Abortion doubles breast cancer risk

Sydney
6 January 2002

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Abortion doubles breast cancer risk

By Johanna Bennett

An independent British study has found that abortion makes women twice as likely to suffer from breast cancer.

According to a report in The Scotsman newspaper in December, Life, a UK pro-life group similar to Australia’s Right to Life organisation, commissioned the Populations and Pensions Research Institution to undertake a statistical study to establish if there was a link between abortion and breast cancer.

The statisticians looked at breast cancer and abortion rates in Britain, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic. As a result, they believe that up to 50 per cent of breast cancer cases over the next 26 years will be “attributable to abortion”.

The research institution said it expected UK cases to more than double from around 35,000 in 1997 to 77,000 in 2023, largely because of abortions carried out on women who had not yet had a baby.

Life said as many as 22,000 British women could have developed breast cancer because of abortions. It has accused the British Government, breast cancer charities and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of refusing to acknowledge the link between abortion and breast cancer.

Following the release of the study, an American breast cancer expert, Professor Joel Brind, said: “Women are at risk and they do not really know about it.”

NSW Right to Life is concerned about Australian women’s ignorance of the link between abortion and breast cancer.

It says the struggle to inform them of the dangers is similar to the early struggles to publicise the link between smoking and lung cancer.

The introduction on cigarette packets of compulsory printed warnings about links between smoking and cancer is still comparatively recent.

Catherine Cotton of Right to Life points out that the link between long-distance flying and deep vein thrombosis has only recently been acknowledged by airlines.

Right to Life reports that 27 out 34 studies conducted since 1957 have shown a link between abortion and breast cancer, with five showing a twofold increase and 17 a statistically significant increase.

A 1996 meta-analysis of published reports conduced by Prof Brind and his colleagues found a 30 per cent increase in breast cancer risk with abortion. It concluded: “The results support the inclusion of induced abortion among significant independent risk factors of breast cancer.”

Right to Life said the UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists had confirmed that Dr Brind’s review was methodologically sound and that the abortion-breast cancer link “could not be disregarded”.

The increased risk is believed to stem from the fact that pregnancy causes breast cells to multiply early on but with abortion they do not stabilise into milk-producing cells as this only happens in late pregnancy. This leaves breast cells vulnerable to oestrogen-caused cancers, as oestrogen can be a tumour promoter.

Mrs Cotton said Right to Life had tried to publicise this risk to women in Sydney via a billboard poster campaign at major city railway stations last year. But posters were removed halfway through the campaign after the Australian Standards Board received two complaints, although the complaints were later dismissed.

She said Right to Life understood that abortion was an emotive issue and that a decision to have an abortion arose out of situations that many women did not want to face, so compassion and understanding were necessary.

“In standing for life, we need to look not only at the life of the unborn child, but also at that of the mother so as to support her by every means possible,” Mrs Cotton said.

The abortion-breast cancer advertising campaign had become a freedom of information issue, she said, “in a way similar to the way issues of smoking-lung cancer and long flights-deep vein cancer have in the past”.

She added: “Court cases for misinform-ation are taking place on these issues in the US today.”

For more information on this issue and for help, contact Catherine at Right to Life by telephone on 9299 8350 or by email at dccotton@nswrtl. org.au