Black Women and the
Abortion-Breast Cancer Risk
By Lynn Robinson

Although African-Americans comprise only 12% of the American population, black women account for 34% of the approximately 1.3 million abortions annually performed. Many black women are presented with the myth that abortion is good for them supposedly because it brings them out of poverty, eliminates unstable relationships, promotes their education or career. Above all, they are told that abortion is safe.

But Mildred Jefferson, M.D., the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, and a former assistant professor of surgery at Boston University School of Medicine, issued a chilling reminder to African-American women who want to believe the abortion advocates' argument that abortion is safe and legal: "No one can predict what physical effect abortion will have on a girl or woman."

Dr. Jefferson's warning has proven prophetic. An increasing number of studies show a disturbing link between abortion and breast cancer (also known as the ABC link).

For example, Dr. Ameila E. Laing, et al., published a study in the Journal of the National Medical Association (Dec. 15, 1993), that traced, from 1978 to 1987, the breast cancer experience of 1,000 black women - - 500 with breast cancer, treated at Howard University Hospital, and 500 without breast cancer. Later, Laing conducted a second study between September 1989 and December 1993 that involved more than 200 African-American women with breast cancer in the D.C. area, published in 1994.

The Laing et al. studies found that induced abortions appeared to significantly increase the risk of breast cancer in black women. The first study showed the risk of breast cancer increased 50% for black women under 40 who had aborted. Worse yet, the risk for breast cancer for black women over 50 who had aborted increased 370%.

Her second study, in which breast cancer patients were compared to their own sisters who did not have breast cancer, confirmed the results of the first study: the risk increased 144% for women who had chosen abortion.

Dr. Joel Brind, professor of biology and endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York, says that the Laing studies are significant. "It is the first study of abortion and breast cancer exclusively on black women, extending to a new category of women the ABC link previously established in Asian and white women," he said.

Why is there a greater incidence of breast cancer in women who have induced abortions? Scientific studies have found that in a normal pregnancy, within a few days, the mother's ovaries release progesterone to maintain the pregnancy, as well as high levels of estrogen which makes the breast tissue grow. However, that means any potentially abnormal or cancerous tissue can also proliferate.

Normally, toward the end of the pregnancy, the growth-promoting effects of estrogen are neutralized by other hormones, which cause the breast cells to differentiate into milk-producing tissue, or to die off if not needed. Such specialized cells are much less likely to become cancerous.

However, if the pregnancy is deliberately terminated, there are no late-term hormones to differentiate the breast tissue. In addition, the growth-stimulating effects of the estrogen surge is unchecked, meaning tissue is free to grow into abnormal or even cancerous cells.

Leon Bradlow, Ph.D., a director at Strang-Cornell Cancer Research Laboratory, had this to say in the December 1993 Journal of the National Cancer Institute: "There is a real risk involving abortion and breast cancer, and people should know about this risk so that if they decide to have an abortion they do it with full knowledge."

Accordingly, black women should be informed that induced abortion is a significant risk factor for developing breast cancer. African-American women with breast cancer have a higher mortality rate than white or Hispanic women, primarily because they are diagnosed at more advanced stages of the disease and because of lack of education programs.

Recognizing that, Pamela Smith, M.D., director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Chicago's Mt. Sinai Hospital, stated, "We don't need to wait 20 years later - - until a group drops dead from breast cancer - - to do something about it." Dr. Brind predicted that, once the group of women who have had legalized abortion available throughout their reproductive lifetime reaches post-menopausal age, there will be (by conservative estimates) 40,000 to 50,000 additional cases of breast cancer a year.

Former Planned Parenthood board member LaVerne Tolbert said, " Blacks are not quiet about the issue because they do not care, but rather because the truth has been kept from them. The issue is...to educate our people."

Lynn Robinson holds a law degree from the Washington College of Law at American University. She currently is a confidential assistant/policy advisor for Virginia State Department of Housing and Community Development. She has worked with Black Americans for Life on various projects and activities, including the BAL newsletter. She has researched the problem of abortion and breast cancer among African-American women.