Rising Breast Cancer Rates Linked to Abortion

[TheresaMomof9]

Rising Breast Cancer Rates Linked to Abortion
by Lisa Everett

Over the past three decades, 48 million abortions have been performed
on American women, while in the same period, breast cancer rates
have risen by an alarming 40%. Is there a connection?

Patrick Carroll, Director of Research for the Pension and Population
Research Institute in London, recently conducted an analysis in an attempt
to account for the steep rise in breast cancer rates that many Western countries
have experienced in the past 3 decades. His study, entitled “The Breast
Cancer Epidemic: Modeling and Forecasts Based on Abortion and Other
Risk Factors,” was published in the Fall 2007 issue of the Journal of American
Physicians and Surgeons. Carroll examined data from 8 European countries
and considered 7 known risk factors as an explanation for these trends. His
conclusion? “The increase in breast cancer incidence appears to be best explained
by an increase in abortion rates, especially nulliparous abortions
[abortions in women who have never given birth], and lower fertility...In
most countries considered, women now over age 45 have had more abortions
and fewer children than previous generations of women, and a further
increase in breast cancer incidence is to be expected.”

This latest analysis confirms the link between abortion and breast
cancer that was first brought to the attention of the medical community 50
years ago. In April 1957, the first study published in a major medical journal
found that Japanese women who’d had an abortion had nearly three
times as high a risk of breast cancer as those who had not. By 1995, after
abortion was widely legalized in the West, 17 studies worldwide showed a
significant abortion-breast cancer link.

Needless to say, this research has not been welcomed with open arms
or open minds in many circles committed to maintaining “reproductive
choice.” In 1994, Dr. Janet Daling was raked over the coals when she published
her study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showing a statistically
significant increased risk of breast cancer in women who had an
induced abortion, especially young women with a family history of cancer.
An accompanying editorial downplayed her findings, claiming that “it is
difficult to see how they will be informative to the public.” Dr. Daling responded
to critics by professing that she was adamantly “pro-choice,” and
had hoped that her findings would be different, but that her data was “rock
solid.”

A year later, in 1996, Dr. Joel Brind and his colleagues from the Pennsylvania
State College of Medicine added fuel to the fire when they published
the results of their comprehensive review and meta-analysis of all
the studies published to date on the abortion-breast cancer link. Their
analysis concluded that women who have an abortion have a 30% increased
risk of breast cancer. This increased risk is independent of the effect
of losing the natural protection that a full-term pregnancy provides.
In the past 10 years, several studies have been published claiming
that there is little or no link between abortion and breast cancer. The number
of serious flaws in these studies finally persuaded Dr. Edward Furton
of the National Catholic Bioethics Center to write an article called
“The Corruption of Science by Ideology” in 2004 in which he castigated
“the unwillingness of scientists to speak out against the shoddy research
that is being advanced by those who deny the abortion-breast cancer link.”
In 2004, Dr. Joel Brind, (who went on to co-found the Breast Cancer Prevention
Institute in Poughkeepsie, New York), published a comprehensive
analysis of these studies, demonstrating serious flaws in their design,
methods and statistical analysis.

According to Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, breast surgeon and co-founder
of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, the link between abortion and
breast cancer is understandable and indisputable once we understand how
the human breast matures. A woman’s breasts are not completely mature
until the end of a full-term pregnancy when they are capable of producing
milk. During the first trimester of pregnancy, there is a large surge of estrogen
which stimulates the growth of the breasts in preparation for breastfeeding—
the number of Type 1 and Type 2 lobules increases significantly.

The longer a woman is pregnant before 32 weeks, the more Type 1 and 2
lobules she forms. Type 1 and 2 lobules are vulnerable to cancer, and over
80% of all breast cancers are ductal cancers which arise in Type 1 lobules.
After 32 weeks her breasts stop enlarging and the Type 1 and 2 lobules develop
into Type 4 lobules capable of producing milk. Type 4 lobules are
cancer-resistant, and when they regress to Type 3 lobules after weaning,
they retain the genetic changes which makes them cancer-resistant. After a
full-term pregnancy, about 85% of breast tissue consists of cancer-resistant
Type 3 lobules. This is why a full-term pregnancy reduces breast cancer
risk, and the earlier in her reproductive life that a woman experiences this,
the lower her risk. Breastfeeding reduces her risk even more, and every
subsequent pregnancy decreases her breast cancer risk by an additional
10%.

An induced abortion interrupts this natural breast maturation process
and leaves a woman with more cancer-susceptible Type 1 and 2 lobules,
and therefore with more places for cancer to start. An early miscarriage
generally does not result in increased breast cancer risk because most miscarriages
occur in pregnancies with abnormally low hormone levels which
do not result in the proliferation of Type 1 and 2 lobules in the breasts.
Although sound scientific research has repeatedly confirmed that induced
abortion significantly increase a woman’s risk of developing breast
cancer, this research has been largely ignored and even suppressed in our
society by those in a position to publicize and promote it.

[oldermomof5]

Oct. 30, 2009 at 2:14 PM

[Anouck]

Oct. 30, 2009 at 2:16 PM

Sigh....not this again.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage