Study: Abortion Can Slightly Raise Risk Of Breast Cancer Research Combines 23 Studies; Some Experts Question Findings

A combined analysis of 23 studies has suggested that induced abortion can slightly raise a woman’s later risk of developing breast cancer. The reported increase in risk of about 30 percent is considerably less than might result, say, from having a family history of breast cancer or delaying childbirth until after age 30.

The analysis, published Friday in a British journal, The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, sought to bolster the statistical value of dozens of individual studies, most of which had found a weak relationship between abortion and breast cancer.

The research team, headed by Dr. Joel Brind, a biochemist at Baruch College in New York, reported that it had included all studies, good and bad, in which induced abortion had been examined as a risk factor for breast cancer so as not to be accused of selecting those that favored a particular conclusion.

But some experts questioned the significance of the finding and the statistical validity of combining the results of studies that relied on reports by patients who developed breast cancer that they had had abortions.

In the introduction to the study, Brind, who has spoken against abortion and has written about the relationship between abortion and breast cancer in the National Right to Life newspaper, asserted that the medical community had failed to warn abortion clients about this risk and had generally ignored it in medical articles about the risk factors.

Dr. Michael Burnhill, vice president for medical affairs at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the new study, “which lumps together studies done in different countries over the last 40 years, shows a very small increase in relative risk” of breast cancer following abortion.

He said his organization would wait for the study to be “analyzed by dispassionate experts at the National Cancer Institute” before making a policy decision as to whether women seeking an abortion should be counseled about this risk.

Dr. Carolyn Westoff, an obstetrician-gynecologist and epidemiologist at the Columbia University School of Public Health and chairwoman of the medical board at Planned Parenthood of New York City, said, “As a clinician, I haven’t felt there was enough evidence of a relationship to bring this up with my own patients.” She said abortion counseling generally focuses on the pregnancy itself, the medical issues involved in the procedure and its effects on future fertility.

Another researcher familiar with the Brind analysis challenged its validity and significance and questioned its assumptions. Dr. Lynn Rosenberg, an epidemiologist at Boston University School of Medicine, said: “A relative risk of 1.3 (that is, a 30 percent increase in risk) is in epidemiological terms virtually indistinguishable from a risk of 1.0 (that is, no increase in risk). Even if the finding is true, it has no meaning for the individual woman because the change in risk is so minuscule as to be not worth considering.”

Cigarette smoking, by contrast, increases the risk of developing lung cancer by 200 to 800 percent. With regard to breast cancer, the increase in risk is very much higher than 30 percent among women who have a strong family history of the disease, women who have never had children and women who have their first child after age 30.