New Study Shows Abortion is 'Best Predictor of Breast Cancer'

LifeSiteNews ^ | 10/3/07 | LifeSiteNews

[bjs1779]

Correlation does not imply or prove causation.

The report indeed did not directly examine this question:

Just of the hell of it, do you two believe in abortion?

[narses]

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[EternalVigilance]

An article I wrote last year for a print publication. This study is just one more link in the chain:

Women have the right to know that 28 out of 37 worldwide studies have independently linked induced abortion with breast cancer. Thirteen out of fifteen studies conducted on American women report increased risk. Seventeen studies are statistically significant, sixteen of which found increased risk. Almost all of the studies have been conducted by abortion-supporters.

The incidence of breast cancer increased by 0.3 percent, (or 211,000 cases) per year from 1987 to 2002. According to Professor Joel Brind, the president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, “Abortion is an elective surgical procedure and a woman’s exposure to the hormones of early pregnancy -- if it is interrupted -- is so great, that just one interrupted pregnancy is enough to make a significant difference in her risk”

Because American women already face a high lifetime risk of developing breast cancer of about 12.5 percent, boosting that risk by even a small percentage through the procurement of a single induced abortion is comparable to the risk of lung cancer from longterm heavy smoking.

Jane Orient, M.D., a spokeswoman for the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, said, “If you look at the number of studies that show a connection, they vastly outnumber the ones that don’t, and the ones that don’t have been criticized for serious methodological flaws.”

She also reported that “the elevated risk is substantial, particularly in women who abort their first pregnancy at a young age and who have a family history of breast cancer.”

She added, “I think (doctors) should inform patients about this,” and the information “should include the potential connection with breast cancer as well as the long-term psychological risk.” According to the American Cancer Society: “Much of the long-term underlying increase among women is due to historical patterns, such as delayed child-bearing and having fewer children.”

As David Ripley of Idahoans for Life points out, “abortion is by far the most significant change that has occurred in reproductive patterns in the United States.”

Our congratulations go to West Virginia for joining six other states, Louisiana, Kansas, Texas, Mississippi, Montana and Minnesota, in passing informed consent laws concerning the abortion/breast cancer link!

The West Virginia law mandates that information on the breast cancer/abortion link be given to women who are considering abortions. It even requires specific language in the printed materials that reads as follows: “Breast Cancer: Studies show that women who have children before age 30 have a lower risk of breast cancer than those who have children later in life or no children at all.

Findings from other studies suggest an increased risk of breast cancer among women who had one or more abortions.”

On an important political note, it should be pointed out that West Virginia’s Legislature is led by and composed of a large Democratic Party majority. The well-documented link between abortion and breast cancer should be a nonpartisan issue. Unfortunately, some are more interested in catering to the powerful abortion industry lobby than they are in clear science and women’s health.

[Amelia]

Just of the hell of it, do you two believe in abortion?

I can't speak for M. Dodge Thomas, but speaking for myself:

Do I believe abortion exists, or do I believe that it's moral?

I believe that abortion is murder. That doesn't mean I think this study proves it causes breast cancer, however.

[Amelia]

Would miscarriages, which are also early terminators of pregnancies, tend to have the same effect?

[Caramelgal]

Countries don’t get breast cancer, women do.

Good point. I read the abstract and for this reason and others, I found its logic and hypothesis rather faulty.

First of all Patrick Carroll is statistician, not a medical researcher. That’s not to say he’s completely wrong and abortion could very well be a risk factor for breast cancer but he took the abortion rates of some Western European countries and the rates of breast cancer of those same countries and made some rather broad assumptions based on what he saw as parallels in those two statistics. He took some trends and is making predictions on those trends without quantifying how the data will confirm those predictions. According to this study, if for instance the abortion rate among women is 50% and the incident of breast cancer is also 50% then abortion is the cause and 100% of the women who had abortions should get breast cancer. It’s a meaningless statistic unless you can make a direct correlation of the incidence of breast cancer of women who had abortions vs. those who did not and factor in other causes.

What he didn’t look at was the history of women who actually developed breast cancer and whether or not they had any abortions and that would be key.

His study didn’t account for other known risk factors. I would like to know for instance if countries with higher abortion rates also had higher occurrences of other known risk factors, like smoking, Diethylstilbestrol (DES) Exposure, the ages at which the women started menstruation and menopause, previous chest radiation, alcohol use, obesity and physical activity as these are all well known and documented risk factors. How do the statistics of those risk factors in countries with higher abortion rates compare with countries with lower abortion rates?

It is also important to note that heredity, genetics and race also play a factor as women with an inherited BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation have up to an 80% chance of developing breast cancer during their lifetime and BRCA mutations are found most often in Jewish women of Ashkenazi (Eastern Europe) origin, although they can occur in any racial or ethnic group but White women are slightly more likely to develop breast cancer than are African-American women.

Carroll suggests that the known preference for abortion in this class might explain the phenomenon. Women pursuing higher educations and professional careers often delay marriage and childbearing. Abortions before the birth of a first child are highly carcinogenic.

The words “suggests” and “might” shows he is making a hypothesis here. Did he really look at the rates of abortion among the social classes?

I think there are a lot of good reasons to oppose abortion as I do, but junk science and faulty studies are not at the top of my list of reasons. I don’t like junk science and faulty studies and skewed statistics to support global warm claims either.

I also have a family member and two close friends who have been diagnosed with breast cancer who, I am very confident, never had any abortions. My sister-in-law is a devout Catholic and never took birth control and after marrying my brother, had her first child in her early twenties and then two more children in five years. She is a smoker however with a family history of cancer including breast cancer so abortion did cause her cancer. Gratefully she is also a 15 year survivor after a double mastectomy and two rounds of chemo and several reconstructive surgeries. While both of her two daughters had their first children at a young age, late teens and early twenties and have both had other children since, their family history of breast cancer dicated that they get mammograms every two years.

[ga medic]

I despise planned parenthood, and I believe that abortion is murder and should not be legal. However, this information isn’t really information. It is a correlation comparison between countries. It cannot be used to prove or disprove anything. Abortion may in fact increase breast cancer risk, and it might lower it. There is absolutely no way to tell from this “scientific” study.

[ga medic]

Your comments are rational and reasonable. This is why I don’t like LifeNews. They get pro-lifers excited with their news articles, but others (the ones we want to convince) see it for the meaningless correlation study it is. It makes the movement look ignorant at best and deceptive at worst.

[Fairview]

As we were warned, the wages of sin is death.

[diamond6]

I’m curious... could a natural miscarriage increase one’s chances of breast cancer?

[mountainbunny]

Correlation does not prove causation.
Sorry, it simply doesn’t.

[mountainbunny]

You didn't ask me, but since I posted a similar sentiment (that correlation is not proof of causation), I will answer your question since I won't be back tonight:

I am not pro-abortion, but I do believe in science. For example, if you are going to use science to show the early development of fetuses as a reason not to abort, IMO, you can't pick and choose.

I say this for two reasons: fudge facts to suit your case & your case is lost. If you (the generic you, of course) weren't telling the truth about abortion being a direct link to cancer, were you telling the truth when you said a fetus is an individual? If people can throw away part of your argument, they will throw it all away and your point will be lost.

And two, I think it is morally wrong to present a side you know to be wrong. Correlation does not imply causation. Unless you can say that 1000 women had abortions and more of them had cancer than 1000 women who didn't (plus a control group) there is no proof. That study does not exist. This study does not prove that abortion causes cancer.

It is the truth & not shortcuts around it that will set us free.

[EternalVigilance]

That doesn't mean I think this study proves it causes breast cancer, however.

The evidence is pretty overwhelming.

...28 out of 37 worldwide studies have independently linked induced abortion with breast cancer. Thirteen out of fifteen studies conducted on American women report increased risk. Seventeen studies are statistically significant, sixteen of which found increased risk. Almost all of the studies have been conducted by abortion-supporters.

[topher]

Womens lives are being lost because of the liberal denial.

There was a Breast Cancer Surgeon in New Jersey who ignored Abortion as a risk factor in her patients until she was alarmed at how young some of her patients were -- in their 20s.

She decided to start tracking risk factors, and she independently came to the conclusion that what the pro-life people had been saying was true.

She has been a part of the Abortion-Breast Cancer web page for some time -- vainly trying to get the word out.

The point being if people realize how abortion increases the risk of cancer, they might opt for adoption... Some of the Breast Cancer fund raising events are feminist dominated events where trying to get the message out that abortion might be a factor falls on death ears...

[LukeL]

Never thought about it in a literal sense, but it seems people who lead a lifestyle contrary to God’s plan tend to selfdestruct and die at an early age.

[topher]

The truth about Abortion and Breast Cancer is the following:

Science teaches that the first time a girl/woman is pregnant and her breasts are not developed, they start developing. If the pregnancy is terminated part way through this process, a hormone is deprived of the breasts and the development of the girl's/woman's breast stop UNNATURALLY.

This is the link found to breast cancer.

Now I am giving you the shorthand explanation.

If you want the detailed explanation:

Biological Explanation (Abortion-Breast Cancer Web page) -- http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/biology/index.htm

One of the people that worked on this is Dr. Angela Franchioni (spelling?). She was a Breast Cancer Surgeon who started seeing an alarming rate of younger women (in their 20s) coming down with Breast Cancer.

She did not believe in the Abortion-Breast Cancer link until she forced her patients to start writing down information about their pregnancies... The results she came up with surprising -- to make her dedicate her time to the Abortion - Breast Cancer link...

[topher]

The person I was referring to is:

Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, MD FACS, Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in Piscataway, New Jersey.

As a breast cancer surgeon, she became alarmed at what was happening, and she did her own analysis that led her to the conclusion that there was a significant link between abortion and breast cancer.

I believe she found that the least risk of breast cancer occurred with girls who got pregnant at an early age and had the baby.

She found a significant increase in breast cancer in girls about the same age (very young) who got pregnant, but aborted.

The science behind this is that having a baby at an early age develops the breasts.

Abortion, on the other hand, starts the development of the breasts, and then unnaturally halts that development with the abrupt termination of the pregnancy.

[L.N. Smithee]

If the number one cause of breast cancer was ANYTHING ELSE, this would be on the front page of every paper in the world, but as it stands it will be buried.

Amen. This comes days after every network newscast had among its top stories the study about the link of alcohol to breast cancer. But when I saw this thread, I said to myself, "It's gotta be from LifeSiteNews.com -- no MSM outlet would dare."

[topher]

Both of the party front-runners are in trouble over this issue: both Guiliani and Hillary Clinton have advocated abortion as a safe choice for girls/women.

This is an issue that Fred Thompson can skillfully use against both of the current front-runners -- the liberal Democrat front-runner (Hillary Clinton) and the liberal Republican front-runner (Rudy Guiliani).

The Fred Thompson folks and conservative talk radio needs to jump all over this issue.

All these women, when they see how misled they are, (and how stupid Hillary is), might jump on the Fred Thompson bandwagon.

One thing a Good Candidate for president is one that has the savvy and knowledge of the facts.

Even Planned Parenthood has known about this for a long time (the abortion breast cancer link), but they have buried it because it goes against their interests...

[Gondring]

This is why I don’t like LifeNews. They get pro-lifers excited with their news articles, but others (the ones we want to convince) see it for the meaningless correlation study it is. It makes the movement look ignorant at best and deceptive at worst.

BINGO!