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Embryonic Stem Cell Research Again
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You've Come a Long Way, Baby
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Things Your Media Never Told You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them.  How Else Are They Going To Learn?
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Divorce of Love and Life
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Sexual Morality Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
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Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull the Plug?
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Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal if...
Get Rid of that Worthless Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues Prior to Voting

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) issued a fact sheet March 6, 2002, in which it essentially denied a link between abortion and breast cancer. The fact sheet states, "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." Spontaneous abortion is commonly known as a miscarriage. Decades of research have established that there is no link between cancer and spontaneous abortion. The problem lies with induced abortion where there is a sizeable body of research showing that it is associated with increased breast cancer. The NCI seems to be muddying the water deliberately by lumping together induced and spontaneous abortion.

The NCI continues: "Until the mid-1990s, results from studies of breast cancer and induced or spontaneous abortion were inconsistent. Some studies reported an increased risk…. Other studies found no evidence of increased risk." This statement is due either to culpable ignorance or is an outright lie. A 1996 study by Joel Brind, Professor of biology and endocrinology at Baruch College of the City University of New York, found that 17 out of 23 studies reported a statistically significant positive association (increased risk) between induced abortion and breast cancer. There was an average increased risk of 30 percent among women who had had an induced abortion.

Although the NCI ignores Dr. Brind’s study it does report on a 1997 study on 1.5 million Danish women (sometimes called the Melbye study) which concluded that induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. The NCI does not know or feigns ignorance about the many flaws in this study.

Here are some of them:

1. 375,000 (one-fourth) of the women in the study were under the age of 25 at the end of the study. They were old enough to account for 40,000 abortions in the study but too young to account for more than 8 cases of breast cancer.
2. The Melbye study asserted that abortion was legalized in 1973 when in fact it was 1939. The Danish researchers used abortion records starting only in 1973, whereas they included all Danish women born since 1935. This resulted in misclassifying 60,000 women in the study who underwent an abortion as not having one.
3. The Danish study included breast cancer cases diagnosed as far back as 1968, 5.5 years before recording a single abortion. If you want to study the effect of induced abortion (technically, the exposure variable) with breast cancer (the outcome variable) exposure must come first.
4. The women in the study classified as having an induced abortion vs. those not having an induced abortion were not comparable. There was more than a two-fold difference in their follow-up period for breast cancer.
5. The Melbye study found a statistically significant trend toward an increased cancer risk after abortion. The increase is 3 percent for each week of gestation before abortion. Women who had an abortion of an 11-12 week fetus showed a 12 percent increase of breast cancer risk. The risk rose to 89 percent for abortions after 18 weeks of gestation. Oddly the study did not include this in its "Conclusions."

The Danish study is so flawed that reputable medical journals will not run it without a disclaimer. Yet the NCI treats it with the same reverential awe as Scripture.

The NCI fact sheet cites four studies in support of its contention that there is no connection between abortion and breast cancer. Two of these studies are exclusively about spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) which carries no increased risk of breast cancer. One is mostly about spontaneous abortion and reports nothing specific on induced abortion. Although the NCI criticizes other studies as including small numbers of women, 2 of the 4 studies cited by it had only 26 and 23 postabortive breast cancer cases. Another had the same gross misclassification as the Melbye study (over 90 percent) of women who experienced an abortion as not having had one.

Meanwhile the NCI conveniently ignores recent studies that show a link between induced abortion and breast cancer. Important among these is the 1994 Daling study, ironically funded by the NCI, which reported a 50 percent risk increase of breast cancer after abortion. The study cannot be faulted for small numbers: 1,806 women — 845 women who had breast cancer with a "control" group of 961 women who did not. Yet the NCI treats the Daling study like a monster child hidden away in a basement lest it be seen. The NCI pretends not to know that English Dr. Thomas Stuttaford wrote, "Breast cancer is diagnosed in 33,000 women in the U.K. each year; of these, an unusually high proportion had an abortion before eventually starting a family. Such women are up to four times more likely to develop breast cancer." Researcher Patrick Carroll in England found that women who have had an abortion are twice as likely to suffer from breast cancer. Up to 50 percent of breast cancer cases in England and Wales over the next 26 years will be "directly attributable to abortion." Another convenient omission by the NCI is the 1989 study by the New York State Department of Health that reported a statistically significant 90 percent increased risk in women who had had an induced abortion.

In the U.S. over 800,000 women a year abort their first child. Of these, 80,000 would be expected to develop breast cancer, but because of abortion, breast cancer cases will increase to 120,000. Of these 40,000 extra cases, 25 percent or 10,000 additional women will die of breast cancer.

Why are the media silent about this? Look at the rabidity with which they pounce on alleged threats of Alar on apples, cancer from power lines or insecticides, and the pronouncements of junk science in the matter of global warming. But a statistically established connection between abortion and breast cancer escapes their notice. Abortion not only kills babies but some of their mothers as well. The reason the media do not report this is that the ideologues among them do not wish to discomfit the abortion industry. Apparently the "right to choose" does not include the right to know. Better to sacrifice 10,000 women annually so as not to raise doubts about the safety of abortion. After all, what are the alternatives to abortion? Abstinence? Impossible! Carrying a pregnancy to term? Unthinkable! A child hinders a career. So abortion must be protected at all costs. The additional 10,000 women who die each year from beast cancer induced by abortion can console themselves that they are martyrs for the noble cause of irresponsible sex.

The flaws in the studies that the NCI relies on are well documented. If the NCI has trouble with the studies that establish a connection between abortion and breast cancer, it should not dismiss them as being "inconclusive" but point out the faults. If it cannot find any, it has a duty to warn the public about cancer risks. The health of mothers, not to mention their babies, should not be jeopardized by ideologues who ignore what they cannot successfully attack.

If you have read this far you now know things that your media choose not to tell you.