Pregnancy Termination: What are the risks of pregnancy termination? -checksum="62538" ends

Pregnancy termination in relation to risk of breast cancer.Newcomb PA,Storer BE,Longnecker MP,Mittendorf R,Greenberg ER,Willett WC.

University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center, Madison 53706, USA.

Objectives:

To evaluate the association between pregnancy terminations and risk of breast cancer.

Design and

Setting:

Population-based case-control study in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire.

Study Participants:

Cases were women younger than 75 years with a new diagnosis of breast cancer (n = 6888), identified from statewide tumor registries. Controls younger than 65 years (n = 9529) were randomly selected from lists of licensed drivers, or for older subjects, from lists of Medicare beneficiaries.

EXPOSURES AND OUTCOMES

Breast cancer risk in relation to spontaneous or induced abortions.

RESULTS

After adjustment for parity, age at first birth, and other risk factors, pregnancy termination (induced or spontaneous) was associated with a relative risk (RR) of breast cancer of 1.12 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04 to 1.21), compared with the risk among women who had never had a termination. Induced terminations were associated with a RR of 1.23 (95% CI, 1.00 to 1.51), which was somewhat greater than the risk associated with spontaneous terminations (RR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.20). The association with induced abortions was stronger for those performed before legalization of abortion in 1973 (RR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.01 to 1.80) than after this time (RR, 1.12; 95% CI, 0.84 to 1.49), suggesting a bias in reporting this sensitive procedure.

CONCLUSIONS
A weak positive association was observed between abortion--whether induced or spontaneous--and risk of breast cancer. The increase in risk of breast cancer was somewhat greater among women with a history of induced terminations. However, this association may be due to reporting bias and was not significantly different than the slight risk for spontaneous terminations.

Please click on the required question.

• 1 What does the term abortion mean?
• 2 What are the legal criteria that permit doctors to terminate a pregnancy in the UK?
• 3 How could we tell if there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped - e.g. Down Syndrome?
• 3A What is Tay Sachs and should we test for it?
• 4 How prevalent is pregnancy termination?
• 5 Why do unwanted pregnancies occur?
• 6 I think I may be pregnant and I do not want to have a baby now. What should I do?
• 7 Should I terminate my pregnancy for social reasons?
• 8 How can my pregnancy be terminated?
• 9 What does a suction (surgical) termination of pregnancy involve?
• 10 What is a medical abortion?
• 11 What will happen to me if I have a medical abortion?
• 12 How do medical and surgical pregnancy termination compare?
• 13 What are the chances of medical termination failing?
• 14 What are the risks of pregnancy termination?
• 15 Why is there debate about the ethics of pregnancy termination?
• 16 Support Groups.
• 17 Where can I obtain more information?
  

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