Abortion and Breast Cancer

An Important Crack In the Wall of Denial Occurs in Florida Parental Notification Case

By Joel Brind, Ph.D.

Having read the articles that have regularly appeared in NRL News for over five years, most subscribers to the "right to life newspaper of record" know that a large and growing body of studies has demonstrated a link between a woman's decision to undergo an induced abortion and a subsequent increased risk of contracting breast cancer. Readers are also familiar with the disheartening fact that there has been a concerted effort for years to minimize, if not actively cover up, this linkage.

When discussing the issue, it is important to remember the basics - - for example, that 13 out of 14 studies conducted on American women reported increased breast cancer risk among women who have chosen abortion. Worldwide, the figure is 27 out of 33 studies. Unfortunately, official denial continues.

However, a significant crack in the wall of denial opened up during testimony in a recent court battle in Florida. Irony of ironies, the truth came out as part of a challenge by a group of Florida abortionists to the state's new parental notification statute.

At trial, I was the expert witness making the case for the link between abortion and breast cancer on behalf of the state of Florida. My counterpart - - representing the abortionists - - was Dr. Lynn Rosenberg of the Boston University School of Medicine. In testimony given last November, Dr. Rosenberg actually admitted a key aspect of the deadly connection between abortion and increased risk of breast cancer.

Why should the issue of the linkage even come up in the context of a law requiring parental notification? Simply because we are talking about young women - - or girls - - who, in all likelihood, know little about their family's health history. And that information is crucial, as explained below.

Hark back to the 1994 study by Dr. Janet Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle, Washington. The results of that study appeared in the prestigious Journal of the National Cancer Institute and garnered major headlines (see NRL News, 11/18/94, p. 18).

Most attention focused on the overall finding that there was a 50% increased breast cancer risk for women who have had an induced abortion. But the risk increases among certain sub- groups of women were even more ominous.

For example, among women with a family history of breast cancer (mother, grandmother, sister, or aunt), the increase in risk was 80%. If the woman had her abortion before she was 18, the increase in risk was more than 100%!

However, the most troubling result from the Daling et al. study came among the sub-group in which these three variables were combined: women with a family history of breast cancer who had an abortion under age 18.

Out of a total study group of 1,800 women - - 900 with breast cancer and 900 healthy women (controls) - - there were only 12 such women.

All 12 women ended up with breast cancer!

Consider that roughly a quarter million abortions annually are obtained by girls under the age of 18. In the context of minors seeking abortion, how many such teenage girls would even know that their grandmother - - who may have died before the teen was born - - died of breast cancer?

But the girl's parents, of course, would know, and their input could rescue many a girl from a tremendously increased risk of breast cancer later in life. And even most conservatively estimated, tens of thousands of girls with this family history have abortions every year, all the more reason a parent or parents should be notified if a minor daughter is considering an abortion.

So, clearly there is an increased risk to a young woman who has an abortion - - an even greater risk if there is a family history of breast cancer.

At long last, in the Florida case, the skillful cross- examination of Mr. Ken Sukhia exposed the simple truth:

Q: "So in other words, a woman who finds herself pregnant at age 15 will have a higher breast cancer risk if she chooses to abort that pregnancy, than if she carries that pregnancy to term, correct?"

Dr. Rosenberg: "Probably, yes."

Q: "Looking at that another way, let's compare two women. Let's say both got pregnant at age 15 - - one terminates the pregnancy, but the other carries the pregnancy to term. And both women go on to get married and have two children, say, at age 30 and age 35. Is the risk of breast cancer higher for the woman who had an abortion at age 15 or the woman who had a baby at age 15, all other things being equal?"

Dr. Rosenberg: "It's probably higher for the one who had an abortion at age 15."

But why should this be so? The answer is so intuitively obvious it is difficult to deny.

The answer lies in the nature of how pregnancy influences breast development. This occurs in two phases: growth and differentiation.

The growth phase lasts all the way into the third trimester - - until about 32 weeks. During this phase, a woman's ovaries secrete far more of the female hormone estrogen than at any other time of her life. This estrogen makes the cells of the breasts multiply rapidly.

During the differentiation phase, most of these growing cells are transformed into milk-producing cells. In the process, the cells' capacity to multiply is permanently turned off. This is key because only the cells which can multiply are susceptible to being transformed into cancer cells later on.

Thus, it boils down to arithmetic. After a full-term pregnancy, a woman's breasts contain fewer such cancer-vulnerable cells than were there before the pregnancy began; thus, her risk of breast cancer has been reduced.

But if there is an early termination of the pregnancy, the mother's breasts contain more cancer-vulnerable cells, because the proliferation of growing cells were never differentiated. Thus the risk of future breast cancer has been increased.

Remember that Dr. Rosenberg - - a scientist who had long denied the abortion-breast cancer link even as her own research has provided evidence for it - - was testifying for the people doing the abortions. (She was hired by the attorneys for the group, the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy.) It is encouraging that, confronted with unequivocal wording under oath, she had to tell the truth that compared to childbirth (the only other option to a pregnant woman) abortion does raise a woman's breast cancer risk.

How then could abortionists ever possibly justify not warning the minor girls that walk into their clinics of the increased risk, let alone fight the state's new requirement to notify one of their parents?

Part of the answer may lie in Judge Terry Lewis's decision to grant a temporary injunction against Florida's new parental notification law, pending his final ruling. Among other things, he stated that a pregnant minor "must" make a decision, whether to abort or to carry the pregnancy to term.

This is a fundamental falsehood. A girl or woman, once pregnant, need make no decision at all. Nine months from the time of conception, she will deliver a baby, under

normal circumstances. It is only the pervasively pro-abortion culture that introduces artificial distinctions and choices that turn reason and common sense upside-down. To the abortionists (and apparently, the judge), it is the act of notifying parents about their minor daughter's behavior - - not the abortion - - which is viewed as the artificial intervention!

Not surprisingly, such poor reasoning results in many contradictions.

Consider the significance of one other exchange between Mr. Sukhia and Dr. Rosenberg. Mr. Sukhia asked whether it wasn't true that 25 studies show evidence of the link. Dr. Rosenberg replied, "I don't know. I haven't counted them, but that's not the way one makes an inference of cause and effect, by counting studies."

Q: "And how would make such an inference?"

Dr. Rosenberg: "Well, there are a lot of factors. ... Results need to be replicated over and over."

Now there are 27 studies that show a link - - and counting.

Joel Brind, Ph.D., is professor of biology and endocrinology at Baruch College, the City University of New York, and founder and president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.