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Abortion and breast cancer – What women still aren’t being told?
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By Brendan Malone
New Zealand celebrated Breast Cancer Awareness Month. All round the country buildings and monuments were lit bright pink at night, street appeals were held, and items about breast cancer and early detection became a regular feature on the evening news and primetime TV advertisements.
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But yet again, one important aspect of this issue was completely ignored; the link between abortion and breast cancer.
It has become common place for breast cancer advocates to vehemently attack any suggestion that abortion increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer, yet the fact remains that approximately 27 out of 35 studies worldwide show increased risk associated with induced abortion, 17 with statistical significance.1 Even the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation lists ‘having few or no pregnancies’ in its list of conditions that increase your risk of developing breast cancer.2
Despite this, pro-abortion groups, the media and many in the medical community either ignore this research or purposely try to discredit it either flawed studies of their own.
The Coalition on Abortion / Breast Cancer (CABC) issued a press release about a new Oxford study which denies the link between abortion and breast cancer.3
This study, authored by Gillian Reeves, is the fifth Oxford study since 1982 to claim that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer, but just like the other four studies this one contains serious flaws in its methodology which casts grave doubt on the conclusions it makes.
The first Oxford study, Vessey et al., published in 1982, made the boldly reassuring claim that “The results are entirely reassuring, being, in fact, more compatible with protective effects (of abortion) that the reverse.”4
Yet closer inspection by other researchers revealed that the study’s findings were completely unscientific, due to the fact that it had included ‘only a handful of women’ that had actually had abortion.5 In the latest Oxford study, the authors actually concede that childbearing reduces the risk of abortion, but they fail to compare the effect of having an abortion with the effect of having a full term pregnancy.
Two breast cancer risks are associated with abortion – the loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy (the universally recognized risk) and the independent link (the debated risk). This new Oxford study, however, examines only the second risk.
The independent link address this question: Does the woman who had an abortion have a higher breast cancer risk than she would if she hadn’t had that pregnancy? By contrast, the first risk (omitted by Reeves et al.) addresses the question: Does the woman who has an abortion have a greater risk than the woman who has a full term pregnancy?
Experts universally agree that post abortive women do have a higher risk than women who have their babies.
Professor Joel Brind, president of the Breast cancer Prevention Institute, maintains that the methodology in the latest Oxford study is “seriously flawed in the direction of covering up the link.”6 In the new Oxford study; both abortions and breast cancer diagnosis were included right up to the same year – 2000. Many women were over 40 when abortion was legalized in their respective countries. Therefore, many younger women with recent abortions were compared to older breast cancer patients who were too old to have been exposed to legal abortions during most of their fertile years.
Brind said, “This sort of bad science is becoming disappointingly familiar. It is similar to the flaws in the Danish study, Melbye et al. 1997.”7,8 The new Oxford research (Reeves et al.) is one of 28 studies with unpublished abortion data that had been included in a review of 52 studies for the Lancet medical journal in 2004.9
The review, Oxford’s fourth attempt to cover up the link, is still used to mislead women about the cancer risk. Four experts have criticized the review, all independently of one another. 10.11.12.13.14
Last year, Dr. Joel Brind authored a review of ten studies11, including two Oxford papers.15, 16 He concluded that they “embody many serious weaknesses and flaws” and “do not invalidate” the larger body of research supporting a link.
While none of the women involved in the more than 18,000 cases of abortion that happen annually in New Zealand are warned about the increased risk of breast cancer, more than 5 women a day, every day, are diagnosed with breast cancer in this country.
Once again we are forced to ask; why are women and their families being denied the full facts about such a serious health issue? The only logical conclusion one can draw is that the medical establishment, the media and the various lobby groups now consider legalized abortion more important than a woman’s health, or her right to know all of the facts.
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1. www.abortionbreastcancer.com/start/
2. www.nzbcf.org.nz/breastcancer/facts_in_nz.asp
3. www.abortionbreastcancer.com/start/
4. Vessey M, et al. Oral contraceptive use and abortion before first term pregnancy in relation to breast cancer risk. Br J Cancer 1982;45-327.
5. Vessey M, et al. Oral contraceptive use and abortion before first term pregnancy in relation to breast cancer risk. Br J Cancer 1982;45-327.
6. Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer Press release, October 18, 2006; “Oxford Study Denying Abortion-cancer Link “Seriously Flawed in the Direction of Covering up the Link”.
7. Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer Press release, October 18, 2006; “Oxford Study Denying Abortion-cancer Link “Seriously Flawed in the Direction of Covering up the Link”.
8. Melbye M, Wohlfahrt J, Olson JH, Frisch M, Westergaard T, Helweg-Larsen K, Anderson PK, Induced abortion and the risk of breast cancer. N Engl J Med 1997;336-81-85.
9. Beral V, Bull D, Doll R, Peto R, Reeves G. Collaborative Group of Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer. Breast cancer and abortion: collaborative reanalysis of data from 53 epidemiological studies, including 83,000 women with breast cancer from 16 countries. Lancet 2007;363:1007-16.
10. brind J. The abortion-breast cancer connection. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly Summer 2005;p.303-32. www.AbortionBreastCancer.com/Brind-NCBQ.PDF.
11. Brind J. Induced abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer: A critical review of recent studies based on prospective data. J Am Phys Surg Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter 2005) 105-110. Available at: www.jpands.org/vol10no4/
12. Lanfranchi A. The abortion-breast cancer link revisited. Ethics and Medics (November 2004) Vol. 29, No. 11, p/.1-4. available at: www.abortionbreastcancer.com/news/041120/index.htm
13. Furton E. Editorial. The corruption of science by ideology. Ethics and Medics (Dec. 2004) vol. 29, No. 11. p.1-2. Available at: www.abortionbreastcancer.com/E+MDec2004-EFurtonarticle.PDF.
14. Schafly A. Legal implications of a link between abortion and breast cancer. J Am Phys Surgeons 2005;10:11-14. Available at: www.jpands.org/vol10no1/aschafly.pdf.
15. Brewster D, Stockton D, Dobbie R, bull D, Beral D. Risk of breast cancer after miscarriage or induced abortion: a Scottish record linkage case-control study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2005;59:283-287.
16. Goldacre MJ; Kurina LM, Seagroatt V, Yeates. Abortion and breast cancer: a cas-control record linkage study. J Epidemiol Community Health 2001;55-336-337.
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