Expert: Pat G - 12/19/2009

Question
I had an abortion about 4 weeks ago and me and my partner have been having unprotected sex since then And i did a pregnency test today and I got a posative result one line was faded a bit but was clear to see it was a posative reading could it be that I still have the pregnency hormone still in me or could it be that i am pregnent AGAIN.

Answer
Hello Sarah,

It is much more likely that these are leftover hormones from your aborted pregnancy. But if you don't want to deal with this, you need to stop having sex. One of the purposes of sex is pregnancy. You should think seriously about this. If you insist on having sex, you should at least learn to tell when you are fertile. You have to chart faithfully, and you can't be using hormones. To learn more, go here:

http://www.fertilityuk.org/

Now here's my thinking. It takes time for the hormones to dissipate, and four weeks is not uncommon. Suppose they dissipated in two weeks instead of four. Your body still has to have time to produce the hormones that cause fertility. But suppose for the sake of argument that it did. You would be only two weeks. Very few pregnancy tests will register that early. Given that it is much more likely your pregnancy hormones simply hadn't dissipated, I'd go with that. But test again in a week. If you don't have a positive indication, or the line is still weak, you didn't get pregnant two weeks ago.

If you learn to tell when you are fertile, you will also know whether or not you are running a risk of pregnancy on any given occasion. There is another reason for avoiding sex, and that is the possibility of disease. By now, you should be checking to see if you have gotten anything, and you could have gotten it from abortion if you had a surgical abortion as well, and having an abortion would make you more susceptible as long as the surface of the uterus is raw.

You really deserve better.

Hope things work out for you.