First ever Abortion-Breast Cancer Settlement [ABORTION causes BREAST CANCER]

December 27, 2001 -- The world's first known abortion-breast cancer settlement has taken place in Australia. News of this settlement comes to light as Australian legislators in Tasmania voted in favor of expanding access to abortion for women. The plaintiff's attorney in the lawsuit, Charles Francis, Queen's Counsel, had cautioned the parliamentarians about the possibility of increased litigation against abortion providers which might occur as a result of expanding abortion rights.

"In Victoria, civil claims for negligence from women suing their abortionists are becoming much more common. Doctors haven't warned them and about 10 per cent have serious psychological repercussions," said Francis.

The plaintiff, who cannot be publicly identified, due to a confidentiality clause in the settlement agreement, alleged her physician had not informed her of the research connecting abortion with an elevated breast cancer risk.

The plaintiff proved her physician failed to secure informed consent, prior to her abortion, which led to this landmark decision.

Since 1957, 28 of 37 studies have concluded abortion increases the risk of breast cancer in women.

Francis commented on the settlement and also discussed additional cases in which plaintiffs alleged they suffered emotionally as a result of their abortions. Francis stated the plaintiffs in the emotional distress cases had obtained "quite large, out of court settlements."

"In Australia, the case of Rogers v. Whitaker in the High Court decided that before any operation a doctor has a duty to warn the patient of any material risks," Francis said. "Abortionists give the women concerned little or no information about the many risks of an abortion. In 1996, two Australian women commenced legal actions because their abortionists gave them no warning that there might be adverse psychiatric consequences. Both these cases were eventually settled for undisclosed amounts."

"Since 1998, cases have commenced which have also claimed the additional failure to warn of an increased risk of breast cancer caused by abortion," continued Francis. "Recently, one of those cases was settled for an undisclosed amount. This is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world. A confidentiality clause, which was part of the settlement, prevents further discussion."

Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, based in Palos Heights, Illinois, said the settlement of the abortion-breast cancer case represented an admission by abortion providers and their medical experts that abortion causes breast cancer. "We're delighted with the settlement of an abortion-breast cancer case. The abortion industry and its medical experts know that it will be far more challenging for them to lie to women about the abortion-breast cancer research when they are called upon to testify under oath." Malec added, "Women and their families are the real victims of this scientific misconduct. Tragically, abortion data from the only Australian abortion-breast cancer study was concealed from Australian women for seven years. Scientists could have spared women a great deal of suffering, if they had only set aside their abortion ideology and published their abortion data."

The Australian study, authored by Thomas E. Rohan et al and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 1988, was conducted on women from Adelaide, Australia. Rohan examined reproductive and dietary risk factors for the disease. Researchers determined Australian women who had abortions increased their risks for breast cancer by 160%. As the study's most significant and only statistically significant risk factor, abortion was unparalleled among all of the variables examined. The elevated risk resulting from induced abortion far and away exceeded that of family history for the disease and even childlessness, according to the research.

Joel Brind, Ph.D., author of a 1996 review and meta-analysis of the abortion-breast cancer studies and president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute located in Poughkeepsie, New York, expressed a sense of horror that researchers would selectively omit data for the most significant risk factor.

At a talk given in 1999 in Malvern, Australia, Brind said, "This is not what you see in scientific research, ever. I've never seen it before, where the most significant finding in a study is specifically left out of a research paper." He concluded, "We hypothesize that there is more of it."

Rohan's abortion data had been buried in a file cabinet, until the publication of a small meta-analysis by French researchers, Nadine Andrieu et al, in the British Journal of Cancer. Andrieu not only reported previously unpublished data, but also found a synergistic effect between induced abortion and a family's history of breast cancer.

Groups Continue to Bury Info About Abortion-Breast Cancer Link

From: The Pro-Life Infonet

Chicago, IL (10.16.01)-- The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer accused Chicago Parent, the Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization and Northwestern University Medical School physician Valerie Staradub, M.D. of falsely reassuring women of the safety of abortion and of minimizing the lifetime risk of breast cancer for American women. Two articles appeared in the October, 2001 issue: the first entitled, "One in eight," by Darcy Lewis; the second entitled, "Myths and Facts about Breast Health," by Eugenia Levenson.

Mrs. Karen Malec, president of the women's group, said "Chicago Parent expects women to believe that the research is pro-life mythology."

Twenty-eight out of 37 studies published over nearly a half of a century, most of which were conducted by abortion supporters, have demonstrated that abortion is a risk factor for breast cancer. They were published in respected journals. A medical book published in 1998 and the 1988 Henderson lecture both say that a first trimester abortion increases risk.[1]

"Chicago Parent and Y-ME would have women believe that scientists publishing in highly regarded journals like the Journal of the National Cancer Institute don't practice science," said Mrs. Malec.

Malec asserted, "The Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health knew in 1986 that abortion causes breast cancer. Their epidemiologists, Phyllis Wingo and Bruce Stadel authored a letter to the journal, Lancet, and said, Induced abortion before first term pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer.' [2] How dare these agencies keep it from women?"

Malec added, "How can Chicago Parent, Y-ME and Valerie Staradub, M.D., a breast surgeon at Northwestern University Medical School, report that having a first full term pregnancy (FFTP) before age 30 and breast feeding reduce risk, but then deny that abortion is linked to breast cancer? How can a childless woman reduce her risk by having an earlier FFTP and breast feeding if she's aborted her child?"

Dr. Staradub relied on two tools currently being employed by the abortion industry to discredit the abortion-breast cancer research: reporting bias theory and the 1997 Melbye study.

The group's website at explains why reporting bias and the Melbye study are not valid reasons to excuse the abortion-breast cancer research.

"Reporting bias theory is a lame excuse for denying a causal relationship," said Mrs. Malec. "There isn't a single study whose scientists presently assert that they've found believable evidence of this phenomenon in the research."

Malec asserted, "Dr. Staradub selectively reported the data. She failed to tell Chicago Parent's readers that the 1997 Melbye study found a statistically significant 89% increased risk among women who'd had abortions after 18 weeks gestation. [3] How is it that she missed the fact that Melbye's publisher, the New England Journal of Medicine, no longer agrees with Melbye's conclusion that abortion has no overall effect on breast cancer risk? The journal identified abortion as a possible risk factor' in February of 2000. [4] Melbye's been severely criticized for its errors. Even a non-scientist could recognize some of the errors." [5]

Malec argued, "If Dr. Staradub and Y-ME want to talk about Chinese studies, why did they omit the Bu study which reported an almost tripling of a Chinese woman's risk if she has a single abortion? A highly regarded scientist, Dr. Janet Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute, co-authored that study." [6]

Malec asked, "Why is the truth being censored from women? We refer Dr. Staradub to the website, , for a Wisconsin Law Review article which discusses the legal liability of physicians who fail to inform their patients of the increased risk."

For women between the ages of 20 and 59, breast cancer is the greatest cause of cancer deaths. Breast cancer rates have increased among American women 40% since 1973 when abortion was legalized.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women's organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

References
1. Robert B. Dickson, Ph.D., Marc E. Lippman, M.D., "Growth Regulation of Normal and Malignant Breast Epithelium," The Breast: Comprehensive Management of Benign and Malignant Diseases, edited by Kirby I. Bland, M.D. and Edward M. Copeland III, M.D.; (1998) W. B. Saunders Company; 2nd edition; Vol. 1, p. 519; and Henderson, B.E., Ross, R., Bernstein, L.;
"Estrogens as a cause of human cancer," The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award Lecture, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California; Cancer Res 48:246-253, 1988.
2. Lancet, Feb. 22, 1986, p. 436.
3. Melbye et al. (1997) N Engl J Med 336:81-5.
4. Armstrong (2000) NEJM 342:564-71.
5. Joel Brind & Vernon Chinchilli, Letter, "Induced Abortion and the Risk of Breast Cancer," 336 NEJM 1834-35 (1997).

6. Bu et al. (1995) Am J Epidemiol 141:S85.

For more information on the link between abortion and breast cancer, see the Abortion section of http://www.prolifeinfo.org

Noted Roe attorney fights for her own life

Women's rights leader faces breast cancer battle

By Natalie Gott / Associated Press

http://www.detnews.com/2001/nation/0112/26/a10-375765.htm

AUSTIN, Texas -- Sarah Weddington spent years fighting for women's rights. Today she is focused on a new cause: her own life.

The 56-year-old attorney who at age 26 argued the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion is battling breast cancer, the most common form of cancer among women. In typical Weddington fashion, she is facing the challenge head-on. She makes breast cancer a familiar topic in her speeches. She named her tumor Darth Vader and has peered through a microscope to study the cancer cells that plague her.

"If you're going to go through something bad, you might as well make it as good as you can," Weddington said. Her doctor has given her a positive prognosis, but battling the disease is tough. Diagnosed in April, Weddington underwent chemotherapy once a week from June through November. She started radiation treatment this month. On a recent weekly doctor's visit, Weddington was upbeat as she recalled arguing Roe vs. Wade before the Supreme Court, her days in the Carter administration and her life. Raised in Abilene, Weddington earned an English and secondary education degree from McMurry University. She told the dean she wanted to go to law school.

"Well, you can't," he told her.

"And I said, 'I have good grades,' and he said, 'No woman from here has ever gone to law school. It would be too tough,' " she recalled.

After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law in August 1967, she couldn't find a job with a firm. "It was just too early for women," she said.

Instead, she took a job assisting one of her law professors with his work for the American Bar Association. In the fall of 1969, some University of Texas graduate students with whom Weddington had been meeting to discuss women's issues approached her, asking if they would be prosecuted for giving people information about getting safe abortions.

She didn't know the answer, but the woman who had an abortion at age 21 in Mexico began to do some research.

"I knew what it was to go to back alleys and how scary that was, and I wanted other people not to go there," Weddington said.

One of the graduate students said she wanted to file a lawsuit challenging Texas' anti-abortion law. Weddington, at first hesitant, asked former classmate Linda Coffee to help with the case.

Their search for a pregnant woman who wanted an abortion led them to Norma McCorvey, who adopted the pseudonym Jane Roe. McCorvey said that while other women at the time were "head over heels with Gloria Steinem," she idolized Weddington.

"She was everything that I always wanted to be," McCorvey said recently. "I wanted to be smart like her." McCorvey, who in 1995 shocked the abortion rights community by joining the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, says she is not bitter about her role in the case and is praying for Weddington. Weddington says she no longer speaks to McCorvey.

Weddington, Coffee and others assembled the case, but it was Weddington who argued before the Supreme Court in 1971 and again in 1972.

"Now, the women who came to me did not say, 'Would you mind doing a U.S. Supreme Court case?' And if they had, I probably would have said, I can't do that,' " Weddington said.

She offers only faint memories of arguing the case because at the time she was so focused on remembering everything she wanted to say to appeal to each of the judges. Her legal arguments included the idea that women should be allowed to decide whether to continue or terminate pregnancies because of the tremendous effect on them.

"When I left, I actually had to say to people, 'What did I say?' What did they ask?' " she said.

Months later, as Weddington was serving her first term as a Texas state representative in January 1973, her office received a call with the news that she had won.

Then came a telegram -- collect -- from the Supreme Court. "If you had said to me then that I would still be talking about it 29 years later, I would never have believed you," she said.

The win propelled her further into the national spotlight, but she continued to serve as a legislator, sponsoring a bill that made it unlawful to deny credit or loans on the basis of sex and later teaming with state Rep. Kay Bailey Hutchinson -- now a U.S. senator -- to pass rape reform laws.

Weddington later became general counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and in 1978 became an assistant to President Jimmy Carter, advising him on women's issues in what she describes as the most exciting job of her career.

She returned to Austin from Washington in the early 1980s to help care for her younger sister, Sue, who had breast cancer. Sue died in September 1984.

"Because she had breast cancer, I thought I would have something else," Weddington said. "I just never considered I would have breast cancer."

Weddington continued practicing law until nearly four years ago, after the 25th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. She wanted to spend more time writing and giving speeches. She also teaches gender discrimination and leadership classes at the University of Texas.

Former Gov. Ann Richards first met Weddington during the Austin attorney's campaign that made her the first female from Travis County elected to the Texas Legislature. "I was so taken with her and so impressed with her composure, with her maturity," Richards said. "She was certain of herself. You knew that you were dealing with someone who was very smart, who had a lot of self-confidence and who was willing to take risks."

At the doctor's office, Weddington bemoaned the loss of her hair, but laughed as another patient talked about looking like a burglar with a bandana covering her bald head. That patient and her two visitors whispered and nudged each other when they realized they were chatting with Weddington. One later peppered her with questions about the famous case and Texas politics.

Weddington answered graciously, even as a tired look crossed her face when the chemotherapy began to take effect.

"Everybody thinks their life is a progression," Weddington said. "So when you've done a Supreme Court case when you're in your 20s, what do you do for your 30s, 40s and 50s?"

"Brag about it," suggested one worker in the clinic.

Weddington says she's proud to be known as the attorney who won the case legalizing abortion, but she is always looking for another way to leave her mark. To that end, she is participating in a study that compares chemotherapy treatments to see which works best. She has written columns about her fight against cancer for the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. And, she has collected several notebooks of e-mails, cards and other symbols of encouragement from friends and strangers.

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