Political Correctness Keeping Researchers From Making Abortion, Breast Cancer Link?
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer drew attention to a new study on Monday which revealed that women who had an abortion are approximately three times more likely to develop breast cancer than those who did not.
The report, titled “Influence of Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 and Prolonged Estrogen Exposure on Risk of Breast Cancer Among Women in Armenia,” was written by Lilit Khachatryan of the Department of Public Health at the American University of Armenia. Researchers from various U.S. universities, including Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania contributed to the report.
Succinctly, the report found that abortion increases a woman’s chance of breast cancer 2.86 times. The study also found that women who delay their first full-term pregnancy, which is what abortions typically do, are also more prone to breast cancer. Statistically, the report noted that there is a 13 percent increase of risk for every one year delay of first full-term pregnancy. Women over 30 had a 4.95-fold increase in risk.
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The research then went on to claim that the report “points to no effect” of abortions on breast cancer, according to the Daily Caller.
However, the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is calling foul. Karen Malec, president of the coalition, told The Christian Post that “political correctness is the reason that the results linking abortion and breast cancer aren’t made fully available to the public.”
“Political correctness as well as lack of political courage.”
Fifty-one of 68 epidemiological studies conducted since 1957 report an abortion/breast cancer link.
Joel Brind, Baruch College biology and endocrinology professor as well as advocate of the breast/abortion connection, released a statement saying that the researchers “did not – and perhaps were not allowed to – characterize their findings honestly in the politically correct atmosphere of the U.S. and Europe. The good news is that they were able to report their findings in a prominent peer-reviewed journal at all.”
The National Cancer Institute directed The Christian Post to their online “factsheet” regarding the abortion/breast cancer link when asked for an interview. The factsheet claims that based on an Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop conducted in 2003 that “induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.”
The workshop consisted of “100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer risk.” The experts of this workshop refute any abortion/breast cancer link.
“The NCI contradicts itself in this study. When they did this 2003 workshop, among the conclusions they acknowledged was that child bearing protects women from cancer. Women who have more full-term pregnancies at younger age have a reduced risk for breast cancer,” said Malec. She goes on to note that abortion allows for women to delay full term pregnancies and in some cases abortions can lead to a premature birth.
Malec told Life News that the study cited recall bias as a limitation of their study, hence making a connection between abortion and breast cancer hard to determine.
“Khachatryan’s group cited recall bias as a possible limitation of their study, but tellingly provided no citations to support that claim. According to this hypothesis, the only reason that scientists find an [abortion/breast cancer] link is not because abortion really does raise risk. Rather, more women with breast cancer accurately report their past abortions than do healthy women,” she said.
“Similarly, authors of the Uzbekistan Health Examination Survey (which received financial and technical assistance through the US AID-funded MEASURE DHS+ program) said induced abortion is not negatively stigmatized in former Soviet states and that the collection of data is, therefore, successful,” she added.
“National Cancer Institute branch chief Dr. Louise Brinton and her colleagues admitted in a 2009 study led by Jessica Dolle that abortion raises risk,” she said. ”They demonstrated that they know recall bias is a red herring used to prop up abortion. After Brinton and the NCI told women during the agency’s 2003 workshop to disregard retrospective studies because they were flawed due to recall bias, Brinton and Jessica Dolle and their colleagues subsequently used supposedly ‘flawed’ data from their group’s 1994 and 1996 studies for their 2009 study.”
When asked why the NCI would want to supposedly keep the alleged connection between abortion and breast cancer from gaining public traction, Malec pointed to the NCI’s failure to publicly acknowledge the link between tobacco and cancer for a long time, and explained that the reason has to do with funding.
“The NCI gets its funding from Congress. The NCI has pressure applied to it by members of Congress [to pervert] their findings. If you are a scientist and your funding depends on the federal government, you better toe the line. We’ve heard complaints from scientists that don’t wish to deny the link between abortion and breast cancer publicly and have had to back out of the research as a result."
"There is a corruption of science.”
