Meta-Analysis: Abortion-Breast Cancer Linked

China's one-child policy has yielded a huge data base of information about the effects of abortion:  China has "an average 8.2 million pregnancy terminations ever year, and 40 abortions for ever 100 live births," writes Dr. Mary L. Davenport, immediate past president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

In the US we are used to abortion advocates claiming that the risk of elective abortion is relatively trivial, and major medical organizations denying any link between abortion and breast cancer.

Now a powerful new study from China published last week by Yubei Huang and colleagues suggests otherwise. The article, a meta-analysis pooling 36 studies from 14 provinces in China, showed that abortion increased the risk of breast cancer by 44% with one abortion, and 76% and 89% with two and three abortions.

Huang's study shows an even stronger increase than the 30% higher risk found in the 1996 meta-analysis by Joel Brind and colleagues on abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer. The Brind meta-analysis, combining the results of 23 studies, gave a more complete view than any single study. But even though it was the most comprehensive study on the topic at the time, it was disregarded by establishment medical groups.

Dr. Davenport argues it is a "disgrace that a more honest discourse about difficult medical topics can be found inthe People's Republic of China than in the USA."

Chinese researchers and physicians are unencumbered by abortion politics, and do not cover up data showing long term effects of induced abortion, as do their US counterparts in governmental, professional and consumer organizations.

Full study available here.