Article 1. "Why All the Silence About Abortion and Breast Cancer?"
Article 2. Redbook Misrepresents Abortion-Breast Cancer Link
Why All the Silence About Abortion and Breast Cancer?
Byrne, Dennis. "Why all the silence about abortion and breast cancer?" Chicago Tribune. May 21, 2001
How Long will this nation sit by as a powerful, wellfunded industry continues to expose women to the No. 1 preventable risk of breast cancer?
How long will the industry's political flunkies, who recieve millions in campaign funds from this special interest, be allowed to turn a blind eye to a danger that kills thousands of women every year?
How long will a biased media keep silent in the face of a hazard that directly imperils more than 1 million women a year?
No, I'm not talking about the chemical industry, daily poisoning the environment with its toxins. Nor the producers of fatty food or alcohol, also factors suspected of increasing breast cancer.
The industry I'm talking about is the abortion business--consisting of abortion "providers," their clinics, ideological supporters, grant-giving foundations and the rest of the political power structure that refuses to even admit that a scientific debate, let alon[e] scientific evidence, exists about the dangers of induced abortions. They--despite their claims of superior benevolence and compassion--are threatening thousands of women's lives with an unspeakably painful disease.
Yet in the month of May, a time of renewal, promise, new life and marches throughout the country against breast cancer; millions of women are being decieved about this rick, or denied the knowledge of important studies.
Twenty-seven out of 34 independant studies conducted throughout the world (including 13 out of 14 conducted in the United States) have linked abortion and breast cancer. Seventeen of these studies show a statistically significant relationship. Five show more than a tow-fold elevation of risk. In turn, the abortion industry says all those studies are trumped by one study, whose methodology, critics say, is seriously flawed.
The biological hypothesis is that during a pregnancy, a woman's breasts begin developing a hormone that causes cells--both normal and pre-cancerous--to multiply dramatically. If the pregnancy is carried to term, those undifferentiated cells are shaped into milk ducts and a naturally occuring process shuts off the rapid cell multiplication. An induced abortion leaves a wom[e]n with more undifferentiated cells, and so, more cancer vulnerable cells.
When I first wrote about this issue in 1997, the scorn and name-calling flowed in. Anti-choice fanatic. Ignorant bozo. Misogynist. Since then, much has happened. The United Kingdom's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists became the first medical organization to warn its abortion practitioners that the abortion-breast cancer link "could not be disregarded." It said that the methodology of the principal ABC (abortion-breast cancer) researcher, Joel Brind, was sound.
John Kindley, an attorney, warned in a 1999 Wisconsin Law Review article that physicians who do not inform their patients of the ABC link expose themselves to medical malpractice suits. He concluded that about 1 out of 100 women who have had an induced abortion die from breast cancer attributable to the abortion.
The American Cancer Society webpage lists induced abortions (along with pesticides, chemical exposures, weight gain, and other factors) among elements that may be related to breast cancer, and that the relationship is being studied.
Earlier, Dr. Janet Darling and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in a study commisioned by the National Cancer Institute, found that "among women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those who had... an induced abortion was 50 percent higher than among other women." The risk of breast cancer for women under 18 or over 29 who had induced abortions was more than two-fold. Women who abort and have a family history of breast cancer increase their risk 80 percent. The increased risk of women under 18 with that family history was incalcuably high.
Being pro-choice didn't shield Darling from the usual attacks. She fought back. "If politics gets involved in science," she then told the Los Angeles Daily News, "it will really hold back the progress that 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 it is."
Yet the website of the Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, sponsor of many marches, fails to mention even the possiblity of the ABC connection in its list of risk factors. Not even under its list of fuzzy, not "clear-cut" factors. Not even the existence of a scientific debate over induced abortion is worth a mention.
As if women had no right to know.
If you want to know more, look in on the web page of the Palos Heights-based Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer (www.AbortionBreastCancer.com). You may not agree with everything there but at least you'll be respected for your intellectual ability to make an informed choice.
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant. E-mail: [email protected]
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Redbook Misrepresents Abortion-Breast Cancer Link
Source: Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer Press Release; September 6,
2001
Chicago, IL -- A women's group today accused Redbook of misrepresenting
research associating breast cancer with induced abortion and the birth
control pill in an article published in its September, 2001 issue by Nancy
Monson called, "Seven cancer facts you need to know now."
Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer said,
"It's strange that Dr. Mitchell Creinin of the University of Pittsburgh
and Dr. Andrew Kaunitz of the University of Florida denied that abortion
and oral contraceptives cause breast cancer. Medical experts agree that
breast cancer risk is increased significantly each year that a first full
term pregnancy (FFTP) is postponed. This glaring omission of the facts
reveals their ideological bent."
"We're not surprised," said Mrs. Malec "that these experts would deny that
the pill and abortion cause breast cancer. Kaunitz led nationwide
clinical trials to bring Lunelle, a new birth control method, to the
marketplace. Creinin researched the use of ultrasound to determine the
effectiveness of mifepristone and misoprostol (RU-486) for abortion.
Many researchers are profiting from sales of contraceptives and
abortions."
Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, author of the book, Breast Cancer: Its Link to
Abortion and the Birth Control Pill, discussed the Oxford study which was
cited by Kaunitz as evidence that there is no link between the pill and
breast cancer. [p. 32] Kahlenborn reported that the study had two
significant weaknesses: 1) It failed to determine the consequence of using
the pill during the most dangerous time in a woman's life -- before a
FFTP; and 2) It failed to provide for a sufficient latent period which
would allow for time to elapse between exposure to the pill and the
development of tumors. [Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast
Cancer. "Breast cancer and hormonal contraceptives: further results,"
Contraception (1996) 34: S1-S106]
Kahlenborn cited studies demonstrating a 40% increased risk of breast
cancer among women who use the pill before a FFTP and a 72% increased
incidence among women who use the pill for four or more years before a
FFTP. He added that using the pill for a prolonged period, 4 years or
more, at any time during a woman's life increases breast cancer risk. [p.
36-37]
Apart from the effect of postponing a FFTP, 28 out of 37 studies published
since 1957 have independently linked abortion with breast cancer, but only
two studies were mentioned in the Redbook article.
Malec continued, "According to Dr. Edison Liu of the National Cancer
Institute, One study does not make a conclusion.' In his discussion of the
abortion-breast cancer (ABC) research, Creinin relied on a single study to
deny an ABC link, the 1997 Melbye study, although 28 studies call for the
opposite conclusion. Creinin ignored the fact that even Melbye reported
that [w]ith each one week increase in the gestational age of the
fetus...there was a 3 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer.'"
[Melbye et al. (1997) NEJM 336:81-5].
Malec cited a different prospective study conducted in New York which was
ignored by Creinin. The 1989 Howe study reported a statistically
significant 90% increased risk of breast cancer. Such a study depends
upon medical records for its data, not interviews. As such, it rules out
any possibility of recall bias, errors allegedly occurring due to faulty
reporting by women. [Howe et al. (1989) Int J Epidemiol 18:300-4] "Creinin
argued that recall bias is an explanation for the remaining 27 studies
showing a positive association; but several groups of scientists have
sought evidence of this phenomenon and none has ever proven that it
exists. Nevertheless, Creinin considers recall bias theory a fact," said
Malec.
Melbye was jettisoned by its own publisher, The New England Journal of
Medicine, three years after its publication. "Had Drs. Creinin and Kaunitz
properly researched these issues," said Mrs. Malec, "they would have
learned that the NEJM published an article identifying abortion and oral
contraceptives as possible risk factors.'" [Armstrong (2000) NEJM
342:564-71]
Malec reported that "Creinin's misrepresentations closely follow Planned
Parenthood's portrayal of the ABC research." Planned Parenthood is being
sued by three women in California Superior Court. The suit alleges that
Planned Parenthood makes "confusing, false, and misleading representations
concerning the safety of abortion." The plaintiffs seek an injunction to
compel Planned Parenthood to: 1) Accurately represent the research to its
patients; 2) Prohibit it from making untrue or misleading statements...
that abortion is safe and/or that it is safer than childbirth;' and 3)
Inform its patients who'd procured abortions at its California facilities
of their increased risk of breast cancer." [Agnes Bernardo, et al v.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood of San
Diego and Riverside Counties]
"Doctors should be cautious about representing abortion as a safe
procedure," advised Malec. "The California suit is the second in the
country for false advertising, and a personal injury suit was filed in
Pennsylvania because of a physician's failure to inform his patient about
the breast cancer risk. It is reprehensible that American scientists have
struggled to cover-up the link for 44 years. We invite women to visit our
website at www.AbortionBreastCancer.com for documentation of this
cover-up."
Malec concluded her comments saying, "As a cancer survivor, I am deeply
disturbed by the Byzantine and egregious efforts of the abortion industry
and its supporters in organized medicine to conceal the facts, just as the
tobacco industry covered up a link between tobacco and cancer. If experts
like Redbook's would only honestly represent the evidence of an ABC link,
then women who've had abortions could take risk reduction drugs (such as
tamoxifen and raloxifene), and they'd be motivated to seek early detection
of the disease. Tragically, women will depend on Creinin's and Kaunitz's
statements, and many will suffer and lose their lives because Redbook
failed in its obligation to disseminate the truth.
We, therefore, demand from Redbook an immediate and prominent retraction
of the article and a new article containing an honest portrayal of the ABC
research. Redbook's readers have a right to know the truth, and the
magazine has a social responsibility to provide it."
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women's
organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by
educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for
breast cancer.
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