ABORTION-BREAST CANCER NEWS HEADLINES
"An Open Letter to World Magazine"
By Karen Malec, president, Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
Re: "Life or death? ABORTION PRESENT: Group that fights breast cancer maintains troubling ties to Planned Parenthood," By Alisa Harris, January 17, 2008. Available at:
Dear editor:
A new article in World Magazine discussed the disturbing financial relationship between the breast cancer group, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and an organization that is the primary cause of the breast cancer epidemic in the U.S. - Planned Parenthood.
The author, Alisa Harris, correctly reported that basic medical textbooks acknowledge that full term pregnancies offer women a considerable reduction in breast cancer risk. Logically, that means that the woman who chooses not to have a baby (i.e. by having an abortion) has a higher breast cancer risk than does the one who has a baby. The loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy is the first of three ways that abortion is linked with increased breast cancer risk (known as the "ABC link").
Harris' story, however, included inaccuracies and omitted important facts. Eight medical organizations acknowledge that abortion further raises a woman's risk (independently of the loss of the protective effect of childbearing) by leaving her breasts with more places for cancer to start. [1]
I am troubled that Harris left her readers in doubt about the existence of the independent link. She said Komen's officials dispute the independent link because:
More . . .
Who knew it was July already!
Sorry for trying to steal 6 months from y'all.
Posting nerd,
Leslieforlife
You know, abortion is nasty enough without people claiming that it gives women cancer. I guess the anti-choice side is out of real arguments.
You are an ignorant turkey. You wrote:
"If Harris would read the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) workshop conclusions, she would find that the federal agency acknowledged the protective effect of a full term pregnancy, but then blatantly contradicted itself by denying an ABC link."
No contradiction there. Having babies lowers your risk for bc; having abortions does nothing to it. Someone who has one baby and twenty abortions is SAFER from bc than someone who has zero babies and zero abortions.
While Malec's organization has done much good to bring to light medical research that many have tried to ignore, I don't believe it is right or fair (yet) to say that abortion causes breast cancer. It is accurate to say that enough legitimate medical science has found that it does increase breast cancer risk, though. It isn't an "anti-choice argument" to say this. We don't have to "claim" anything. The science has found it.
And while abortion may not have truly been proven (yet) to be a literal cause of breast cancer, certain findings and experts cannot be ignored, yet are, routinely, by supposed "medical establishment" types.
So who else besides Malec reports that abortion can increase breast cancer risk?
1. 28 out of 37 worldwide research studies (16 statistically significant for increased risk)
2. 13 out of 15 American studies (8 statistically significant)
3. A 1996 American Cancer Society pamphlet “Cancer Facts and Figures”
4. Phyllis Wingo (a CDC researcher prior to working for American Cancer Society and doing an about-face), and 3 other epidemiologists (including Bruce Stadel, National Institutes of Health)
5. Dr. Clark Heath, when he was a Vice President for the American Cancer Society.
6. Harvard’s Dr. Brian MacMahon, Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, et al., in the International Journal of Cancer
7. Dr. Lynn Rosenberg, a Boston University Medical School epidemiologist
8. Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., F.A.C.S., breast cancer surgeon and Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, NJ.
What most pro-choice/pro-abortion folks cite, including the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute and others, including Planned Parenthood, is the 1997 Melbye (or Danish) study, which "found" that the A/BC link is false. The problem is: that study was severely criticized at least twice in the New England Journal of Medicine, for its errors of misclassification and data adjustment. [Joel Brind & Vernon Chinchilli, Letter, ”Induced Abortion and the Risk of Breast Cancer,” 336 New England Journal of Medicine (1997) 1834-35] and by Katrina Armstrong in February of 2000, [Armstrong (2000) NEJM 342:564-71].
Here are some of the substantial, legitimate objections to Melbye:
1. Melbye misclassified 60,000 women who'd had abortions as not having had them;
2. They studied non-abortive women more than twice as long as the women who had abortions;
3. They compared a smaller group of younger women (280,691) who had had abortions to more than four times as many older women (1,248,541) who hadn't had abortions.
The problem with the first one is obvious enough to disqualify the entire study as bad research. or as someone once referred to pro-life-leaning research elsewhere here in another thread: "junk science." If it was a prolife-leaning study that did this, you'd toss it in the trash, rightfully so. You must toss this one then too, yet the sources prochoice folks defend still stand by it.
The problem with the last two is that, of course, they’ll find more BC in older women or women who’ve been studied longer: those women have a greater chance of developing it, according to the historical statistics!
The other main problem overall is that no one in the "medical establishment" will do the full-fledged research needed, as they are immediately blacklisted.
Just like pro-choice researcher Dr. Janet Daling was blacklisted, after her research was published and after she wrote, in the N.C.I.'s own journal in 1994, "If politics gets involved in science, it will really hold back the progress we make. I have three sisters with breast cancer, and I resent people messing with the scientific data to further their own agenda, be they pro-choice or pro-life. I would have loved to have found no association between breast cancer and abortion, but our research is rock solid, and our data is accurate. It's not a matter of believing. It's a matter of what is."
SOMG, since you brought up the NCI and multiple abortions allegedly being so safe, I'm allowing your ironically-self-incriminating name-calling comment to be published, this once, so you may get your response.
Go read about the "2000 China Abortion/Breast Cancer Study That National Cancer Institute Funded But Really, Truly Seems To Not Want Anyone To Know About" …
…because it means that as many as 4,262,500 U.S. women (who had 3 or more abortions between 1983 and 2002) likely have increased our risk of postmenopausal breast cancer by about 60 to 70%…
…and of the 6,500,000 U.S. women who’ve had only two abortions in that same twenty year period , we have either a 60% increased breast cancer risk (if we had our second induced abortion [IA] under the age of 45), or a 70% increased BC risk (if we had the first of two IAs at or above age 35).
…and among the 13,850,000 U.S. women who’ve had only one abortion, of those having that abortion prior to our (last) live birth (FTP), we may have increased our BC risk by 40%. Including me personally.
Do go read about the "nonexistent" journal-published articles and the suddenly-disappearing SER annual meeting abstracts PDF file.
It isn't conspiracy theory. It's the real deal. And the NCI doesn't want you to know about it all. Because it's bad news. Way bad news.
But guess what? They succeeded in keeping 99.9% of Americans "ignorant turkeys" about it, including you.
Wait... I can see why you guys wouldn't believe, say, Planned Parenthood about this stuff, but you don't believe the NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE?
Rock on, Annie B.! Rock on. :o)
Thank you, Annie B. This is the kind of information, if it is correct, that should be taught in Catholic seminaries across America, so that our pastors will be better equipped to discuss the ABC link with the faithful and with those who would deny it. As you say, it's a question of what is.
Our many heroic Protestant brothers and sisters in the clergy could also benefit. But the information isn't taught anywhere, as far as I know. Does anyone know why?
Pax,
John
Thanks to all who commented or wrote me privately. (sigh) I do long for the day I don't have to do this kind of research, or reporting of it, anymore.
John, I agree, it should be taught. Everywhere. Why isn't it? Perhaps because these kinds of scientific findings 1) are fairly recently researched, 2) are blackballed by the mainstream media and medical establishment (including the ACS and NCI itself) and thus hard to dig up, never mind teach adequately, and 3) most "teaching institutions" are managed, run and taught by liberal/progressives of varying degrees so this will never see the light of day where this type rule the day.
(On another note: I'd love to teach this and all I've researched to any university or institution interested in having me!)
The mere fact that I did much of the basis for this topic's uncovering of research about 3 years ago--and yet prochoice leaning commenters here are still completely unaware and disbelieving that it exists and is real, is proof that the mainstream media and the majority of the medical establishment-in-power have succeeded in keeping the world at large in the dark and ignorant.
Imagine how I felt when I realized how I'd increased my own risk for breast cancer by having an abortion.
To the prochoice folks reading this, if you're so about "women's choices," if you don't think we should have TOTALLY INFORMED choices, including this information, then you're being hypocritical. Hell's bells, kids need parents' permission to get a tattoo in some states, shouldn't we women be informed of the risks of any medical procedure that does affect us physically?
I always just shake my head every time prochoice leaning folk ridicule us and ream us out as idiots, "ignorant turkeys" and/or religious freaks, when it is they who don't know much at all really about what's true, in a lot of areas of hard, objective science.
After some 5+ years of this kind of digging, all of it documented with objective sources on the 2 blogs, Afterabortion.blogspot.com and AbortionPundit.blogspot.com , I have resigned myself to the fact that there will never be a shortage of such folk.
It just seems that the ones who finally get shown such cold hard facts that they cannot refute any longer, some stop diatribing against us, others ignore their loss in that argument and change the subject or get more vicious. A lot do become silent and disappear. Then they are always replaced by new commenters who don't realize that, probably for any prochoice argument they can throw at the wall, I've done some research post that counters it, at least in part, as done above.
To those who defend abortion, as I've said before, I really don't care about eyeballs on the 2 blogs, but you could save yourselves some wasted time and embarrassment if you did some spelunking on the sidebars or google searches of those blogs.
I am 100% in favor of doctors informing patients of the risks of any medical procedure, including and especially abortion. However, this isn't a risk. It's propaganda.
It's like the autism-vaccination link. It looked plausible on the surface. And then there were studies to investigate it. The studies say, "no, not really," but the idea still has thousands of proponents.
Parents cling to the idea that vaccines gave their children autism because it's satisfying. It's simple. In some cases, it gives them someone to blame. It's the same thing with abortion and breast cancer. Anti-abortion activists just aren't ready to accept that it isn't real.
Last tidbit, especially for DRF: That ACS brochure I referenced above? It's still online at their website. Let's see how many hits and downloads it will take before they remove it from the web:
Under the RISK FACTORS section:
"Additional factors that may be associated with increased breast cancer risk and that are currently under study include pesticide and other chemical exposures, alcohol consumption, induced abortion, and physical inactivity."
Yes, they used the word "may", yet those who know anything about the ACS know that to mention a risk factor at all, and to leave it on their website, as one of their downloads available to the world at all, is significant.
So much for "this isn't a risk. It's propaganda". As I wrote, it would seem that some anti-life "activists just aren't ready to accept that it IS real."
So why are you treating a study as if it were results? It's a question, not an answer.
Abortion is nasty enough without trying to dress it up as worse than it is. Stick to the truth and people will be more likely to believe you.
Let's rephrase DRF's question because she is really saying this: "Wait... I can see why you guys wouldn't believe, say, Planned Parenthood about this stuff, but you don't believe the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?"
DRF's question is like asking why no one believes Governor Blagojevich's claims of innocence!
Did the government tell the public the truth about the risk of cancer from atomic bomb testing in Utah and Nevada during the 1950s or the risk of cigarette smoking in 1954 (although epidemiological research dating from 1928 supported a link between smoking and lung cancer)?
Did the government tell 399 poor black sharecroppers the truth - that they had syphillis and that penicillin could have easily CURED them as early as 1945 - when the U.S. Public Health Service-funded scientists were studying the progression of the disease into the brains of these men between 1932 and 1972? Those men had to endure painful spinal taps every year so the scientists could satisfy their curiosity. Members of the sharecroppers' family became infected with the disease too!
Did the government tell women the truth about the risk of using combined oral contraceptives (the pill) or combined hormone replacement therapy (when the evidence became available in the 1980s)?
Did the government tell women the truth about the EXISTENCE of the first study (published in 1957) on the abortion-breast cancer link showing that Japanese women who had abortions had a 160% increase in risk? (Segi et al. 1957 GANN)
Did the government tell women the truth about an admission from four leading epidemiologists in a 1986 letter to the British journal Lancet. They admitted, "Induced abortion before first term pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer." (Lancet, 2/22/86, p. 436)
This line of questioning could be continued ad infinitum, but we might reasonably ask DRF, "Why do you believe everything the government tells you?"
DRF, it is far more reasonable to argue that abortion enthusiasts can't bring themselves to accept that the abortion-breast cancer link is real (despite a half-century of biological, epidemiological and animal research) because they aren't ready to cope with it emotionally.
We are really talking about 3 breast cancer risks associated with abortion. Two of these risks are known risks.
First, an early full term pregnancy is known to protect women from breast cancer. Therefore, if you have two pregnant young women and one aborts, while the other has a full term pregnancy, there is no debate that the one who has an abortion has a greater risk. She loses an opportunity to mature 85% of her cancer-resistant breast lobules into permanently cancer-resistant lobules.
Second, an abortion raises the risk of having a premature birth in subsequent pregnancies (per the Institute of Medicine and about 100 studies), and a premature birth before 32 weeks gestation increases the risk of developing breast cancer (supported by 4 epidemiological studies).
DRF, if a premature birth before 32 weeks gestation raises risk, then explain why an abortion would not also raise risk (independent of the loss of the protective effect of full term pregnancy).
Also, childlessness is an accepted risk factor for breast cancer. If a woman aborts all of her pregnancies, will she be childless, DRF?
Let's have just a little intellectual honesty here.
SoMG:
The protective effect of a full term pregnancy is a recognized risk of abortion. It is not debatable.
Even Dr. Lynn Rosenberg (Boston Medical School) admitted it during her testimony in 1999 as an expert witness for the Center for Reproductive Rights and Florida abortion providers, who brought a lawsuit against the state because of its parental notice legislation. She admitted that the 15-year-old who has an abortion has a greater breast cancer risk than does the 15-year-old who has a baby. [1999 Northwest Florida Women's Health vs. State of Florida, videotape deposition, 11-18-99, pp. 77-78)
No scientist would risk perjuring himself or herself by denying that abortion results in the loss of the protective effect. It has been in standard medical texts for decades.
From what I've seen, it is at most equally as likely that pro-choice and anti-abortion advocates will project their desires. It's a human trait, not a pro-choice or anti-abortion trait. It shows up in almost all political advocacy situations.
That is why we have to look at what the anti-cancer advocates and other politically neutral sources are are saying, and they're saying, "We looked into it and it isn't there."
In the cases you described, it's not abortion causing the problem, it's pregnancy conferring an advantage. It's misleading to say that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer when it's really that it doesn't decrease the risk either. Drinking water doesn't decrease my risk of breast cancer either, but that doesn't mean that it increases it.
Abortionists cannot accept the link between killing human beings in the unborn stage and the incidence of breast cancer because: 1)they have a psychological need to support abortion violence and cannot accept that it is a crime against another human being or anything else negative about the practice; 2)if the link were generally accepted, it would devastate the abortion industry financially, because many mothers who do not care about their unwanted unborn children (an unhappy weakness in human nature) would nevertheless care about their own future health and so abortion rates would decline dramatically; and 3) if the link were generally accepted, it could lead to billions of dollars in lawsuits (from middle aged women with breast cancer who killed their unborn children in their youth) which could potentially destroy the abortion industry.
This last factor is the real fear of the abortionist movement and why I believe they will fight tooth and nail to avoid ever having to admit that abortion violence is not only lethal to helpless innocent little unborn children but also potentially lethal to the mothers who killed them.
They cannot and therefore will not face the fact that abortion violence is an unhealthy, unnatural and biologically devastating act which destroys the life of one human being and severely damages the life of another, physically, psychologically and spiritually.
DRF:
There is little point in conversing further with you when you are impervious to the facts.
Your argument is absurd. You wrote: "In the cases you described, it's not abortion causing the problem, it's pregnancy conferring an advantage."
Of course, that is the abortion industry's argument, but history proves that it will not fly in a courtroom. There are five successful lawsuits against abortionists who failed to warn women about the loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy and the emotional harm resulting from abortion.
Dr. Joel Brind, president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, has written that the abortion industry's argument is comparable to "a skydiver's widow suing the guy who folded the parachute that didn't open, and the attorney for the parachute-folder trying to tell the court: 'He didn't get killed because the parachute didn't open; he got killed because he jumped out of the plane!'"
I strongly suspect you are shilling for the abortion industry, which physically abuses women. Therefore, our conversation ends here.
We've seen the Bush administration's ability to lean on the NIH. If anything, the NCI would be biased against abortion rights, not in favor.
The parachute metaphor doesn't hold up. In the case of a skydiver, there is an understanding between diver and the supplier of the parachute that the parachute will work. Otherwise, the skydiver would not have decided to step out of the plane.
It's more like saying that drinking water must cause cancer simply because it does not prevent it. Yes, women should be told that having a child can reduce their risks of breast cancer, but it is just silly to say that abortion causes breast cancer when it does no more harm than just not getting pregnant in the first place.
DRF, what study are you asking about, the Danish one or the Chinese one?
Regardless of your vagueness in asking your question, it's clear that you didn't really bother to read a whit about the Chinese study OR the Danish study.
"what [you've] seen" doesn't really amount to much since you insist on not having all or even a lot of the facts.
And umm, DRF, a study is research that finds results, one way or the other. A research study asks a questions, and then answers its question one way or the other. That's what a study does.
As for your snide "Stick to the truth and people will be more likely to believe you", let me see if I understand this, you're saying that to me means you must also be saying that to all the scientists I quoted or linked to, including the NCI, the ACS, Dr. Daling, et. al. etc.?
Like I said before, we don't have to "claim" anything as Truth. The science has found it. But you glossed over that and everthing else I pointed out, so WHY are you still here, after all? You've been shown to be in error. I get it that you can't accept that. Perhaps you should DYOR and find out that all I've pointed out is in fact reality.