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A new study   "Induced and Spontaneous Abortion and Incidence of Breast Cancer  Among Young Women," by Karin Michels of Harvard Medical School and others, was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in May 2007.   It found negligible connections between abortion and breast cancer.    The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, 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,  says the study is seriously flawed. 

"We call on journalists to challenge Michels et al. to conduct a proper study that allows sufficient follow-up time between exposure to abortion and the development of breast cancer," says Karen Malec, president of the Coalition.      Breast cancer, like lung cancer, isn't something that develops overnight. 

"If you smoke cigarettes, are you going to develop lung cancer tomorrow? Or six months from now?  This is the fifth study that didn’t allow sufficient follow-up time between exposure to abortion and the development of breast cancer. Journalists should challenge researchers to do the study properly by including only abortions that occurred up to 1993. Then researchers should follow the women for at least 10 years." 

Other flaws include the failure to adjust for miscarriage in reporting the overall statistics and the exclusion of cases of in situ breast cancer.  "This isn't the first time that Harvard Nurses Study researchers  have produced the wrong epidemiological results," says Joel Brind, president,  Breast Cancer Prevention Institute. "They were wrong about combined hormone replacement therapy (HRT) reducing the  risk of heart attack and stroke, and they're wrong about abortion."

The U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded the new study.  Ten years ago, NCI expert  Patricia Hartge concluded, "In short, a woman need not worry about breast cancer when facing the difficult decision of whether to terminate a pregnancy."  

"So why has the NCI continued to spend millions of dollars to fund studies on the  abortion-cancer link?" asks Karen Malec. "Clearly, its scientists must either suspect a link or  know that it exists."   The study  focused on the debated breast cancer risk - whether abortion leaves women with an increased number of cancer-vulnerable breast lobules. It did not focus on the recognized breast cancer risk - the loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy. 

"Even the NCI agrees that increased childbearing, starting at an early age, protects women from breast cancer," says Karen  Malec. "Legislators have a moral obligation to require abortion providers to inform expectant mothers that if they have an abortion, their breast cancer risk will be higher than it would be if they have a baby. That's settled science." 

See also: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/commentary/070423/index.htm

A legal  expert who  also analysed  the Michels et al   study says it is as valid as determining  the incidence of heart disease by observing teenagers.  "The average age of diagnosis of breast cancer in America is 61 years old," concluded  Andrew Schlafly, general counsel,  Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. "But the average age of participants in this study was only 42 years old, too young for the average woman to develop breast cancer. 

Schlafly said the age discrepancies were not the only problems he found with the study that could have a major impact on the results and conclusions.  The study also "concealed” an important result to present the appearance that "abortion is safe," he found. 

"The research data show that abortion causes a sharp increase in the deadly PR-negative breast cancer," Schlafly wrote. "The press reports concealed this alarming result, making it look like abortion is safe. The report's abstract concealed this important result also."

Thirdly, he said, "the research study deliberately excluded women who had had abortions and then died from breast cancer!" 

Those who developed breast cancer early in the follow-up also were excluded, he said. "So those who were hurt most by their abortions were excluded, and this skewed the results towards a claim that abortion is safe," he said. 

Researchers also made huge assumptions that would have left the results not reflective of the truth, he said. "The research study treated women who left the specific question about past induced abortions blank, perhaps due to embarrassment, as though they had not had an abortion," he said. "Many would draw the opposite conclusion. 

"By switching women from 'had an abortion' to 'did not have an abortion,' this would inflate the numbers of breast cancers by women who ostensibly did not have an abortion. It would then falsely appear that abortion did not cause breast cancer," he said.

Miscarriages   

His analysis noted that more than one-fourth of the respondents to the questionnaire "exhibited confusion" about the wording of the survey, too, where it uses "spontaneous abortion" to refer to "miscarriage." 

"Miscarriages do not increase breast cancer risk, and this deceptive word choice would cause many respondents to mark prior abortions as 'spontaneous abortion' or miscarriage. That would reduce any genuine differences between induced abortion and miscarriages in the observed results," he said. 

Schlafly also suggested the research may be questioned because "none of the researchers hold positions in oncology, the specialty devoted to cancer, and one of the researchers is a nutritionist." 

He also noted that the study concealed that 92 percent of the study group were "non-Hispanic white" subjects, and that African Americans, a population group reporting among the highest percentages of abortion, and Hispanics were virtually absent. 

Karen Malec's own analysis found that it appears the results of the study were obtained because that's what researchers wanted to find – an absence of an abortion-breast cancer link.  Many such studies indicating a lack of connection have been debunked for a lack of scientific integrity. 

Dr. Joel Brind's analysis  of such studies was  published  in  December 2005 in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, updating   a similar analysis he completed in 1996.  In his essay, Brind addressed 10 separate studies conducted between 1996 and 2005 – studies used by those who deny a link between induced abortion and cancer – pointing out problems with  each study's methodology. He asserts those problems skew the results toward the denial of a causal connection between abortion and breast cancer, also known as the ABC link, making them thoroughly unreliable. 

Reproductive Hormones

The basic biology underlying the ABC link boils down to the fact that breast cancer is linked  to reproductive hormones, particularly estrogen. At conception, a woman's estrogen levels increase hundreds of times above normal – 2,000 percent by the end of the first trimester. That hormone surge leads to the growth of "undifferentiated" cells in the breast as the body prepares to produce milk for the coming baby. 

Undifferentiated cells are vulnerable to the effects of carcinogens, which can give rise to cancerous tumors later in life. In the final weeks of a full-term pregnancy, those cells are "terminally differentiated" through a still largely unknown process and are ready to produce milk. Differentiated cells are not as vulnerable to carcinogens. 

However, should a pregnancy be terminated prior to cell differentiation, the woman is left with abnormally high numbers of undifferentiated cells, therefore increasing her risk of developing breast cancer. 

The Gatekeepers

Karen Malec says  "gatekeepers" in organized medicine have continued to maintain the appearance of an absence of links, and key leaders of the National Cancer Institute, which helped fund the newest study, previously have editorialized against studies confirming such a link.   The Michels study  featured the contributions from Fei Xue, Graham A. Colditz and Walter C. Willett. Their work said induced abortion has been "inconsistently associated with breast cancer risk."  But it also included among its foundational work statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, named for a past president of Planned Parenthood, the largest member of the abortion industry in the U.S. 

The "personal ideology" or "their own involvement in performing or referring patients for abortions," have come between many researchers and the evidence that there is a link, according to the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer.  

Karen Malec, president, Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer  comments:  “Science News  has published a letter to the editor from one of our medical advisers concerning a politically incorrect kind of pollution - a type of estrogen widely used in oral contraceptives.  Estrogen has been on the nation's list of "known carcinogens" for approximately six years.

It would be interesting to ask leaders of the cancer fundraising industry,particularly those who previously worked for Planned Parenthood or NARALPro-Choice America, what (if anything) they've done to raise awareness about this kind of pollution. 

For instance, Breast Cancer Action, which does not tell women the truth about the link between abortion and breast cancer, has long blamed environmental pollutants for the breast cancer epidemic. 

Other organizations, like Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the American Cancer Society, give funds to the polluter, Planned Parenthood, which sells women cancer-causing oral contraceptives and abortions. 

Babette Francis comments:  In Australia the National Breast Cancer Foundation holds a number of fund-raising activities throughout the year.  The event for May was the Mother's Day Classic, a run/walk for breast cancer research.  The NBCF has done a commendable job of raising over $2.4 million for research programs.   

However, this research is mainly directed towards treatment and support for breast cancer patients.  What I would like to see is more effort made towards prevention by publicizing the  known risk factors.  Some risk factors - such as genetic history - women cannot avoid.  But they are not being told  that  commencing their child-bearing years early, ie. having their first baby by age 25   lowers their risk, and for older mothers, breastfeeding is specially  protective.  Other risk factors include induced abortion and using hormonal replacement therapy (HRT), both avoidable.     

The value of research is  enhanced if the information derived - such as on avoidable risk factors - is widely disseminated.   Feminists should not be allowed to control the agenda  and conceal facts that the contraceptive pill, abortion and leaving babies in long day care instead of breastfeeding is not  healthy  for women, let alone babies.