Abortions Linked to Breast Cancer Again

A new study shows that abortions can be classified as carcinogens, because the number of breast cancer cases can be predicted reasonably accurately based on the number of abortions in a given population.

The study, "The Breast Cancer Epidemic: Modeling and Forecasts Based on Abortion and Other Risk Factors", was done by Patrick S. Carroll of London-based research institute PAPRI and the results were published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons this week.

It shows, that among risk factors, abortion is the "best predictor of breast cancer". The results show that countries with higher abortions rates, such as England and Wales, higher breast cancer incidence is reported. "Where abortion rates are low (i.e. Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic) a smaller increase is expected", the study said.

Karen Malec, of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, works to publicize such links in the group's battle against breast cancers.

The results, she told WND, "weren't a surprise at all".

"Actually women have the right to be told this particular research and the biology supports what we know about female biology during pregnancy", she said. "Women should be told - especially before the birth of a first child - abortions are highly, highly, carcinogenic".

Carroll used a mathematical model to develop forecasts for the numbers of breast cancers in several countries based on abortion, and found that when matched with the actual numbers of cases later reported, the forecasts were very accurate

"The forecast predicted 100.5 percent of the cancers observed in 2003, and 97.5 percent of those observed in 2004", the study reported.

"It's time for scientists to admit publicly what they already acknowledge privately among themselves - that abortion raises breast cancer risk - and to stop conducting flawed research to protect the medical establishment from massive ... lawsuits", Malec said.

Malec has been among those critical of studies that appear to disprove a link between abortion and breast cancer, noting that such studies many times are set up to reveal what those researchers choose to have as results.

The Carroll study concluded that, "The increase in breast cancer incident appears to be best explained by an increase in abortion rates, especially nulliparous abortions, and lower fertility".

The results included that, "The South East of England has more breast cancer than other parts of the British Isles. It also has the highest abortion Rate. Ireland has the lowest reate of breast cancer and the lowest abortion rate".

"We have had sufficient evidence to support an abortion-breast cancer link, through biological, epidemiological and experimental evidence ... since the 1980s", Malec told WND.

"They knew it back then, but nobody told women that this research was even going on", she said.

Her coalition, which was 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, regularly confronts supporters of abortion, whose work denies such a connection.

"They're very wealthy. It's a money industry, just like tobacco", she told WND.

"A woman who has had an abortion is at risk for breast cancer", she continued. "It's [the research] showing that the researchers can predict, they can forecast the breast cancer rates in nations that have accurate statistics on induced abortions using their particular mathematical models. They can forecast what the breast cancer rates are going to be in nations that have adequate data".

But she said it's not hopeless for those who have had abortions.

"There are things women can do to bring down the risk", she said, including having a child. "Increased child bearing, starting at a younger age, this is the very best way to prevent breast cancer".

WND earlier reported when a 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. It found negligible connections between abortion and breast cancer.

But an expert said it essentially was meaningless.

"The average age of diagnoses of breast cancer in America is 61 years old", concluded Andrew Schlafly, general counsel for the 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 person to develop breast cancer.

"This study is as meaningless as drawing conclusions about heart disease by looking at teenagers", he said.

He also said that particular study "deliberately excluded women who had had abortions and then died from breast cancer. ... So those who were hurt most by their abortions were excluded, and this skewed the results towards a claim that abortion is safe".

As WND also has reported, many such studies indicating a lack of connection have been debunked for a lack of scientific integrity.

Dr. Joel Brind's results were published several years ago in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Brind, Ph.D. and president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, had updated 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 the 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.

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.

Malec told WND "gatekeepers" in organized medicine have continued to maintain the appearance of an absence of links, and key leaders of the National Cancer Institute, which has helped fund such studies, previously have editorialized against studies confirming such a link.

(Note from David: {Proverbs 26:2} As the sparrow in her wandering, as the swallow in her flying, So the curse that is causeless alighteth not.)

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