Abortion and Breast Cancer: What Feminist Lawyers Don’t Want You to Know

Congressional Record a document laying out the details of the plan, as he denounced, “the deceptive practices used by the abortion lobby.” The entire document can be read on the Congressional Record website, gpoaccess.gov/crecord.

The plan was originally exposed by Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, Washington D. C. When CRR staff contacted him and demanded that he not release the information, Ruse shared it with nationally syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, who released it nationwide.

“We should take these people very seriously indeed,” Ruse said. “They are at the heart of the international abortion movement, with many connections to the United Nations.”

Does Abortion Kill Women?

Many scientists now claim there is a strong link between abortion and breast cancer, a claim which the CRR lists as one of the “lies” of the “antis,” which must be dealt with on the way to creating a global abortion right.

But is it a lie?

“Telling women their abortions are related to increased breast cancer risk is clearly not good for the fundraising business,” says The Coalition on Abortion Breast Cancer. “These organizations are not motivated by profit. Their members do not perform abortions.”

Readers can see the list on the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer website, abortionbreastcancer.com/medicalgroups/index.htm. Highlights include:

• National Physicians Center for Family Resources, Birmingham , AL (“increased breast cancer risk” as a “long-term complication of abortion”)
• Catholic Medical Association, Washington, D. C. (“29 out of every 38 worldwide epidemiological studies show an increased risk of breast cancer of approximately 30 percent among women who have had an abortion”)
• Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Tucson , AZ (“We believe that a reasonable person would want to be informed of the existence of this evidence before making her decision.”)

Further information is found on the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer homepage, abortionbreastcancer.com.

There are still physicians who “are not 100 percent convinced by the evidence,” said a spokesman for the Christian Medical and Dental Associations.

How convincing is the evidence?

Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., F. A. C. S., with the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer and the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, says the research on abortion and breast cancer meets six criteria “to decide whether there is a causal relationship (and not just an association) between a particular factor and a disease, and that is in the case of abortion/breast cancer, all six criteria have been met.” ¹

These are:

• “The exposure or risk must precede the disease, which it does in all the studies.”
• The preponderance of the studies must show an association [28 out of 37 do].
• “The studies must include statistically significant studies” [there are 17 of these].
• “There must be a plausible biological basis.” [There is see below]
• “There should be a dose effect, the more you are exposed to a risk, the higher the risk.” [A 1997 study supports this, in the case of abortion/breast cancer.]

• “There must be a relative risk of over 3.0 or a 200 percent increased risk. In subsets of women, the relative risk is greater than 3.0. Teenagers less than age 18 who have abortions between nine and 24 weeks have an 800 percent increased risk, or a relative risk of 9.0.” [Another study found “a relative risk of infinity among teenagers procuring abortions when they also had a family history of breast cancer, all women in the study who had a family history and an abortion at age 19 or younger developed breast cancer by the age of 45.”]²

For more information, see the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute website:³

How Can Abortion Lead to Breast Cancer?

According to Dr. Frank Joseph the 800,000 first-time abortions performed each year in the U. S. generate “roughly 25,000 excess cases of breast cancer” per year.⁴

How?

When a woman becomes pregnant, her body sharply increases its production of the female hormone, estrogen. At the cellular level, her breasts gear up for milk production.

Estrogen levels decrease during the second half of a pregnancy. The immature cells within the breasts, now influenced by other hormones, grow and differentiate rapidly, specializing for milk production. Once they are fully specialized, they become less likely to turn cancerous.

When this process is cut short by an abortion, however, these immature, undifferentiated cells never finish their development. They are not normal breast cells, nor have they become milk-producing cells. In such a condition, advocates of the abortion/breast cancer link say these cells are especially vulnerable to cancer. Not only is the woman now more at risk for breast cancer than she would have been had she completed her pregnancy, she is also apt to develop it at an earlier age. (For more detailed medical/scientific information, see abortionbreastcancer.com. ⁵)

Dr. Joel Brind, of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, in an affidavit filed in a California lawsuit, said a woman who has her first full-term pregnancy cut off by an abortion is especially vulnerable. Her risk of death from breast cancer, he said, is “ten times greater than the death rate associated with childbirth.”

Dr. Nancy Krieger, writing in the medical journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment , said, “an early full-term pregnancy would provide the greatest protection against breast cancer.”⁶ In other words, by allowing her first baby to be born, a woman greatly reduces her risk of ever having breast cancer.

Other researchers have pointed out that breast cancer is much more common in “developed countries” where abortion is easily available and many women, consequently, never actually have a child. It is less common in third world countries where abortion is less available and most women complete their pregnancies.

Back to the Bad Guys

Given the abundance of scientific evidence suggesting that abortion really does increase a woman's risk of breast cancer and results in many otherwise avoidable deaths, why do groups like CRR try so hard to stifle public discussion of the matter?

“These so-called advocates for women don't care about women at all,” said Marie Tasy, legislative affairs director for New Jersey Right to Life. “After a woman has an abortion, and needs help psychologically, they are nowhere to be found.”

Chalcedon founder, R. J. Rushdoony, if he were still alive, would probably call it a natural progression of their rejection of God and His law.

The writers of CRR's strategy paper speak candidly of their need to employ “a stealth approach” to their work.

They need one. In addition to burying the evidence linking abortion to breast cancer, their program also includes

• Abolishing laws that require abortion providers to report to authorities when they suspect an underage girl's pregnancy is due to child sexual abuse, incest, or rape.
• Advocating for the “right” of minors under age 18 to have “consensual sex”, including sex with adults.
• Countering “reactionary yet influential international actors as the United States and the Holy See” by creating a web of international “agreements” upon which left-wing American judges might base rulings that nullify democratic efforts to restrict abortion.
• Using the courts to undo legislative measures to ban partial birth abortion.
• Finding judges to overturn laws denying abortions to minors without parental knowledge or consent.

No wonder they didn't want Mr. Ruse to print it.

Meanwhile, someone ought to be warning women about the link between abortion and breast cancer. With much less cause, politicians and celebrities go into hysterics about the dangers of secondhand smoke, red meat, and school prayer. (But don't hold your breath waiting for Hillary Clinton or Madonna to speak up on the dangers of abortion.)

This cause needs a standard-bearer.

Any volunteers?

Notes

1. “Criteria Met to Establish Causal Relationship,” Coalition on Abortion Breast Cancer, www.abortionbreastcancer.com/criteria.htm.

2. Ibid.

3. Dr. Joel Brink, “Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer, a Minority Report,” Breast Cancer Prevention Institute: http://www.bcpinstitute.org/nci_minority_rpt.htm.

4. Frank Joseph, M.D. “The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link: America 's Best Kept Secret,” http://hometown.aol.com/Dfjoseph/abclink.html

5. http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/The_Link.htm

6. http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com, “Quotes from Experts.”