The quote from the article is “I could kick myself in the butt for waiting until I was 40 to have children.” Sure sounds to me like she *waited* until she was 40 — not clear if she ever actually had any. Either she actually “didn’t realize” or she really just didn’t care because her career was more important to her (a much more plausible assumption). Oddly, there is no mention as to whether she’s ever been diagnosed with breast cancer, whether she ever took oral contraceptives, or whether her “waiting” involved any abortions.
The whole notion that childbearing is something women should pursue early and often as a way to avoid breast cancer is insane and offensive. The increase in breast cancer rates from delayed or omitted childbearing is clear but small, and most women who choose to delay or omit childbearing are doing so because they’ve decided that they have some other priorities (in many cases, as traditional as wanting to make sure they’ve found a man who’s really good husband and father material, and that they want to spend their lives with and raise their children with).
There is NO scientific evidence that having abortions increases breast cancer rates, despite exhaustive research on the matter, including a solid study from Baylor University medical school, which is hardly known for harboring an abortion-promoting agenda. Anyone who is still running around promoting this notion is rightly regarded as an ideologically-driven quack. If somebody, someday actually produces some real scientific research showing such a link, even in some small subset of women with other key co-factors required, it will be worth discussing, but that hasn’t happened. Angela Lafranchi has in fact never published any medical research, ever, on any topic. Not even as a second or fifth or tenth author, much less as a lead author. The only publications that show up for her in PubMed are 3 opinion pieces in an obscure, ideologically-driven legal journal, and an opinion-based comment (i.e. letter to the editor) in Lancet Oncology. In other words, she’s not a medical/scientific researcher at all, yet she’s running around claiming that all the real researchers in this field are part of a conspiracy: “federal agencies and academicians are participating in the suppression of information about the heightened risk of breast cancer” (from the abstract of her most recently published diatribe in the legal journal).
There is ample evidence linking hormonal contraceptives and also abortion to breast cancer for those who study the issue closely. Start with the fact that the incidence of breast cancer has increased by 40% since 1975. What would cause this? This is what started the good doctor down the path to scientific truth.
In the following textbook, Bland KI, Copeland EM. The Breast: Comprehensive management of malignant diseases, 3rd ed, 2004. Epidemiology of Breast Cancer, the text states that the increased risk from induced abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy is 38%. There are a vast number of studies as well, the majority of which link breast cancer and abortion. Specifically, this is an abortion prior to the first full term pregnancy.
Estrogen in hormonal birth control has been considered a carcinogen by the WHO since studying the issue in 2002, and the NIH lists estrogen as a carcinogen. The estrogen stimulates breast tissue growth, which increases the number of potentially cancerous cells. The increased risk here is also approximately 30% or greater.
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_1_3x_Known_and_Probable_Carcinogens.asp
http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/crthgr01.php
The American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) has a couple good articles debunking those that say there is no link between abortion and breast cancer: http://www.aaplog.org/downloads/AbortionComplications/Induced%20Abortion%20and%20Subsequent%20Breast%20Cancer%20Risk.pdf
Dr Lanfranchi is not alone - the data is on her side, and I commend her for speaking the truth.
I'm with you on that.
"The whole notion that childbearing is something women should pursue early and often as a way to avoid breast cancer is insane and offensive."
Show me where anybody has actually advocated that. For you to adduce this and then triumphantly repudiate it is a strawman argument. But I'm away (mostly) for a coupla days. Have a nice weekend, GS.