"There is a real risk involving abortion and breast cancer, and people should know about this risk so that if they decide to have an abortion they do it with full knowledge."
Leon Bradlow, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Biochemical
Endocrinology at the Strang-Cornell Cancer Research Laboratory. Journal of the
National Cancer Institute, December 15, 1993.
Critics who formerly dismissed the possibility of a causal relationship
between induced abortion and breast cancer are increasingly on the defensive,
largely as a consequence of the findings of a fascinating study published in the
November 2, 1994 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute
(JNCl). The exhaustive work of Dr. Janet Daling and her colleagues at
Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center examined the possible linkage
between abortion and breast cancer. Funded by the National Cancer Institute and
directed by a woman who describes herself as "pro-choice," the study can hardly
stand accused of coming at the issue with a pro-life tilt. Indeed, an
accompanying editorial written by Dr. Lynn Rosenberg in the JNCI went out of its
way to minimize and explain away the evidence which strongly supported the case
that an induced abortion places women at a greater risk for breast cancer.
A number of factors contributed to making Dr. Daling's "Risk of Breast Cancer
Among Young Women: Relationship to Induced Abortion" a cross-roads in the debate
over whether abortion increases a woman's chance of contracting breast cancer.
These significant factors include:
What specifically did the Daling study show? Most media reports concentrated
on the finding that, on the average, the chance of a woman having breast cancer
before she turns 45 increases by 50 percent if she has had an abortion. But this
heightened danger was dismissed in the accompanying JNCI editorial as "small in
epidemiological terms." If breast cancer were rare or abortion infrequent, this
editorial counter would carry more weight. There are, however, 182,000 new cases
of breast cancer diagnosed every year and 46,000 women die
annually. Add to this the roughly 1,530,000 abortions per year and this
so-called "small" increased risk means a huge number of new cases of breast
cancer. For example, abortion aside, a woman today has roughly a 10 percent
chance of contracting breast cancer in her lifetime. But because every year so
many women are having an abortion, even if the abortion decision increases the
risk by one-half, or 50 percent (from 10 percent to 15 percent), in a few
decades the results will be, at a minimum, an additional 40,000 cases of breast
cancer every year.
But the Daling study contained even more frightening results, largely ignored
by the media. If a woman had obtained her first abortion after age 30, her risk
jumped by 110 percent. And if she had her first abortion before she turned 18,
the likelihood of having breast cancer increased by 150 percent. Worse yet, if
she has a family history (mother, sister, aunt) of breast cancer and had a first
abortion after age 30, her risk went up by 270 percent. Most ominous of all were
the results for women who had had an abortion before age 18 and who also had a
family history of breast cancer. Twelve women in the Daling study fit that
description. Every one of them had breast cancer!
Daling's study, however, only followed women into their forties. What about
later in life? A path-breaking but vastly underreported study in the December
1993 issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association traced the
breast cancer experience of about 1,000 black women (500 with breast cancer, 500
without) as they grew older. We've always known that abortion is lethal to unborn babies; only of late has
abortion's dangers to pregnant women become unmistakably clear as well.
Many press outlets have
bent over backwards to hide the stark facts about abortion and breast cancer.
However, with more studies "in the pipeline," it is only a matter of time and
ongoing pro-life publicity before the truth wins out.
(Sue's Note: 2004: Since this article from Ohio Right
To Life was written in 1995, more studies have shown the link between abortion
and breast cancer and many states are discussing laws which will force abortion
providers to warn women considering aborting their pregnancy about this danger.
Spontaneous abortion or miscarriage does NOT increase the breast cancer risk
because the body "remembers" about the undifferentiated cells in the breasts and
removes them. But in an abortion a woman's body goes from being fully
pregnant to being totally NOT pregnant in 5 minutes. I suspect that we are
only beginning to realize the physical devastation that procedure may do to
women. SW)
Why Does an Induced Abortion Heighten the Risk of Breast Cancer?
One
reason the association between an induced abortion and breast cancer is becoming
harder to deny is that the linkage both makes sense intuitively to the layman
and conforms to what scientists know about how breast cancer begins and about
the protective influence a completed pregnancy affords to women. For instance,
most researchers believe the cancer originates in immature, undifferentiated
breast cells -- tissues which have not matured and specialized. Such cells
proliferate dramatically in the first trimester of pregnancy, stimulated by
increased concentrations of the female hormone estrogen. "These young, growing
cells," as one science reporter put it, "if left to their own devices, are
especially vulnerable to malignancy." But in the second half of pregnancy, the
estrogen levels recede. Under the influence of such hormones as human placental
lactogen, the immature tissues grow and differentiate rapidly into mature,
specialized milk-producing tissue. Once specialization has occurred, cells are
less likely to turn cancerous. That is why scientists have long known that a
completed pregnancy confers protection against breast cancer. However, this
process is short-circuited if a woman has an induced abortion. While the
estrogen of early pregnancy still stimulates a proliferation of
undifferentiated, cancer-vulnerable cells, the protection that comes from
hormones released later in pregnancy never takes place. Thus, an induced
abortion presents the woman with the worst of all possible worlds. She loses the
protection she gains from carrying her baby to term -- studies show that the 10
percent risk of breast cancer drops to 7 percent -- while at the same time the
abortion increases the normal risk -- from 10 percent to 15 percent.
"Breast Cancer Risk Factors in African-American
Women: The Howard University Tumor Registry Experience" confirmed that the risks
of breast cancer increased much more for women who had aborted than for those
who had not. This fine study found the same overall 50 percent increased risk
factor for women under 40 who had aborted. But black women now in their 40s who
had aborted experienced a 180 percent increased risk. The risk jumped to a
whopping 370 percent for black women over 50 who had aborted.