8mm
Posted on 11/17/2006 4:53:52 PM PST by wagglebee
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- Following the lead of abortion advocacy groups, ABC News reporter Dan Harris wrote a news article Friday attacking the work of the thousands of pregnancy centers nationwide that provide abortion alternatives and help for pregnant women. The article also contained a false claim that induced abortion has no link to various confirmed risks.
In the headline of its story, ABC News claims that crisis pregnancy centers are "offering information long discredited by the medical community."
The claim comes after comments from abortion advocates who allege pregnancy centers "harass and mislead women by telling them ... that abortions can lead to breast cancer, sterility and depression."
Harris then writes, "These claims have all been widely discredited by the medical community" though he provides no evidence in the story to back up his assertion.
The news report, however, runs counter to significant recent medical research.
A study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in January found that mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicidal thoughts, were more likely to occur among women who had an abortion than women who had never been pregnant or didn't have an abortion.
The research found that 42 percent of the women who had abortions had experienced major depression within the last four years. That's almost double the rate of women who never became pregnant. The risk of anxiety disorders also doubled.
According to the New Zealand study, women who have abortions were twice as likely to drink alcohol at dangerous levels and three times as likely to be addicted to illegal drugs.
David Fergusson, who led the study and backs legal abortion, said the results show access to legal abortions is not necessarily good for women. He also said the study confirms abortions cause women mental health issue -- rather than alleviating them as abortion advocates claim.
His conclusion backs the results of a study by researchers at Bowling Green State University in 2004 who examined data on nearly 11,000 women between the ages of 15 and 34 who had experienced an unintended pregnancy.
Their survey found that women who have abortions of unexpected pregnancies were 30 percent more likely to experience subsequent problems with anxiety than those who don't have one.
LifeNews.com contacted Harris about his article and the false claim on the abortion risks and Harris defended the allegation.
The "medical community" that Harris says believes abortion doesn't lead to depression, breast cancer or sterility consists only of an internal group of doctors that advise ABC News.
"We have a medical unit here consisting of doctors who pulled all of the relevant research," Harris told LifeNews.com, and he made his claims based on their contention those abortion risks don't exist.
When asked about the recent research showing abortion causing numerous mental health problems for women, Harris cited a 1989 and 2000 research study to black up the claims from the ABC News medical advisors.
He also cited an old statement from the American Psychological Association discounting the abortion-depression link, even though the organization recently withdrew their statement denying it.
Harris did say he would welcome information from LifeNews.com on more recent research and would correct his news story if warranted, but again defended his claim that abortion produces no medical or mental health risks.
"I don't think we made an error, our medial unit is pretty solid and respected in the medical community," Harris contended.
But members of the "medical community" don't agree with the findings of ABC News' anonymous group of medical advisors.
Last month a leading group of psychologists and mental health professionals in England say that abortion causes women tremendous psychological and mental health problems. They are calling on the nation's doctor's group to revise its guidelines about what women considering an abortion are told.
The list of professionals included Andrew Sims, past president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Patricia Casey, a professor of Psychiatry at University College in Dublin, and leading psychologists. nat2697.html
On the abortion-beast cancer link, Harris told LifeNews.com the medical unit based its view on a new study conducted by researchers as Oxford University in England that claims induced abortions do not raise a woman's breast cancer risk.
However, Professor Joel Brind, a researcher from Baruch College in New York and the president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, says the new Oxford study is "seriously flawed in the direction of covering up the link."
The study included both abortions and breast cancer diagnoses on women from various European nations up to the year 2000 -- but many women were over the age of 40 when abortion was legalized in the countries.
Therefore, many younger women with recent abortions were compared to older breast cancer patients who were too old to have been exposed to legal abortions during most of their fertile years, Brind explained.
"This sort of bad science is becoming disappointingly familiar," Brind added. "It is similar to the flaws in the Danish study" which Brind says had the same flawed analysis as the new Oxford one.
Dr. Gillian K. Reeves, who published the study, also failed to compare the effect of having an abortion with the effect of having a full term pregnancy.
A 1996 report published by the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health looked at 23 previous studies and found abortion increases the breast cancer risk by 30 percent.
Meanwhile, research shows that abortion can lead to infertility by increasing the risk of miscarriages.
A 1986 report in the medical journal Epidemiology reveals women with a history of abortion have a greater risk of fetal loss than women who had no previous abortions. Women with two prior pregnancies carried to term and no abortions had the lowest risk, while women with two prior abortions had the highest risk.
Also, a 1991 British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology article revealed that women with a history of abortion had a 1.5-1.7 times higher risk of ectopic pregnancy than women who had previously carried a pregnancy to term.
ACTION: Contact ABC News and urge it to feature abortion news reports that are fairly and accurately written: ABC News, 77 W. 66 St., New York, NY 10023 (p) 212-456-7777. Or send an email to support@abcnews.go.com about Dan Harris' news story.
The claim comes after comments from abortion advocates who allege pregnancy centers "harass and mislead women by telling them ... that abortions can lead to breast cancer, sterility and depression."
Their real objection is that the pro-life pregnancy centers recommend against infanticide.
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What in Dan Blather is wrong with these people.
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The final few seconds of this report focused on children who were saved by CPC and the reporter slipped up and refered to them as "children."
All in all, I think they shot themselves in the foot on this one.
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"The role of spontaneous and induced abortion on breast cancer risk is examined among 267,361 women recruited into the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition between 1992 and 2000. The data were collected from 20 centers, across 9 countries, and included information on a total of 4,805 women with breast cancer, of whom 1,657 reported having ever had any type of abortion. Overall, the relative risk of breast cancer in women who reported ever having had a spontaneous abortion was not significantly elevated when compared with women who reported never having had such an abortion (RR = 1.07, 95% CI = 0.99-1.14). However, there was some evidence of a slight increase in the risk of breast cancer among women who reported having had 2 or more spontaneous abortions (1.20, 1.07-1.35). The relative risk of breast cancer among women who reported ever having had an induced abortion when compared to women who reported never having had an induced abortion was 0.95 (0.87-1.03). Overall, the findings provide further unbiased evidence of the lack of an adverse effect of induced abortion on breast cancer risk."
If you go down this road, there is work that indicates oral contraceptives reduce the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer - so by that standard should he be recommending oral contraceptive use?
retMD
The studies I've seen on premature birth seemed to be pretty solid, however I only saw articles and not the actual reports and studies as they would appear in medical journals, can you comment on the increase in premature births over the years? It certainly appears to be abortion related (cervical damage/weakening) , like you the cancer link never made sense to me but this problem sure seems to be a "no brainer" cause and effect..
I am curious about your views on these studies. To me this entire article seems suspect. On the mental health link, the study is entirely correlational. Why not take the results and conclude that women that have mental health issues or suffer from alcohol/drug abuse or depression are more likely to become accidentally pregnant or resort to abortion when they become pregnant?
I don't see any study that can truly establish cause and effect here. All the studies that I have seen on the link between breast cancer and abortion are also correlational. I strongly support making abortion illegal, and support many organizations that are working towards that goal. However, I don't like deception or inaccuracy. I think that ultrasound is a much better method for convincing women that abortion kills babies. It is honest and persuasive. Any woman that can look at a picture of her baby, and then abort it certainly won't be convinced by the possibility of depression later on.
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My husband saw this report and described how slanted it was.
It was one or two years ago that Eliot Spitzer was considering going after pregnancy crisis centers - to shut them down. It looks like this story is attempting to lay the ground work.
I once received preliminary training to work at a crisis center (then I BECAME pregnant and had to back out :) )
We were instructed to tell the girls/women that the center would provide counseling, contacts with adoption services if needed, help with pregnancy costs and costs associated with caring for newborns (i.e. renting breast pumps, renting car-seats, provide maternal & baby clothes). We would help provide rides to doctor's appointments.
We were instructed to not bring up the subject of abortion unless the client brought it up first. At that point we were to say that we don't provide that service, and we don't offer contact information, but that their services could be located in the phone book.
I thought it was a good way to encourage women to see the help they could receive if they didn't choose abortion.
True: clearly, evil walks the Earth.
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