THE SILENT SUBJECT: ABORTION BREAST CANCER-LINK
As one who has had to mourn the death of a sister following breast cancer,
it was disheartening to discover that one of the main resolutions coming out
of the First World Meeting on Breast Cancer and its prevention, held in
Hamilton, Canada, in July 1997, was... to ban all pesticides, despite any
scientific indication that they could act as carcinogens at the levels
legally prescribed. We all remember that a similar drastic move several
years ago caused a serious resurgence of malaria and millions of deaths in
India.
One of the points made in most editorials at the time was that breast cancer
risk is most dramatically affected by environmental stresses on young women
as their breast develop. No one can seriously question this. However, one
stress factor was
conspicuously absent from those listed, i.e. the proven connection between
breast cancer and an aborted first pregnancy. To date, 30 separate
peer-reviewed studies of induced abortion have been published worldwide,
with 24 showing increased risk. It is rare in the epidemiological
literature to find any potential risk factor so universally associated with
any disease as induced abortion is with breast cancer (miscarriages carry no
risks).
There are clear and simple to grasp physiological reasons why abortion might
promote the development of breast cancer later in life It is, first of all,
a medical reality that most known risk factors for breast cancer are
characterized by some form of estrogen overexposure. (This is why doctors,
who have long recognized the effects of estrogen on breast cancer risk, are
very careful in prescribing such medications as post-menopausal
estrogens replacement therapy for older women, especially those with any
family history of breast cancer).
An abrupt artificial termination of pregnancy plays havoc with the normal
hormonal profile of pregnancy. In the early weeks of pregnancy, a woman`s
breast tissue is highly stimulated by a powerful surge of estrogen. Once
terminally differentiated into
milk-producing cells by other hormones late in a first pregnancy, breast
tissue mature permanently and breast cells can no longer be stimulated to
reproduce. When an abortion cuts short that pregnancy, a woman`s breast
tissue is left in a dangerous stimulated but undifferiented state,
increasing the risk of later cancerous development.
Despite overwhelming evidence of a 30 to 50 percent increase in risk of
breast cancer for women who abort their first pregnancy, pro-choice
advocates have persuaded the medical community - and the mainstream media -
that proof of such a link is inconclusive. Such mainstream media as the
Globe and Mail summarily rejected
scientific analyses by expert breast cancer researchers, epidemiologists,
endocrinologists with top international reputations, as "specious zealotry
by the rabid right-to-lifers resorting to scare tactics."
The reputation of abortion as safe for women is crucial to the pro-choice
movement. One needn`t, therefore, look very far to find the motivation
behind the increasingly desperate attempts to prevent public access to the
considerable body of evidence of a
connection between induced abortion and breast cancer. The research has been
buried or even discredited because it undercuts the pro-choice argument that
abortion has no long-term risks.
You`d think that those feminists who claim to believe in women`s rights
would be anti-abortion if they learned the facts on what abortion does to
woman, namely, evidence of a 30 to 50 percent increase in risk of breast
cancer following termination of a
first pregnancy. But no, their minds are made up, and they refuse to let
anyone confuse them with the facts. So much for informed consent! Were
breast cancer, however, as definitely linked to any other procedure besides
abortion, the uproar would be deafening. That single study finding that
there is an 80 percent increase risk of prostate cancer among men who have
had vasectomies was reported in headlines everywhere. One would therefore
have expected to see the breast cancer/abortion research findings making
banner headline news also.
If, as science now shows quite conclusively, abortion is a calculated risk
factor that is almost always the result of a personal choice, it is
avoidable in a way environmental risk may not be. How can anyone who is
truly interested in the welfare and health of women knowingly suppress or
ignore this kind of information? How patronizing for pro-choice leaders to
decide that women other than themselves are insufficiently intelligent to
make informed decisions based on what scientific literature
has to say about abortion and cancer.
It is nothing short of criminal that young women aren`t being warned by
their self-appointed leaders and our country`s medical watchdogs of the
significant risk of a procedure they might want forego because of the risk
involved. As for the Canadian media, their silence on the "risk factor that
dares not speak its name" is truly killing women.
For the organizers of the Hamilton conference, some 1.6 million extra cases
of breast cancer worldwide did not seem to merit their concern. This, once
more, is a chilling reminder that pro-choice advocates regard access to
abortion as a higher priority than the safety and health of women.
Thaddee Renault
Pro-Life Family Program