Please let me know if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
Posted on 04/23/2005 6:23:28 PM PDT by wagglebee
Just this week a study announced that a natural pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, shows promise for preventing breast cancer. According to researchers, HCG activated tumor-suppressor genes that stopped cancer cell growth.
So, if pregnancy hormones work to combat breast cancer, does that mean having an abortion somehow increases the risk?
There are groups like the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer who insist the answer is "yes." They cite reports dating back to 1986 in which "government scientists wrote a letter to the British Journal Lancet acknowledging that induced abortion before the first term pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer."
They also frequently cite a 2001 report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which indicates a 40 percent increase in the cases of breast cancer among women in the generation following Roe v. Wade. They further report on their website that as of 2004, "five medical groups say abortion is one of the causes of the disease."
By stark contrast, Planned Parenthood the nation's leading abortion provider slams the theory as blatantly false. According to Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "There is no truth to this [theory] at all. It is one of those nasty myths invented by anti-choice organizations to frighten women away from having an abortion."
Most notably stuck in the middle of this debate is the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This is the foundation that uses events such as the famous "Race for the Cure" to raise money to fight breast cancer. According to its website, the Komen Foundation works "through a network of U.S. and international affiliates … to eradicate breast cancer as a life-threatening disease by funding research grants and supporting education, screening and treatment projects in communities around the world."
The problem is the Komen Foundation uses some of its funds to support Planned Parenthood. This raises the question whether the Komen Foundation has literally struck a deal with the devil. It also creates a possible dilemma for pro-lifers who support breast cancer research through the Komen Foundation.
The fact is local chapters of the Komen Foundation supplied nearly half a million dollars in grants to local Planned Parenthood affiliates in 2003. They have also continued to fund Planned Parenthood in 2004 with plans for continued support in 2005.
When complaints began to emerge a few years back about funding Planned Parenthood, the Komen Foundation defiantly circled the wagons by announcing their resolve to continue funding the abortion provider.
The question is: "If it is even possible that abortions are linked to increased risk of breast cancer, what could be the logic for Komen's support of Planned Parenthood?"
One very sick and twisted explanation is simply that it's good business. It could be that today's abortion clients are tomorrow's breast cancer patients and therefore future fund-raisers for the Komen Foundation. In this scenario, abortions would simultaneously secure future clients and contributors. This possibility not only boggles but blows the mind.
There is simply no illness that touches our lives and hearts like breast cancer. Having battled with another form of cancer, I find few women more inspiring than those who have beaten the illness. So I am incensed at the possible Faustian relationship between the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood.
Abortion kills. Thanks to advances in technology like the human genome project and 4D ultrasound, everyone knows that abortion ends the life of an unborn baby. There is also a strong case made that abortion kills the spirit of women who have them whether consciously or subconsciously. The plain question before us is whether it is also taking the life of women physically through breast cancer.
Surely it is time we put politics aside and got at the truth of abortion, its effects and its relationship to breast cancer. Or shall we close our eyes to the strong possibility that abortion providers take the life of children in one room while holding out hope for life through breast cancer education, treatment and screening in the next?
Regardless of the answers, I cannot in good conscious support the Komen Foundation. This is a difficult decision because I have a good friend battling breast cancer and running in the Komen Foundation's "Race for a Cure." But I cannot support life and death at the same time by funneling money to Planned Parenthood.
One very sick and twisted explanation is simply that it's good business. It could be that today's abortion clients are tomorrow's breast cancer patients and therefore future fund-raisers for the Komen Foundation. In this scenario, abortions would simultaneously secure future clients and contributors. This possibility not only boggles but blows the mind.
If there is even a shred of truth to this it is very disturbing.
Pro-life Ping
I would offer that it also increases the risk of ovarian cancer...every woman I ever knew that died of ovarian cancer died childless...
Is this not a notion, that is in essence behind the homosexual agenda? If homosexuals cannot biologically concieve then how are they to "pro-create" themselves ?
They have begun by challenging the Courts of the United States for the past twenty years.
One cannot "promote" an agenda and lose all victims along the way and still have power!
I am one of those very stupid girls who believed it was just birth control, we'll find out soon just how stupid those decisions were!
Abortion drastically increases the odds of suicide and serious mental illness.
I work in oncology and I strongly beleive there is a link between abortions and incrased risk of breast cancer. Of course, I'm just an lowly office worker, but I observe. If nature gets artificially interupted (i.e. abortion, hormone replacement), things tend to go awry. JMHO
But hey, abortion is a big business, why should the public be educated??/sarcasm
Just out of curiousity, do the doctors you work with really make an effort to determine if women with cancer (especially younger ones) have had abortions (and by a real effort I mean more than just a yes/no checkmark on a standard questionaire)?
No. Where I work, we generally work with those that are "high risk" for developing breast cancer. And yes, risk is determined primarily by checkboxes on a form. Abortions, per se, are not on the list, but it does have pregnancies vs. live births, as well as age at first birth (FYI - the older the higher risk), but no separation between abortion vs. miscarriage.
I am so sorry that you are right.
Supposedly, and I am going to speak as a lay person and not as a doctor -- supposedly, when a woman becomes pregnant, her hormones go through her entire body getting it ready to carry the child to term. Her breasts swell. If the pregnancy is interrupted through a 'pregnancy termination' her hormone receptors in the breasts, that have been 'opened' by the pregnancy hormones, stay open. These receptors naturally close during childbirth or after a 'natural' miscarriage.
Where the problem lies is in the fact that with 'forced on the body type' of abortion, those receptors remain 'open' and become vulnerable to acquiring cancer.
There is also some question as to whether birth control pills cause cancer like abortion does. They too are hormones and they do fool the body into thinking it is pregnant. There is also an increased risk of older women who take synthetic hormone replacement therapies of getting breast cancer.
On my mother's side of my family there is no history of breast cancer. However, I have one aunt who used birth control pills when they first came out in the early 1960's, the high dosage type, and she is the only one in our entire family to get breast cancer.
Way off the curve, but I had a patient who died of ovarian cancer after 18 babies.
Another, after 2 children and 35 years after her complete hysterectomy - she showed up with fluid around her lungs that tested out as metatstatic ovarian cells.
The facts that we've always known is that women who don't have children or who have their children later in life are more likely to have breast cancer than those who have babies and who have their first completed pregnancy before 25 years old. That may not be enough reason for most women to start their families early.
But, for those women who do become pregnant, however unexpectedly, it is one of the factors to consider if you believe in a womans "right to choose."
Of course, most of us don't - I wouldn't allow abortion except to save a woman's life and far too many who oppose me wouldn't allow true informed consent if it detered any woman from the "choice" of abortion.
But, women deserve better than abortion and especially better than not having a true choice to continue the pregnancy once they become pregnant.
Please let me know if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
The link has been known for decades, the first inkling of a connection was discovered in 1957.
For years we have tried to educate the Race for the Cure women with
a truth truck greeting them with the message "Breast Cancer's most
avoidable risk factor: Abortion."
Lots of hisses but no tomatoes thrown!
"Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "There is no truth to this [theory] at all"
She seems to have forgotten to mention here credentials in the field of cancer research.........
..oh, she doesn't have any?
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