Posted on 05/01/2002 1:16:25 PM PDT by codebreaker
There is a clear biological connection between abortion and beast cancer.
Here's how it happens:
1. The hormone estrogen causes milk-producing tissue in the breast to grow
2. If this tissue is immature when exposed to large amounts of estrogen, it more readily turns cancerous
3. In pregnancy, there is lots of estrogen, but a full-term pregnancy casues the tissue to mature and resist cancer.
4. An abortion stops the process of maturing the milk producing cells, leaving them vulnerable.
5.That combines with growth producing estrogen-especially from the high levels of pregnancy before the abortion-to promote abnormal cell growth and cancer.
For instance, the female body seems to have larger numbers of immature breast cells before age 18 and after age 30.
And this fits in with breat cancer risk because we know that women who have abortions before age 18 and after age 30 have the highest rates of breast cancer.
The largest and most valid study of the alleged link between breast cancer and induced abortion concluded that induced abortion has no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. The Melbye study, reported in 1997, is considered the most accurate and informative study to date because of its particularly sound methodology: it involved a very large study group and was free from reporting bias. The study relied on data about all women born in Denmark over several decades, which was collected from Denmark’s National Registry of Induced Abortions and the Danish Cancer Registry.
Litigation against abortionists (as much as I hate litigation!) may be the only break the courts might allow to curb the killing.
Then again, maybe not.
Me thinks you would get a vastly different result if only women who have had mulitple abortions pre 18 years and post 30 years were considered.
Is somebody forcing you, or anybody else for that matter, to have abortions or take birth control pills?
Where's my tinfoil hat?
Induced abortion: A large, recent study from Denmark has provided very strong data that induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. Also, there is no evidence of a direct relationship between breast cancer and spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) in most of the studies that have been published.
Even the Republican pro-life judge in San Diego who tossed that case last month said it was a bunch of hooey, had no basis in science, and was not even admissible as evidence.
Stand on your faith - - but don't resort to pseudoscience propaganda.
Well, since the first one was successful, I suspect the others will follow suit; however, I haven't heard anything yet. Thank Goodness the people who live in Australia are getting the word. Many Australian lives will be saved. Too bad in the USA this life-saving information is gagged by the money-grubbing abortion industry.
The American Cancer Society? Your paranoia knows no bounds.
Duh.
I have long wondered how many women who develop breast cancer in their 30s had abortions in their early-to-mid teens. I believe there is a direct correlation.
Well, they did that in Denmark, but you don't like the results of that study.
Because it cites absolutely no research, it will be totally and justly ignored.
Yes, but your research would be better directed if you didn't do it all out of religious advocates' pamphlets.
Your objection is ridiculous because no one would limit it to that immediate a reaction.
In Denmark, abortions have been legal since 1939. Therefore the entire population at all age levels will have women who have and never have had abortions, and you have their breast cancer rates. Plus, best of all, in Denmark they have a registry of ALL medical procedures performed on everyone (best for this sort of research, I'm not advocating socialised medicine.) So they know who had what, when and where.
I remember getting into a heated argument with a "pro-choice" woman at church (United Methodist) who didn't believe my personal experience regarding legal abortion. She said she had had an abortion, and she "simply didn't believe it" when I told her of consequences of legal abortion. As we spoke more, it turns out she had lost a baby at 7-months gestation and the death certificate read "spontaneous abortion".
She wanted that child, and lost it through abortion--so of course she's "pro-choice". The problem is, that's a situation/loss/pain she needed to take up with God.
Legalized abortion, when the woman decides--for any or NO reason--to actively end the pregnancy, is completely different from what she labeled "pro-choice".
Legalized abortion has led to increased rates of breast cancer. It just isn't politically-correct to inform the women considering abortion that their lifetime health and welfare is at stake.
My question is: who will those many women sue when the truth comes out--as it will one day. (Remember, during the 1930s and 1940s, the average German didn't believe the rumors either, and denied the truth also, until the evidence was too overwhelming to deny any longer.)
(end rant)
In my own family I have one aunt who has had breast cancer. She is one of 6 who took birth control pills.
Way too simple a view, not accounting for such things as geographical distribution like the increase incidence on Long Island, or for the ethnic distribution differences.
One thing I have learned is that anyone can prove anything with statistics. (Yes, that includes pro-life studies, and that is why these and other details are so important. Are they published??)
Abortion and Breast Cancer
The relationship between abortion and breast cancer has been the subject of extensive research. The current body of scientific evidence suggests that women who have had either induced or spontaneous abortions have the same risk as other women for developing breast cancer. Until the mid-1990s, results from studies of breast cancer and induced or spontaneous abortion were inconsistent. Some investigators reported an increase in risk, typically from interview studies of several hundred breast cancer patients compared to other women. Other studies found no evidence of increased risk.
Recent large studies, particularly cohort studies, generally show no association between breast cancer risk and previously recorded spontaneous or induced abortions. In a large-scale epidemiologic study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, researchers compared data from Danish health registries that included 1.5 million women and more than 10,000 cases of breast cancer. The registry data on abortions was collected before the diagnosis of breast cancer was made. After adjusting the data for several established breast cancer risk factors, the authors found that “induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer.” The strengths of this study include its large size, the ability to account for breast cancer risk factors that may differ between women who have had abortions and those who have not, and the availability of information on abortion from registries rather than having to rely on a woman’s self-reported history of abortion.
In 2000 and 2001, additional findings were reported from studies that collected data on abortion history before the breast cancers occurred. These studies showed no increased breast cancer risk in women who had induced abortions. In three of the studies, information on abortion was based on medical records rather than on the woman’s self-report; in another study, interview data was collected before any breast cancer diagnosis. The studies were conducted in different populations of women, and varied in size and the extent of details on established breast cancer risk factors.
Most of the early studies necessarily relied on self-reports of induced abortion, which have been shown to differ between breast cancer patients and other women. Other problems with these studies included small numbers of women, questions of comparability between women with breast cancer and those without, inability to separate induced from spontaneous abortions, and incomplete knowledge of other breast cancer risk factors that may have been related to a woman’s history of abortion.
Even though it appears that there is no overall association between spontaneous or induced abortion and breast cancer risk, it is possible that an increased or decreased risk could exist in small subgroups of women. For example, the large Danish study found a slightly lower breast cancer risk in women with abortions occurring before 7 weeks gestation, and a slightly higher risk in women who had abortions at 7 or more weeks. The National Cancer Institute is currently funding at least six other studies examining complete pregnancy history, including induced and spontaneous abortion, in relation to the risk of breast cancer.
Well-established breast cancer risk factors include age, a family history of breast cancer, an early age at menarche, a late age at menopause, a late age at the time of the first birth of a full-term baby, alcohol consumption, and certain breast conditions. Obesity is a risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women.
References:
Goldacre MJ, Kurina LM, Seagroatt V, Yeates D. Abortion and breast cancer: A case-control record linkage study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2001; 55:336–7.
Lazovich D, Thompson JA, Mink PJ, Sellers TA, Anderson KE. Induced abortion and breast cancer risk. Epidemiology 2000; 11:76–80.
Melbye M, Wohlfahrt M, Olsen JH, et al. Induced abortion and the risk of breast cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine 1997; 336:81–85.
Michels KB, Willett WC. Does induced or spontaneous abortion affect the risk of breast cancer? Epidemiology 1996; 7:521–528.
Newcomb PA, Mandelson MT. A record-based evaluation of induced abortion and breast cancer risk (United States). Cancer Causes and Control 2000; 11:777–781.
Rookus, MA, van Leeuwen, FE. Induced abortion and risk for breast cancer: Reporting (recall) bias in a Dutch case-control study. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 1996; 88:1759–1764.
Tang M-T C, Weiss NS, Malone KE. Induced abortion in relation to breast cancer among parous women: A birth certificate registry study. Epidemiology 2000; 11:177–180. # # # Sources of National Cancer Institute Information Cancer Information Service Toll-free: 1–800–4–CANCER (1–800–422–6237) TTY (for deaf and hard of hearing callers): 1–800–332–8615 NCI Online Internet Use http://cancer.gov to reach NCI's Web site. CancerMail Service
Yeah, do you think some enterprising lawyer will get on the stick and form some class action law suit on behalf of breast cancer victims, like they do for fen-phen and redux and mesothelioma and smoking and tires...
ME TOO!! One of my miscarriages was classified as an "incomplete abortion" since I didn't miscarry naturally after the baby died. I remember sitting at some insurance person's desk trying to explain that I hadn't had an abortion....that my baby died in utero and I had to have surgery. It was awful, and all these years later it still makes me want to cry.
Bless your heart. It is a crying shame. I had a miscarriage once and it was just horrible. Just horrible. All these shenanigans by health providers just make it worse. Thanks for telling your story, Sis.
Remember, scare tactics didn't work with kids about drugs and this won't work either as a scare tactic to women who may be considering abortion. I would imagine breast cancer is the last thing they would worry about before an abortion.
Perhaps you could start your own web page and discuss it there, leave it up 24/7. We hardly need a monthly thread on this. Most freepers have been here a while and seen your message over and over again. And the newbies that come here aren't coming here to get misinformation before they make such an horrific decision. There is nothing wrong with promoting pro-life as a choice but it would be better done with the truth.
I may be wrong but, are you the one who hates it when we talk about how much we love our animals, as though it is our fault abortion exists?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.