Teenagers whose mothers had abortion earlier are more likely to undergo abortions, a new study has warned.

According to the researchers, in developed countries, about 6.7 million abortions are performed every year, with a large proportion of teens aged 19 or younger.

"Research shows there is an association between mothers and daughters in the timing of a first pregnancy ending in a live birth. We wanted to see whether the same tendency exists for pregnancies ending in an induced abortion," said co-author of the study, Joel Ray from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, Ontario.

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The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, included data on 431,623 daughters born in Ontario obtained from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and linked to other databases that provided information on mother-daughter pairs.

In the exposed group, the probability of having an abortion during their teenage years was 10.1 percent, compared with 4.2 percent in the unexposed group.

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As the majority of those abortions (94.5 percent) occurred before 15 weeks gestation, it's unlikely that the reason was a genetic or birth defect in the fetus in most cases and it may be reasonable to assume social indications, the researcher said.

There was also a dose-response effect — the greater number of abortions in the mother, the greater the number of abortions in her teenage daughter.

Study limitations include a lack of information on the fathers, the marital status and education levels of both mother and daughter, or family dynamics and attitudes. (Bollywood Country)