Does anyone know of any statistics of women in their 20's getting breast cancer before Roe v. Wade and after Row v. Wade??
If what pro-lifers say is true, very few women in their 20's would have had breast cancer before Roe v. Wade.
I understand that today, with all the screenings and advancement in treatment options, many women in their 20's are getting breast cancer, some dying from it.
I have some statistics, though the ones I really want are not yet up on the web.
First of all; keep in mind that there are
several statistical relationships you will want to track simultaneously to develop an answer to the quesiton you want. 1) The
Incidence of Abortions after Rowe v. Wade
over time -- or how many occurred in each year since 1973. 2) The
Age Distribution of those women receiving abortions
over time -- or what is the distribution by age group of those women having abortions. 3) The
Incidence of Breast Cancer over time -- or how have breast cancer diagnoses been tracked before and after Roe v. Wade. 4) The
Age Distribution of the Incidence of Breast Cancer over time -- or at what age were women diagnosed with breast cancer.
I could also introduce some other trends you might want to track, but these are the minimal group and I'll tell you why. First of all; keep in mind that the relationship between a woman having an abortion and later contracting breast cancer will not be one that shows up immediately. You would likely expect that it would take a number of years for cancer to surface after an abortion IF the fact of the abortion is a cause. I'm just hypothesizing here, but it would seem to me that a woman who had an abortion in her 20's might not expect to be diagnosed with cancer until her 30's. So the proper method of tracking the influence of abortion on breast cancer rates will be to identify how many women within a given age group have abortions in any given year and then track that age group over time to see if their is a heightened statistical probability of breast cancer in years to come, ideally ruling out other possible causes to isolate the correlation between abortion and breast cancer.
Also keep in mind that abortion rates have not remained constant in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade. I'm not certain of this right now, but I seem to remember that there was a decline in the abortion rate in the late 1980's and into the 1990's. Am I right about that? Maybe you can tell me. At any rate, the likelihood of fluctuations -- whether up or down -- in the rates for both the incidence of abortion and the incidence of breast cancer would be important to tracking a relationship between the two.
And ideally, you would want to "regress" the incidence of breast cancer "against" the incidence of abortion for some time period prior to the diagnosis of cancer (to permit a causative relationship to take place) and then draw a partial correlation that strengthens the relationship between the two by factoring out other possible causes such as family risk factors, incidence of estrogen therapy (a known cause for breast cancer, my mom was in this group), and other known causes. Got that? LOL! Forgive me, but I have been trained as a Research Analyst, so crunching numbers, especially demographic statistics, is well known to me, even though I work as a software developer now.
With all of that in mind, what have I found for you? Well, it's not much, but here it is.
The best statistics that are from the Surveillance Epedemiology and End Results (SEER) branch of the National Cancer Institute. At the following link:
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html?statfacts_page=breast.html&x=15&y=17
You will find the "joinpoint trend in SEER cancer incidence and mortality" for breast cancer from 1975-2003. What that means is you get to track the "Annual Percentage Change" in incidence and mortality for breast cancer from 1975-2003 (does it go up or down?). And here is that data:
Incidence and Mortality for Breast Cancer Among Women, All Races: 1975-2003
Figures Show "Annual Percentage Change" over Previous Years
| Statistic |
1975-1980 |
1980-1987 |
1987-2001 |
2001-2003 |
| Incidence |
-0.4 |
+3.7 |
+0.4 |
-4.8 |
| Mortality |
+0.4 |
-1.8 |
-3.1 |
-1.4 |
I would draw your attention immediately to the two cell entries for "Incidence" (row 1) for 1980-1987 and 1987-2001, both of which show a consistent trend upwards in the incidence of breast cancer after Roe v. Wade in general, but that is only of limited utility. What we do NOT have here is data which shows the distribution across specific age groups. I found a couple of statistical analyses listed in the SEER database that were not filled out in the .pdf files when I opened them, which I believe would have given me that information. But I do have a broad overview of one statistic I want to show you that lends at least a little more support to the notion that increased incidences of abortion may lead to increased incidences of breast cancer later in life. You might also notice that while the
incidence of breast cancer is
increasing in those years, the
mortality from the disease is dropping. If younger women were being diagnosed in greater numbers during those years this is what you would likely expect, given that they should have more robust physiques. Again, this does not prove the point, because more age-specific data is needed, but it does not weaken the hypothesis either.
In the page at the following link:
http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2003/results_single/sect_04_table.01.pdf
Incidence of Breast Cancer Among Women, Below 50 and Over 50: 1975-2003
Figures Show "Annual Percentage Change" over Previous Years
| Age Group |
1975-1980 |
1980-1986 |
1986-2003 |
| Under 50 |
-1.4 |
+3.0 |
-0.3 |
| Over 50 |
+0.8 |
+5.8 |
+0.7 |
Note "Under 50" for "1980-1986" and "1986-2003." That is a large increase for the first cell entry and only a very modest decrease for the second. These contain the women who would have had abortions in the previous ten years or so and, when you factor in overall increases in medical science, it might just help to explain the figures. The only "contrary" piece of data in all of this is the "Over 50" cell entry for "1980-1986," which shows a large annual percentage increase in the same period that you see it among younger women, which suggests there may have been more going on than just abortion in the previous 15 - 20 years. But again, without good age-specific data it is hard to tell.
So Coleus, to sum it all up, a brief review of what statistical evidence there is as returned from an initial web search does nothing to refute the hypothesis that abortion may lead to an increased risk factor for breast cancer later in life, though an absence of more age-specific data limits our ability to discern much more than the most abstract possibilities as of now.
And I must repeat that I am looking at the statistics without having recourse to incidence of abortions, which is necessary for the comparisons to make sense.
So; even though it took me over an hour to prepare this post, I noted a genuine desire to protect the unborn in your posted sentiments Coleus, a sentiment I applaud, so I didn't mind one bit. It was time well spent.