Long story short a few years ago a woman went to get a depo provera shot, and went through the usual screening. The urine test showed she wasn't pregnant. However(and I'm sure this has happened plenty of times) because it was so early on, it was a false negative. She got the shot and then a month or so later found out she was indeed pregnant.

Now from what I can gather(I've done A LOT of research) the harmful effects of the birth control shot on an unborn baby at any point in the pregnancy are rather minor. There's an increased risk of a low birth weight and potentially stunted growth later in life, but these things can just as easily be caused by excessive stress on the mother during pregnancy or even a poor diet. In undeveloped countries there's an increased infant mortality rate because of circumstances caused by a low birth weight. But something like that shouldn't really mean much in an environment that has proper healthcare. I have yet to find any studies or warnings showing potential life ending ailments caused by exposure to depo provera or even serious physiological damage such as mental retardation, physical disabilities or anything like that.

So why then would a doctor/nurse/whoever convince a woman that there was a very great chance the child would suffer from life altering disabilities because of early exposure to depo provera during pregnancy? These studies have been out for over 15 years. In fact some were completed even before the drug was approved for use in the US, so I don't see how any informed medical personnel would perpetuate the idea that a baby exposed to depo provera would be seriously disabled.

In the end because of how heavily she was convinced, the woman had an abortion, fearing her unborn child had a high chance of developing something which would adversely affect his/her life permanently. As far as I can tell this was completely unneccesary. In actuality the baby most likely would have turned out just fine.

If there are any people here with sufficient medical knowledge or experience, could you shed some light on this? Are there serious side effects I am unaware of? Could there be other factors involving the shot, such as complicating the pregnancy itself and not neccesarily just the unborn baby?