Home | Contact Us | Newsletters

Denise Mountenay of Silent No More, Canada,  convened the second  Endeavour Forum Inc. workshop, "Breast Cancer & Reproductive Health",  at the UN's Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York  (see also p. 2).   Professor Joel Brind and Dr. Angela Lanfranchi were the keynote  speakers. This is Denise's  report:

"Dear Babette,

The quality of people...was impressive...a beautiful doctor from Nigeria stood up and said she was thrilled to be at our workshop and hear  the testimonies we shared about the pain of abortion and information on the ABC link.  Then a lady from Taiwan stood up and said that she was a breast cancer survivor, and had also had an abortion in 1987....  She is also the President of a huge breast cancer survivor group with thousands of members..she speaks Mandarin...and was so excited to meet with us...and wants to keep in touch...and Lord willing we may go there to bring this message! 

"Another woman from Botswana, also thanked us...a gentleman from Denmark asked for an interview with Dr. Joel and Dr. Angela...I had three radio interviews...one on Moody Broadcast to 250 Christian radio stations across the USA, one pro life radio/internet program...and another scheduled for next week...thank

God our voices are getting heard!

"THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY...  

GOD BLESS YOU!!!     - 

DENISE”

In its  26 February 2007  issue, Time Magazine  ran  quite a  good  feature story on Crisis Pregnancy Centres in the US, and how they are  helping to   reducing the abortion toll by winning over "one woman at a time", but   the Time reporter queried the  centres' counsellors informing women about the abortion-breast cancer link, and cited the US National Cancer Institute's denial of such a link.  Below the responses from Professor Brind and Dr. Angela Lanfranchi:

“To the Editor, (Time Magazine)

Deriding a pro-life pregnancy counselor’s insistence on the reality of the link between abortion and breast cancer, Nancy Gibbs (“1 Woman at a Time, Feb. 26) opines: “It’s hard to imagine what it would take—certainly not a ruling from the U.S.  National Cancer Institute (NCI)—to change her mind.” The “ruling” Nancy  refers to, that is, that the absence of an abortion-breast cancer link (ABC link) is “well established”, was a conclusion of a February 2003 “workshop” to which the NCI invited ‘the world’s leading experts’. 

“As one of those invited experts, I wonder what it would take to convince a reporter like Nancy Gibbs  that the “workshop”, ostensibly convened to resolve a highly controversial medical and scientific issue, was entirely one-sided, with no presentation allowed to show evidence for the ABC link—only against, and with no opportunity to review the data. 

“In fact, had  Nancy Gibbs the inclination to dig a few mouse clicks deeper than the summary conclusions of the “workshop” on the website of the same government agency (NCI) that once denied the tobacco-lung cancer link, she could have viewed the obviously biased proceedings on the video archives of the 2003 “workshop” without leaving the comfort of her own desk chair. 

“Meanwhile, it is incontrovertible that a woman who chooses to abort a pregnancy ends up with a higher long-term risk of getting breast cancer than if she chooses not to abort. Kudos to the pro-life pregnancy resource centers for telling women this life-saving truth that the NCI—and apparently Time Magazine—still wish to hide”.

Joel Brind, Ph.D.,

President, Breast Cancer Prevention Institute

9 Vassar Street

Poughkeepsie, NY 12601,

www.bcpinstitute.org

and 

Professor of Human Biology and Endocrinology, Dept. of  Natural Sciences, Baruch College, CUNY

New York, NY 10010

“Dear Editor, [Time Magazine]

Nancy Gibbs in her Feb 26 article "1 Woman at a Time" writes about finding common ground between the pro-choice and pro-life groups in the dialog of what is best for any one woman. As a breast cancer surgeon who frequently cares for 30 something women with breast cancer, the common ground I see is the fact that an 18 year old who gives birth after an unplanned pregnancy halves her risk of breast cancer compared to having an abortion and her first planned child at 32. It is a "silver lining" that can spare her breast cancer. The literature, including a  2002 study by Chapel Hill, North Carolina  Professor of Ob-Gyn, Dr.JohnThorp, documents this undisputed fact. Women with unplanned pregnancies have a right to know this. 

“As for the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) denial of an independent link between abortion and breast cancer and  [Pregnancy Support Centre’s Nurse] Wilson's  expressed disbelief of the NCI, the first study linking cigarettes to lung cancer was in the 1920's yet 40 years passed before the NCI made strong statements alerting the public.  The more recent NCI delay linking hormone replacement to breast cancer was 20 years. Both delays are believed to have been influenced by financial interests”.

Sincerely,

Angela Lanfranchi, MD FACS                                 

Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School,

UMDNJ,Piscataway, NJ