The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is reporting on a study published in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine whose authors found a 6.38-fold greater risk of breast cancer among women with histories of induced abortion.

According to the Coalition, the study, led by Ramachandra Kamath, MD (Department of Public Health, Manipal University), found induced abortion was the most important risk factor.

"With only 94 cases and 94 controls, the study was way too small for a significant risk of the order of 1.5-fold to even show up," explained Professor Joel Brind (Baruch College, City University of New York). "Yet induced abortion did show up as the strongest risk factor (and right on the border of statistical significance) because the risk increase was so high at 6.38-fold."

The authors found a non-statistically significant 1.76-fold risk increase among women with first births after age 30.

"Medical texts acknowledge delayed first full term pregnancy is a risk factor for breast cancer," said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer. "It's indisputable that abortion contributes to delayed first full term pregnancies; and in some cases, women remain childless forever, which is also an accepted risk factor."

Kamath's group observed that India has the "largest estimated number of breast cancer deaths worldwide," and breast cancer rates are on the rise there.

Brind said he found it "troubling that the abortion-breast cancer link is now showing up big time in the world's most populous countries where breast cancer used to be rare. That means millions upon millions of women will die from this deadly after-effect of abortion. Consider that between India and China, we're talking about over a billion women. If only 1% of them get breast cancer due to abortion, that's still 10 million women, of whom at least 2 or 3 million will die from it!"

"Their deaths," declared Malec, "can be laid at the doorstep of the U.S. National Cancer Institute whose leaders have covered up the ABC [abortion/breast cancer] link for twenty years since the study, Daling et al. 1994, became available."

Kamath's team noted that a 2006 Indian study, led by Manjusha Rai, had found a "significant association between abortion and breast cancer."