Alleged link between breast cancer, abortion spurs debate

New Orleans CityBusiness, Nov 22, 2004 by Richard A. Webster

For nearly 10 years, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals policy has been to tell women seeking an abortion that the procedure increases the risk of breast cancer.

Now, a panel of 100 of the world's leading cancer experts have determined this information to be false.

Spokesman Bob Johannessen said the DHH was unaware of the most recent scientific study before a recent Associated Press story on the discrepancy forced it to drop the notification requirement.

Our medical staff reviewed the findings once they came to our attention and all of the language indicating a link has since been removed, he said.

Louisiana dropped the notification requirement but three other states - Texas, Kansas and Mississippi - continue to require it while 14 other states are considering adopting similar legislation.

Proponents of the notification call it a common-sense approach to women's health.

Opponents accuse its backers of ignoring scientific facts in favor of pushing an extreme anti-abortion ideology.

Information given by health care professionals should be accurate and not based on the opinions and value judgments of anti-abortion hardliners, said Julie Redman, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta.

The controversy first erupted early last year when the National Cancer Institute changed a fact sheet on its Web site that for years stated the absence of a link between abortion and breast cancer. Under new director Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, an appointee of President George W. Bush, the NCI changed the language to indicate tests disproving the abortion/breast cancer link were inconclusive.

This sent the scientific community into an uproar. In February 2003 Eschenbach convened an expert panel that concluded having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a women's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.

Dr. Polly Newcomb, head of the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, took part in the NCI panel. She said there is no scientific evidence supporting the abortion-breast cancer link.

Abortion is an agonizing decision and adding to that anguish a fictitious link between abortion and breast cancer is a disservice to women and public health, Newcomb said.

When the NCI changed the language on its Web site to reflect the new research, anti-abortion groups were outraged.

Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer in Hoffman Estates, Ill., accused the NIC of caving in to pro- abortion politicians. She wrote that the truth was being covered to protect feminists and their breast cancer fund-raising businesses.

She accused Big Abortion, which she claims includes gynecologists and pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies, of hijacking mainstream science and suppressing the facts.

Malec says abortion causes cancer indirectly and directly.

Scientific research has shown that women who give birth early in life are less susceptible to breast cancer. Malec says a woman delays giving birth by having an abortion, which indirectly increases her risk of breast cancer.

Scientists have said they could cut the breast cancer rate in half if women changed their child-bearing patterns, had more kids at an earlier age and breast fed them longer, Malec said. That's not possible if they have abortions.

Newcomb said many factors reduce the risk of breast cancer such as delaying a girl's first period by limiting her nutrition.

But we're not going to suggest we don't feed our daughters just like we wouldn't encourage our daughters to have more children at an earlier age, Newcomb said.

NCI says it's wrong to say abortion is a direct cause of breast cancer through hormonal disruption. Malec admits the theory is contested but says some medical groups support the idea, including the Boston-based Catholic Medical Association, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Holland, Mich., and the Polycarp Research Institute in Altoona, Pa.

Polycarp's Web site states it will not promote methods or intentions that are inconsistent with the ethical and moral guidelines of the Catholic Church.

Dr. Joel Brind, an advocate of the abortion-breast cancer link, founded a fourth group, the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He became interested in the abortion-breast cancer link after converting to Christianity, he said in an interview with Physician magazine. With a new belief in a meaningful universe, I felt compelled to use science for its noblest, life-saving purpose. By 1991, I realized that my understanding of life was incompatible with a pro-abortion point of view.

He was the only member of the NCI panel to disagree with its findings.