-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
For those who oppose abortion no tactic is too sleazy. The scare tactic of stopping abortion by linking it with breast cancer was manna from heaven. The visceral fear of breast cancer would present the faithful with a weapon to be wielded with no regard for the facts. The fact that the scientific evidence shows no link between abortion and breast cancer fazed them not.
The recent Komen/Planned Parenthood publicity and Komen’s ties to this woo, has reanimated this long-dead controversy.
The Komen tie-in is via Jane Abraham, a member of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Advocacy Alliance board of directors. Abraham is also on the board of directors of The Nurturing Network, an organization founded and chaired by Mary Cunningham Agee. It was Agee who, in 1999, wrote in a Culture of Life Foundation newsletter that “the undeniable link between breast cancer and abortion is only the ‘tip of an iceberg’ of damage that medical science is now able to reveal about this procedure.”
Abraham is also founder and General Chairman of the Susan B. Anthony List. On its website, the SBA List touts its Komen connection while claiming:
There are also studies that link abortion to breast cancer- which is precisely what SGK is supposed to be fighting against.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a lie.
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a report, Induced Abortion and Breast Cancer Risk, that found:
More rigorous recent studies demonstrate no causal relationship between induced abortion and a subsequent increase in breast cancer risk.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found:
Breast cancer: induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.
The American Cancer Society studied the link and reported the results:
- Induced abortion is not linked to an increase in breast cancer risk.
- Spontaneous abortion is not linked to an increase in breast cancer risk.
These scientific results are known to the anti-abortion cadre, and they’d rather lie to women.
H/T: Jodi Jacobson, Catholics For Choice (pdf).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion%E2%80%93breast_cancer_hypothesis The scientific community has concluded that abortion does not cause breast cancer. I have a friend with estrogen dependent breast cancer. Her oncologist is advising her to do every she can to eliminate the production estrogen in her body. She is on a strict organic diet with ,of course, hormone free dairy and meat. He also told her to eat grass fed beef and not to drink alcohol. Exercise is another component of her regimen.
John K, I read the study you posted. It didn’t say what you thought it said. It again reinforced the connection of estrogen to breast cancer, something I’ve been reading about for 25 years.
Got to love the antichoicers (John Kindley I am looking at you) leaning on shamelessly biased groups for their information (with a url like abortionbreastcancer.com, can there be a doubt about the bias?)
This all boils down to wanting to control women’s bodies… period. Not just abortions, which make up an almost infinitesimal portion of what PP does, but birth control as well. There is a small but rabid minority in this country that would like to go back to the days of de jure (not just the de facto we have now) second class citizenship for women. Sadly some of these are women themselves.
Mike S……did you see my earlier post. But much better done by you, I admit.
Blousie, …..although facetiously meant, your joke does incite recall that papillomavirus causes cancer, both of the cervix and of the rectum! Interpret the latter as you will, don’t have the root data myself.
But I guess one can get STDs from scissor sister exercises as well.
Or if she smokes, even worse. (My facetiousness is grosser than yours)
Thank goodness I belonged to the post-pill and pre-AIDS generation.
Did we have fun!!!
All: If you check out Kindley’s own site, he intimates he was going to get rich mimicing the cigarette case. In this case, women who had gotten breast cancer, and that through having had an abortion. He says he put his own money in and lost it all. Read and get your own take.
I think the Kindley is here looking to get some to follow to his site and debate him there. It’s probably pretty lonelly there. Weirder ideas have been shown to be the truth.
Maybe people who smoke cigarettes are more likely to have abortions. We know that breast cancer is associated with smoking. Maybe people who are careless about their lungs are careless about making their partner spend a quarter on a rubber. It would not take a scientist to sort this out. Ask the janitor at the abortion clinic if there are a lot of patients smoking before and after the procedure. He/she would know from the refuse and observing the persons smoking with the nurses and doctors at the smoke em if ya got em station just outside the door of every clinic in America.
oops … not #3
raf,
Only if he’s bald! 😉
Blouise,
I thought having sex with a man is a god send for women? 🙂
Somebody needs to learn the definition of statistically significant.
Mr. Spindell: First, I was called a “liar” here first, before I called anyone else a liar. Second, the result in the study to which you refer was indeed “statistically significant,” meaning it’s 95% likely that the positive association is not due to mere chance. Third, it’s interesting that your doctors apparently informed you of the risks associated with those medications and those procedures, even though they were not large enough for you to avoid those medications and procedures. Fourth, women have been informed for years about what you describe as the “mildly increased possibility of breast cancer” associated with oral contraception.
Just trying to introduce some sanity into this debate … 👿
My maternal Grandmother, Mother, and maternal Aunt all died from breast cancer. My nephew heads one of the top ranked (#3) Breast Cancer Research Facilities in the nation. To say that he is appalled by this politician/priest led insanity would be an understatement.
If one wants some actual information here’s a good place to start
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/basic_info/
Gene, I have a copy of a cartoon from the New Yorker magazine somewhere around here. It shows two lab rats in a cage talking. One rat tells the other, “See how well I have the psychologist trained? When I push this button, he gives me food.”
Blouise, there have been several studies that show women do better living without a man than men do living without a woman. Women are good for men in terms of happiness; the converse? Not so much.
Everyone knows lab rats cause cancer, Blouise.
Mr. Kindley,
I won’t give you the respect of calling you a liar. That would presume you were smart enough to actually read and understand your own evidence. I actually took the time to read it and there are two glaring evidential weaknesses to it as an affirmation of the relationship of abortion to breast cancer.
1. The first was that it was a study about oral contraception and breast cancer, not abortion and breast cancer. The mildly increased possibility of breast cancer and oral contraception has been known for years and is even referenced in TV ads for oral contraceptives.
2. Secondly, the small section (two statistical lines) presented about abortion and breast cancer showed statistically insignificant results. As a comparison, to stay alive I must take medication that has about the same statistical risk as that in the study. Secondly, in the last two years I have undergone heart biopsy’s also to keep me alive. These procedures have the same relative risk factors as those in your study, meaning they are not significant enough for me to avoid.
This is a made up issue, by people like yourself who have come to a conclusion and then stretched the facts to agree with them. That some of them are Doctors and scientists is no surprise. Religious faith can make the most intelligent people believe without evidence, which is after all the basic meaning of faith and those people will unconsciously manufacture the evidence to support their beliefs. You are quite quick to attack and defame, however, in your haste you neglect to examine your own evidence.
Bdaman,
Same old, same old. JPands is a joke. However, I understand your need to present this stuff stems from your deep faith and I respect that as long as you don’t impose it on others.
On a personal note though, I hope that you, your whole family and Mom are doing well and have recovered from your recent travails.
Bron,
The American Cancer Society has pulled together research on risk factors. There are studies that indicate a positive correlation between high levels of estrogen and cancer. There are two kinds of estrogen; endogenous and exogenous. The former is that produced naturally by the body, and the latter comes from an external source, such as hormone pills.
Here is the information from the ACS that is written clearly and simply, bypassing the actual sausage-making of the highly technical studies on which these findings are based.
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/Patient/page3
Has anyone checked into the possibility that having sex with a man gives a woman breast cancer?
Bdaman:
how is that germane to breast cancer?
David:
is there a link between estrogen levels and breast and uterine cancers?
A perhaps scurrilous sociological comment:
Liars figure, figures don’t. BUT, people with preformed convictions ofter end up in perhaps odd professions: like lawyers, and “scientists”,
Googling properly would probably expose the scientists as having no earlier merits publication-wise.
Kindley has demonstrated his lack of judgement well enough here already.
His dreams of fame and fortune, shows that juridical diplomas should be conditioned on passing a psychological test of some sort.