'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

[Hekate]

16. Don't know. There are so many preemies these days, and for so many reasons.

What my mother's generation would have mourned as a miscarriage (and there were many more than we acknowledge, really) now ends up in the NICU being kept alive at all costs. They come from all sorts of backgrounds, and oddly, increased use of fertility treatments is one factor in the spike in premature births. People paying through the nose for fertility treatments often choose to have twins, even triplets, and on occasion more because they can't bring themselves to selectively reduce what they sought so hard to achieve. Multiples are, more often than not, premature. For the rest of the maternal population, poor diet and access to prenatal care account for some of it too, and the US is bad at both.

You are right, though, that preemies are more likely to have compromised health even after they go home -- sometimes forever.