In the past, rich women had a higher rate of breast cancer than did poor women. Before 1969, legal abortions in hospitals were just too expensive which limited access to those who could afford them. The pattern has changed. However, breast cancer did not increase among the wealthy women who had supposedly always had access to abortion. Similar statistics were researched in California.
Religion also has an influence.
Catholics and conservative Protestants believe that human life begins at conception and therefore oppose abortion. But most Jews and liberal Protestants permit abortion. Researchers found that Jewish women are shown at risk 2.8 times that of Catholics in one multi-national study in 1983. A 1978 study showed Protestant women with a greatly increased risk over Catholic women in Canada. Those who suffer the most from the silence of the medical and popular press are poor women, young women, minority women, and women who have suffered miscarriages.