Posted on 02/16/2003 9:24:20 AM PST by toenail
Breast cancer and abortion: the facts
When I first heard of the link between abortion and breast cancer, in 1993, I thought it was a pro-life fantasy. "That's crazy," was my initial response. However, out of curiosity I changed the history form I used in my work as a breast surgeon, asking each woman the order and outcome of all pregnancies. The results surprised me. In the first six months I had two patients in their 30s with breast cancer; one had had seven pregnancies and six abortions, the other five pregnancies and three abortions. I continued to see more and more young women with a history of abortion, developing breast cancer. Of course, I may have been witnessing a statistical fluke. But then, in 1996, City University of New York Professor Joel Brind published his meta-analysis, which revealed 23 of 28 studies showing a link between abortion and breast cancer. The uproar that study caused in Britain, where it was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, prompted the editor to write: "I believe that if you take a view (as I do) which is pro-choice, you need at the same time to have a view which might be called pro-information without excessive paternalistic censorship (or interpretation) of the data." Paternalistic censorship is what I experience every time I try to speak on the science supporting the abortion-breast cancer link. About 85 per cent of cigarette smokers do not get lung cancer. Doctors who tell their patients of the risk of lung cancer are not labelled fear-mongers. Similarly, not all women who have had an abortion will get breast cancer; only 5 per cent will develop the disease. And 95 per cent of breast cancer patients will not have a history of abortion. But some women are at especially high risk. And 5 per cent still adds up to a lot of women. The 1994 Daling study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showed that teenagers younger than 18 who had abortions between nine and 24 weeks had nearly a 30 per cent chance of getting breast cancer in their lifetimes. The US National Cancer Institute's web page on reproductive risk informs women there are studies that show this link. Many people ask me about first trimester miscarriage. This is quite different, in its effect on the woman's breasts, from induced abortion of a normal pregnancy. Miscarriages do not increase breast cancer risk, since they are associated with low oestrogen levels that do not cause breast growth. However, when pregnancy is terminated before the breast cells reach full maturity, a woman is left with more immature type 1 and 2 breast lobules (milk glands) than before her pregnancy started, and therefore is at increased risk. Her breasts never mature to type 3 and 4 lobules, which would have occurred in the third trimester and would have lowered her risk. Ideology should not prevent the dissemination of this information. Australia's breast cancer organisations are not helping women exercise informed consent when they deny them this knowledge. There are three legal actions in the US by women who were not told of the link before having an abortion. As Dr Janet Daling, who identifies herself as being pro-choice, says: "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." Information only empowers women to make informed choices. Women who choose abortions need to be aware that they are at higher risk, so they will have mammograms earlier and more regularly. Cancers found on mammograms are more likely to be stage 1 and curable. No woman should die of breast cancer because she was not warned. I watched my mother die of metastatic breast cancer. In my practice, I see young women with small children die of breast cancer. If the information I give patients can prevent a single death from a completely avoidable risk, I will gladly pay the price of being labelled a fear-monger. Dr Angela Lanfranchi is a breast cancer surgeon, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and clinical assistant professor of surgery at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. She is on a speaking tour of Australia, which is sponsored by, among others, several pro-life organisations.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/16/1045330466585.html
February 17 2003
God Bless the millions of innocent babes. Pass it on.
It looks as if there's not only a connection between abortion and breast cancer, but the actual mechanism for the connection may be evident. That's more than you can say about the connection between smoking and lung cancer.
It used to be said, "It ain't nice to fool Mother Nature." I suspect that women who interfere with life's natural cycles through abortion or hormone treatment are taking considerable risks.
And how's your to-do list going?
I think the whole liberal Democrat lifestyle is the cause of the Marin County breast cancer problem: abortion, hormone therapy, teenage and adult drug use, excessive alchohol consumption, multiple sexual partners, and irrational anger at Republicans. ;)
Have you ever taken courses in statistical methodology and study design, or designed a biomedical study yourself? There are all sorts of confounds even in a study like the one you cite. The Danish study might have examined health-care records, but the health care records from one's primary-care provider (clinic, hospital, or physician) may well not show a private procedure like abortion, which many women consider to be so intimate a procedure that they don't even admit it to their families.
I'm working for a major longitudinal medical study right now. It's amazing how little patients remember or know about their own health and their own history. They even forget the names of all the providers they've seen just in the past year. If a woman had an abortion 10 years ago, half the time she won't remember who did it, how his name was spelled, and where his office was located so that the study can go get the records from that provider. It's hard to believe but even an effort like this one, which seeks to get the patient's health records, can't provide an accurate picture of her history of abortion if any.
Bump
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