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If we oppose abortion on moral grounds, we must stick to those grounds. If we try to use statistical
data, we will run into trouble every time, because such arguments can be used either way. You cannot refute a moral argument with any set of statistics.

I tried to use the abortion - breast cancer link to advance the pro-life position with someone at a party, and that person countered with "what about China, where they have widespread abortion and even forced abortion... why doesn't China have the highest breast cancer rates in the world?"

I was not able to answer that.

(steely)

If we try to use statistical data, we will run into trouble every time, because such arguments can be used either way.

And outcomes of "landmark" studies vary from decade to decade, too.

For decades, despite some findings that there might be a connection between hormone replacement therapy for women and breast cancer, the official position was one of reassuring women that they didn't have to worry about breast cancer resulting from HRT.

After all those years of, in effect, using a million women as guinea pigs, we learn at last... .

Long-term hormone replacement linked to breast cancer, One million menopausal women reveal risks of therapy. 08 August 2003
Women taking combination hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) may be twice as likely to develop breast cancer. So concludes a study involving a million British women, the largest ever to probe the suspected link1.
In response to the findings, Britain's drug regulator today changed its HRT advice. Doctors are now required to appraise patients of the risks of prolonged therapy and to discuss the relative costs and benefits with them annually.

You're certainly right, that statistics can be abused. The rightness or wrongness of abortion, itself, does not depend on its increasing or decreasing the chances of breast cancer.

But I hope that women are informed of any health risks they are taking if they elect to have an abortion.

It would be terrible if we learned that these studies, which show there is no connection between abortion and cancer, were undertaken by people with an agenda.

Aborted fetuses can be of value to some researchers. Those researchers and their colleagues might hate to see the supply of fetuses dwindle, if and when women decide to forego abortion.