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Study finds no link between abortion and cancer

There is no association between abortion and an increased risk for breast cancer, according to a Harvard study in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

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“In this cohort study of young women, we found no association between induced abortion and breast cancer incidence and a suggestion of an inverse association between spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) and breast cancer incidence during 10 years of follow-up,” said Karin Michels of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The study is in accordance with the 2003 report by a panel of experts from the National Cancer Institute that having an abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer.

Researchers studied 105,716 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study, which was established in 1976 to study a wide range of health issues affecting women. The women, ages 29 to 46 at the start of the study, were followed for 10 years. Every two years, they were asked about abortions, miscarriages and new breast cancer diagnoses. The researchers looked at medical records to confirm the diagnoses.

The study found no greater rate of breast cancer among the women who reported having abortions, compared to the other women. They saw no greater risk associated with multiple abortions and no greater risk linked with miscarriages.

But it isn’t likely to convince all those opposed to abortion. Texas, Minnesota and Mississippi still require doctors to warn women seeking abortions of the purported link to breast cancer “when medically accurate.”

The new findings published in the April 23 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

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