A new study done on women in Turkey who had abortions finds a 66 percent increased risk of contracting breast cancer as a result.

The study is the latest to confirm that abortions cause significant adverse medical risks for women who have them, in addition to killing unborn children.

The results also found that, while induced abortion causes increased breast cancer risks for women, having a spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, does not.

Dr. Vahit Ozmen and his colleagues at the Istanbul Medical Faculty at Istanbul University and Magee-Women's hospital in Pittsburgh conducted the new retrospective study.

They published their findings in the April 2009 issue of the World Journal of Surgical Oncology and examined women who, between January 2000 and December 2006, were admitted to clinics of Istanbul Medical Faculty for examination.

The researchers said that their findings showed abortion was "significantly associated with increased breast cancer risk."

"Breast cancer risk was found to be increased in women with ... induced abortion (95% confidence interval)" and an age above 35 years-old at the time of a first live birth. "However, decreased breast cancer risk was associated with ... presence of spontaneous abortion."

"Our study revealed that spontaneous abortion was associated with the decreased risk of breast cancer in univariate analysis whereas induced abortion was associated with increased breast cancer risk in both univariate and multivariable analyses," they wrote.

Contrary to the claims of groups like Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen for the Cure that say there is no such-abortion breast cancer link, the physicians involved in the study assert otherwise.

Other studies "found a positive association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk in women younger than 50. Therefore, similar to our findings, the majority of the studies reported that induced abortion was associated with increased breast cancer risk."

Joel Brind, Ph.D., the head of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute in the United States and a professor of endocrinology at Baruch College in New York, says he is not surprised by the results.

"I guess they didn't get the 'memo' from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), which declared back in 2003 that the non-existence of the abortion-breast cancer link had been 'established,'" he told LifeNews.com.

Brind also said that the breast cancer risk the doctors found in Turkey is likely higher than they reported. He said Ozmen's team most likely underestimated the breast cancer risk associated with abortion because of a flaw known as "selection bias."

Selection bias is a flaw in the study because only hospital or clinic patients were selected as study subjects, and they were therefore not representative of the general population.

According to Brind's hypothesis, a disproportionate number of "modern" women were likely represented among the controls -- a group more likely to have abortions and visit the hospital often for minor complaints.

By contrast, a disproportionate number of "traditional" women were represented among the patients; women less likely to abortions and visit the hospital.

"To their credit, Dr. Ozmen et al. did acknowledge the likelihood of selection bias in their study, although they were not specific in attributing any effects on their results to it," he said.

Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, also commented on the study and said American medical groups need to take notice of the results.

"Although the NCI, the nation's largest funder of cancer-research, and others have worked feverishly to suppress the ABC link by publishing fraudulent research and even leaning on scientists whose studies have shown risk increases among women who have abortions, honest research occasionally escapes the NCI's purview," she said.

Citation: Ozmen et al. Breast cancer risk factors in Turkish women - a university hospital-based nested case control study. World J Surg Onc 2009;7:37.

Related web sites:
Abstract of the study - http://wjso.com/content/7/1/37

[July 28, 2009, Ertelt, Washington, DC, www.LifeNews.com; http://www.lifenews.com/int1278.html]