At least three US states require by law that women considering an abortion should be told it will raise their risk of breast cancer, and anti-abortion groups are lobbying hard for this requirement to be extended to other states.
Against this background, the US national Cancer Institute (NCI) convened a workshop of over 100 of the world's leading experts to review all available data. The meeting concluded that many of the studies which had suggested a link were flawed, often because women with breast cancer were more likely to report having had an abortion in their search for an explanation of their disease.
However, a Danish study of 1.5 million women, published in 1997, is often considered the definitive study and it found no association between abortion and breast cancer. Although anti-abortionists called the workshop's conclusion 'an overstatement', the NCI clearly states that 'having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing cancer'.
1. NCI. 30 May 2003 http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_75.htm
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