CHICAGO – A Harvard study released Monday supports earlier findings by a panel of experts that having an abortion doesn’t increase a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer.
What evidence shows is that childbearing before the age of 35 reduces a woman’s breast cancer risk and breast-feeding also helps, said the new study’s lead author Karin Michels of Harvard Medical School. Scientists believe breast cells that have gone through a full-term pregnancy gain protection against cancer, she said.
Studies that found a link between abortion and breast cancer have relied on reports from women with cancer and healthy women about whether they’d had abortions in the past. The women with cancer may have been more likely than healthy women to report abortions as they searched for reasons why they got sick, Michels said.
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