five pregnancies were terminated in 2008 and that “restrictive abortion laws” do not seem to deter women from seeking the procedure.

One of the primary motivations for the study was to determine whether the number of unsafe abortions was increasing or decreasing, because these abortions are a major contributor to morbidity and mortality among women of childbearing age (between the ages of 15 and 44). Unsafe abortion has been defined by the WHO as “a procedure for termination of an unintended pregnancy done either by people lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimum medical standards, or both.”

Under these circumstances, it’s not easy to find reliable statistics. So the researchers made estimates based on surveys of women, hospital records and whatever data could be gleaned from published studies. Statistics on safe abortions were taken primarily from government records and questionnaires filled out by government agencies.

Here’s some of what the researchers found:
--About 43.8 million abortions were performed around the world in 2008, up slightly from 41.6 million in 2003 but below the 45.6 million performed in 1995.

--Though the total number of abortions rose, the rate of abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age fell slightly from 29 in 2003 to 28 in 2008. The difference was too small to be considered statistically significant. In 1995, the abortion rate was 35 per 1,000 women.

--In 2008, the abortion rate in the developing world -- 29 per 1,000 women -- was higher than in the developed world, where 24 out of 1,000 women terminated a pregnancy. The region with the highest abortion rate was Eastern Europe (43 per 1,000 women) and the lowest was was western Europe (12 per 1,000 women). In North America, the abortion rate was 19 per 1,000 women, or 1.4 million overall, the researchers estimated.

--Worldwide, an estimated 49% of abortions were unsafe in 2008. The most perilous regions were Africa (where 97% of abortions there were unsafe), south central Asia (65%) and Central and South America (where 100% of abortions were deemed unsafe).

--In the developed world, the proportion of pregnancies that were aborted fell from 36% in 1995 to 26% in 2008. In the developing world, the rate remained flat at 19% to 20%. Altogether, 21% of pregnancies around the world ended in abortion in 2008, essentially unchanged from 20% in 2003 and 22% in 1995.

--The abortion rate was higher in parts of the world with restrictive abortion laws than it was in regions with liberal abortion laws.

The researchers found evidence that more women were using the drug misoprostol for medical abortions (as opposed to more invasive surgical abortions). Though it can certainly be safer, it can also be dangerous if given by nonmedical personnel who don’t know what they’re doing, the researchers warned. “Complications such as prolonged and heavy bleeding and incomplete abortions are associated with use of incorrect dosages,” they wrote.

The researchers said they would have liked to examine data on the timing of abortions, since those performed early in pregnancy are generally safer. But information on gestational age was “scarce,” they wrote.

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