The abortion-breast cancer connection.
Issues in Law & Medicine › Vol. 21 Nbr. 2, September 2005
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The abortion-breast cancer connection.
ABSTRACT: This article examines the abortion breast cancer link in some historical scientific detail, offering a perspective on an issue that is at the center of a long-running public policy debate that plays out in legislatures, courtrooms, and newspaper editorials, as well as in scientific and medical journals. Even as politically correct studies have been promulgated to neutralize the data proving the abortion breast cancer link, even stronger data have emerged in recent years that firmly link abortion to premature births in subsequent pregnancies, which in turn raise the risk of breast cancer in mothers and cerebral palsy in prematurely born children.
********** The reputation of abortion as safe for women--which claim is explicitly part of the Roe v. Wade decision--has rightfully come under serious question for many reasons over the years since Roe. One of the reasons that "safe abortion" has come under question is the evidence linking abortion to an increased risk of breast cancer (ABC link). The ABC link has been an issue that has been in and out of the limelight in recent years. It is an issue which has stubbornly refused to go away despite recurrent pronouncements from high places of its nonexistence. A recent example is a 2004 article in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet. (1) The paper was promoted by the mainstream media as "a full analysis of the current data." (2) According to the byline on the paper, the results of all these studies were compiled into a "collaborative reanalysis," by the "Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer," a group of authors too numerous to list. However, a small print footnote reveals that the study was actually put together by a group of five scientists at Oxford University, headed by prominent British epidemiologist Valerie Beral. The Beral study's conclusion is unequivocal: "Pregnancies that end as a spontaneous or induced abortion do not increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer." (3) This conclusion is remarkably reminiscent of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) statement given on its "Cancer Facts" web page on "Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk," carried on the NCI website since the spring of 2003. (4) On this "fact sheet," the NCI concludes that "having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer." The trouble is, to accept this conclusion, one needs to dismiss almost half a century's worth of data which do show a significant link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer. Beral et al. suggest that those previous studies "yielded misleading results," (5) and that one should trust the largest, most recent studies (i.e., those which show no ABC link). Such apparently knowledgeable pronouncements seem just a bit too self-assured in an age when concerns about women's health reign supreme. If one can be certain of anything about the ABC link, it is surely that the question of its very existence is important enough for a careful evaluation, given the millions who choose abortion and the tens of thousands who die of breast cancer each year. The present work will therefore examine the ABC link in some historical and scientific detail, offering a perspective on an issue that is at the center of a longrunning public policy debate that, having been sucked into the maelstrom of the "abortion wars," plays out in legislatures and courtrooms and newspaper editorials, as well as in scientific and medical journals. Early History of the ABC Link Neither the ABC link nor the efforts to suppress it are new; the first published study to document it occurred almost half a century ago. Over the years, denial of the ABC link has become the party line of all major governmental agencies (including the World Health Organization (6) [WHO]), mainstream medical associations (including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (7) and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (8), and the most prestigious medical journals (including the New England Journal of Medicine (9)). A 1957 nationwide study...See the full content of this document
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