ABORTION-BREAST CANCER INFORMED CONSENT LEGISLATION

ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 111, AUGUST 2003

Karen Malec

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer responds enthusiastically to news that the Texas state legislature passed informed consent legislation requiring physicians to inform abortion-bound women about the increased risk of breast cancer associated with the procedure. Texas Governor Rick Perry is expected to sign it.

As President of the Coalition I applaud the efforts of Texas legislators to protect the health of adolescents and women from the profiteering of abortion providers. Women procuring abortions have a right to receive accurate information about all risks associated with abortion. Women can’t be considered decision-makers as long as efforts to falsely persuade them of the supposed safety of abortion continue.

Passage of the bill reveals that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and private cancer organizations have lost credibility among Texas legislators as a result of their efforts to conceal an abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link. In February, the NCI and a group of scientists whose careers rely on the federal government for grants, swept under the rug 46 years of evidence which overwhelmingly supports a cause and effect relationship. Sixteen out of 17 statistically significant studies, including a prospective study, report risk elevations. An animal study and a never refuted biological explanation also support an ABC link.

Five medical organizations aren’t going along with the government's half century long cover-up either. It takes political courage to recognize a causal relationship. Telling women their abortions might lead to breast cancer may not be good for fundraising for cancer research, but it encourages women at risk to be vigilant about seeking early detection and adopting risk reduction measures, and it protects young women headed for abortion clinics.

Medical organisations supporting the abortion-breast cancer link are: National Physicians Center for Family Resources, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Catholic Medical Association, Breast Cancer Prevention Institute and the Polycarp Research Institute. Other organizations, which recognize an ABC link, despite the government’s propaganda, include (but are not limited to) Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and the American Family Assocn..

ESTROGEN LISTED AS CARCINOGEN

A recent US Department of Health and Human Services “"Report on Carcinogens" includes Estrogen for the first time. Steroidal estrogens are used in estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) and common abortifacient drugs. Both kinds of drugs have been widely utilized by American women. Clearly, the Report on Carcinogens presents a serious conflict for the National Cancer Institute, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. What do ERT and abortifacient drugs have to do with the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link? Estrogen overexposure provides the biological explanation for most of the risk factors for breast cancer, including abortion. Estrogen is known to increase the rate of cell division. It causes normal and pre-cancerous cells to multiply. A few days after conception, estrogen levels start climbing, so that by the end of the first trimester, a mothers estrogen level is increased 2000% and her breasts are swollen. Scientists theorize that only a third trimester process, differentiation (maturation of cells), neutralizes the mother’s exposure to estrogen and provides her with increased protection against breast cancer.

The booklet [available from Endeavour Forum] "Breast Cancer Risks and Prevention", explains the critical importance of an early first full term pregnancy (before age 25). This influences breast cell maturity and, consequently, a woman’s lifetime risk for the disease:. "If a woman does not have a full-term pregnancy she has increased risk for breast cancer, since she never develops (mature, cancer-resistant) type 3 and 4 lobules. If she has children later in life (after age 30), she has increased risk, because, for most of her menstrual life, her estrogen has been stimulating immature (cancer-vulnerable) type 1 and 2 breast lobules. If she has children as a teenager, she has decreased risk of breast cancer, since her breast tissue matures very early in her menstrual life to type 3 and 4 lobules." Similarly, women who experience more menstrual periods during their lives are at greater risk. Why? With each monthly period, they are exposed to more estrogen. This is why the risk is greater for women who have fewer or no children, who breastfeed little or not at all, who experience late menopause or early onset of menstrual periods and who delay their first full term pregnancies.

A Report on the Status of Cancer for the period 1973 to 1998 from the National Cancer Institute and other agencies reveals an increasing incidence of breast cancer starting in 1987, fourteen years after the legalization of abortion. A graph provided by the reports’ authors, clearly shows that the more than 40% increase in breast cancer rates since 1987 was sustained solely by the youngest of three generations, the Roe v. Wade generation. . The National Cancer Institute and private cancer organizations are to blame for the nation's out-of-control breast cancer rates. If they really wanted women to know the truth about the ABC link, they would have informed women of the existence of the research in 1973 when abortion was legalized. This is why the NCI’s leaders were afraid to debate the evidence during its workshop earlier this year. They knew they would lose.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women’s organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer. President Karen Malec does a valiant job in informing women about the abortion-breast cancer link. Endeavour Forum Inc. is the Australian affiliate of the Coalition.

At the farcical “workshop” held in February this year, the US National Cancer Institute confirmed that childbirth at a young age reduced women’s risk of breast cancer, but could not bring itself to acknowledge the obvious connection to abortion - every abortion delays childbirth, sometimes forever. However, more and more medical professionals are sounding the alarm. Below is a comment by Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

“The abortion-breast cancer link is biologically plausible and supported by a large amount of credible evidence, even though not unanimously accepted. Particularly impressive is the increased risk of breast cancer at a young age for women who have aborted their first pregnancy, particularly in the later stages. A woman with a strong family history of breast cancer is at extremely high risk if she has an abortion. Failure to inform her of this risk when counseling abortion is unethical.

“Even a physician who does not find the evidence persuasive is ethically bound to inform the patient, at a minimum, that by having an abortion she forgoes the protective effect of a completed pregnancy, an effect that is undisputed even if underemphasized.

“Eventually, the truth about the dangers of abortion will be known. A cover-up cannot continue indefinitely. The abortion industry will one day be seen in the same light as the tobacco industry, which long denied the evidence for an association between smoking and cancer. Prestigious organizations such as the American Medical Association also supported that cover-up until it was no longer possible”.

Jane M. Orient, M.D., F.A.C.P.

AN HONEST EDITOR

Third floor editors at the Los Angeles Times are buzzing about a memo on “ abortion and liberal bias” from top editor John Carroll, which slams a front-page abortion story on 22 May by Houston correspondent Scott Gold:

To: Section Eds

Subject: Credibility/abortion

“I'm concerned about the perception---and the occasional reality---that the Times is a liberal, "politically correct" newspaper. Generally speaking, this is an inaccurate view, but occasionally we prove our critics right. We did so today with the front-page story on the bill in Texas that would require abortion doctors to counsel patients that they may be risking breast cancer.

The apparent bias of the writer and/or the desk reveals itself in the third paragraph, which characterizes such bills in Texas and elsewhere as requiring ‘so-called counseling of patients.’ I don't think people on the anti-abortion side would consider it ‘so-called,’ a phrase that is loaded with derision.

“The story makes a strong case that the link between abortion and breast cancer is widely discounted among researchers, but I wondered as I read it whether somewhere there might exist some credible scientist who believes in it. Such a person makes no appearance in the story's lengthy passage about the scientific issue. We do quote one of the sponsors of the bill, noting that he "has a professional background in property management." Seldom will you read a cheaper shot than this. Why, if this is germane, wouldn't we point to legislators on the other side who are similarly bereft of scientific credentials?

“It is not until the last three paragraphs of the story that we finally surface a professor of biology and endocrinology who believes the abortion/cancer connection is valid. But do we quote him as to why he believes this? No. We quote his political views. Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don't need to waste our readers' time with it.

“The reason I'm sending this note to all section editors is that I want everyone to understand how serious I am about purging all political bias from our coverage. We may happen to live in a political atmosphere that is suffused with liberal values (and is unreflective of the nation as a whole), but we are not going to push a liberal agenda in the news pages of the Times.

“I'm no expert on abortion, but I know enough to believe that it presents a profound philosophical, religious and scientific question, and I respect people on both sides of the debate. A newspaper that is intelligent and fair-minded will do the same.

“Let me know if you'd like to discuss this”.

Well, miracles will never cease. The unnamed professor in the memo of course is Joel Brind, who wrote a minority report on the National Cancer Institute workshop. The NCI initially claimed its findings were unanimous, eventually they conceded in one para that someone (unnamed) had put in a dissent. Professor Brind comments: “The ‘open, complete and vigorous scientific review of which the NCI Director, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, had spoken, did not take place. The workshop was nothing more than a heavy-handed political power play designed to erase any credence for the ABC link”.

Member Organisation, World Council for Life and Family

NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC of the UN