Breast cancer and abortion: the facts

The Age ^ | February 17 2003 | Dr Angela Lanfranchi

[toenail]

Breast cancer and abortion: the facts

February 17 2003

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

[nickcarraway]

I think black women have higher rates of breast cancer and death from breast cancer. Obviously abortion is not the only risk factor-but it can be an extreme one.

[nickcarraway]

ping

[pyx]

An agenda maybe!

Yours ?

Here I was thinking Libertarians didn't believe in initiating force and yet, jamming a pair of scissors into the base of an infant's skull and decapitating and dismembering him inside the birth canal before sucking his parts into a sink somehow doesn't sound too passive.

[briant]

Miscarriages do not increase breast cancer risk, since they are associated with low oestrogen levels that do not cause breast growth

Junk science alert!

First, most miscarriages are caused by a genetic defect in the fetus, not by low estrogen levels in the mother.

I can't tell why you have a problem whith the statment you italicized.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Because 1) low estrogen is NOT the cause of most miscarriages, 2) in the cases where it is, the women in question would have a lower than normal risk for breast cancer to begin with, and 3) in the majority of miscarriages, which are NOT caused by low estrogen, the author's claim of a scientific explanation for a different effect on breast cancer risk depending on whether a first trimester pregnancy is terminated naturally or artificially, goes out the window -- because it was based on hte non-factual allegation that low estrogen is the cause for the difference.

BTW, last year abortion-breast-cancer-link promoter Saundra Duffy posted a transcript of an interview with the leading "researcher" who touts this link, Dr. Joel Brind, in which he said his research showed that miscarriage caused the same elevated breast cancer risk as induced abortions. I think he's changed his tune since then, as he realized it wasn't popular with the let's-fight-abortion-by-scaring-women-about-breast-cancer crowd, which is basically his only audience.

[GovernmentShrinker]

By whom? The fat rights activists? All the real research I've seen continues to say there's a clear connection.

[GovernmentShrinker]

The increased risk of breast cancer from excess weight is both solidly proven and statistically higher than the abortion-breast-cancer-link researchers claims of the risk increase from abortion. So if the risk is so small from increased weight that it's not worth doctors and counselors bringing it up routinely, why should anyone be expected to bring up the smaller ALLEGED risk from abortion?

Either it's important to warn women about ways they can reduce their risk of breast cancer or it isn't. If prospective abortion is the only situation in which abortion-breast-cancer-link activists are chastising doctors and counselors for not discussing breast cancer risk with patients (and it is), then obviously reducing breast cancer is not their real objective.

[Scupoli]

I'm sorry but from what I have seen you have absolutely zero medical knowledge or experience. You do not even know the basics of obstetrical science. I do not know what "studies" you are looking at, but all the responsible medical research thus far has disputed a link. The only people continuing in this direction are desperate pro-aborts. Even pro-abortion physicians have given up on this link. It works in theory but is negligible in reality.

There is no epidemic of breast cancer among fat women. Plenty of thin women get it.

[Scupoli]

So if the risk is so small from increased weight that it's not worth doctors and counselors bringing it up routinely

Because more women die from heart disease than breast cancer and obesity is a factor in a multitude of diseases, including some but not all types of cancer.

[briant]

I thought he was saying that the spontaneous abortions were correlated with low estrogen not caused by it. E.g., a genetic defect may be sensed and the normal hormonal response may not occur, and a deliberate abortion correlated with the normal estrogen levels for that time of pregancy and the effect on the breast they have could lead to problems if tampered with in mid- stream. Or something along those lines.

I don't know if he is bs'ing or not but that was what I though the was saying.

[Saundra Duffy]

Major ping. www.AbortionBreastCancer.com

[Saundra Duffy]

Politics Sours Science at National Cancer Institute 3/4/2003

“The NCI should be above politics, and not a factory for junk science.”

Washington, D.C. – Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America, warned the National Cancer Institute (NCI) not to post misinformation on the agency Web site denying the link between abortion and breast cancer.

“The National Cancer Institute has decided that protecting women's health is less important than avoiding politically sensitive topics, and they should be ashamed,” said Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America. “What was supposed to be a colloquium among scientists about the link between induced abortion and subsequent breast cancer turned into a whitewash.

"The NCI panelists dismissed the best research on the subject -- including that commissioned by the NCI itself -- on the patronizing claim that women can't be expected to tell the truth about their own medical history.”

NCI did not invite Janet Dahling, from the Fred Hutchison Cancer Center in Seattle, to present a paper at the conference. She was the chief researcher in a study funded by NCI that found a strong relationship between abortion and breast cancer.

The conference relied almost solely on a defective study of Danish medical records. The Danish records survey does not count abortions prior to 1973, even though abortion had been legal in Denmark since the 1930s, thereby eliminating all the abortion-related cancer among older women in the sample cohort. In addition, in its review of the cases of younger women, the Danish survey confirms that higher rates of breast cancer are found among abortion survivors.

“The patent dishonesty of the NCI's report on this subject raises real doubts about the Institute's credibility,” said Rios. “The NCI should be above politics, and not a factory for junk science.”

For Information Contact:
Rebecca Riggs
(202) 488-7000
media.cwfa.org

[FourtySeven]

Interesting. Excellent article, thanks; one for the bookmarks!