Terminally Unwanted

Want to know how bad an attitude can be? A mother's feelings toward her pregnancy may be a matter of life or death for her newborn.

Epidemiologists from the University of South Carolina found that infants born of unwanted pregnancies are more than twice as likely to die within a month of life than wanted infants.

The infant death rates can't be explained by income or access to health care, according to epidemiologist Ann Coker. "We studied a group of married, largely middle-income women who were all receiving prenatal care within the first to early second trimester."

Nor can the deaths be pinned on low birth weight or congenital anomalies, typical predictors of ill health, which were not found to be factors for the women studied. The researchers used data from a 1960s study of 8,823 pregnant women in a California HMO.

Coker doesn't believe that maternal attitude is directly responsible for neonatal death. The mothers may have been reckless with diet and drinking, but the study provided too few data in that area to tell, the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health (Vol. 84, No. 3).

Because the data were gathered before Roe v. Wade--when abortion was not an option--and upon a relatively well-off population, the research goes right to the heart of the abortion debate. Coker sees the study as more "evidence suggesting that family planning, contraceptive choice, and abortion for women who choose it, are important for the health of mother and child.

Unwantedness not only increases the short-term risk for infant death, but, as Eastern European studies show, may have lifelong consequences of child abuse and behavioral problems."

PHOTO: Bad behavior and a worse attitude in a pregnant woman can be life threatening.