Alternate facts: Why are we still telling women that abortion causes breast cancer?



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O n June 26 th The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a crisis of pregnancy. options – including abortion. The 5-to-4 vote put in the breast cancer cell (NHGRI)

While critical information about abortion is misplaced at many of the crisis centers, misinformation is apparently readily available. One popular mantra is that abortion causes breast cancer. It's a claim to be vulnerable to the victim The purpose of deep-dive into studies published in the top medical journals shows it is untrue But findings of those investigations tend to be shared.

Perpetuating an alternate fact

In 2014, NARAL Pro -Choice sponsored by a recent high school graduate Dania Flores. She visited 43 crisis centers in California, focusing on lower-income areas, and kept a diary of what she was told.

Flores told the THE LAW that workers at all 43 clinics informed her that abortions cause breast cancer. "You're 16 and they're telling you're going to get breast cancer," Flores said. "You do not want to get breast cancer, so you do not do it."

Cancer fear is used as a deterrent. Flores' work and that of others contributed to the passage of the 2015 law that the Supreme Court just overturned.

A look back at the medical literature reveals where the idea that abortion causes breast cancer may have arisen. It also shows data yes, facts While some of the patients are admitted to the clinic during pregnancy

Origin of the idea

Abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer does make a certain biological sense. During pregnancy, breast cells rapidly diversify and then differentiate (specialize) to elaborate the mammary acorns. Breast cancer occurs during the early proliferative phase, but falls as the cells specialize. Observations in the 17 th century that breast cancer is more prevalent among nuns lead to the idea that pregnancy is actually protective

A study from 1980, "Susceptibility of the mammary gland to carcinogenesis. II. Pregnancy interruption as a risk factor in tumor incidence, "may have ignited the abortion-breast cancer link. In it, rats exposed to a carcinogen while pregnant or lactating were less likely to develop breast cancer than rats

If an abortion, spontaneous or otherwise, halts the pregnancy, the hormone-guided proliferating cells are more likely cancer to cause cancerous mutations. But epidemiological evidence argues against this theoretical risk, and is more powerful than the emotional rhetoric that hurts slurs rather than presenting data. Consider "Study proves abortion causes breast cancer, where are the headlines?" From a 2013 article in Catholic Online : "Abortion is not safe, no matter what the militant left tells you. Their propaganda can be slick and refined, their tactics are honed, but they're still wrong. These are the facts: life begins at conception, every abortion kills a baby (hardly the definition of safe), and mothers increase the risk to their life with each procedure. "

The Danish study

The lack of the link is crystal clear in the results of a 1997 study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine "Induced abortion and the risk of breast cancer." The peer-reviewed NEJM is hardly my idea of ​​slick

Tapping data from the National Registry of Induced Abortions and the Danish Cancer Registry, researchers assessed the histories of all 1,529,512 women born in Denmark between 1935 and 1978. Of the women, 280,965 had at least one abortion, and of these , 1,338 women developed breast cancer later. But of the 1,248,547 women who did not have an abortion, 8,908 developed breast cancer – a had abortions. Adjusting for various factors makes the risk about equal. The investigators concluded:

The risk of breast cancer among women with a history of noncompliance with a history of breast cancer. 19659018] A trend emerged, however, when considering the risk of breast cancer by pregnancy when the pregnancy ended (age of the woman did not matter). Although the risk of breast cancer was actually lower than that of women, it was less likely that the risk of breast cancer was higher than that of men. (How are many women doing this?) Only 37, out of the 1,338 women who developed breast cancer of the 280,965 women who had abortions. Do the math.

"The fact that such an increase did not affect the overall result, it was based on small numbers and therefore requires cautious interpretation," the researchers wrote.

In case these stats were not convincing, the NEJM ran an editorial, "Abortion, Breast Cancer, and Epidemiology," by Patricia Hartge, ScD, from the National Cancer Institute. "In short, a woman need not worry about the risk of breast cancer when facing the difficult decision of whether to terminate a pregnancy," she wrote. And subsequent large studies in other countries. Planned Parenthood describes these studies in detail

Focus on the small, flawed investigations

The pregnancy crisis clinics dishing out misinformation recall bias, and women intentionally not divulging abortion history because the procedure was illegal when performed. For example, this meta analysis that is combined with the results of several small studies that the Danish researchers are biased and the statistics flawed. Yet the Catholic Online article refers to these small studies, giving the appearance of scientific analysis.

Sometimes the deadly warnings of crisis centers do not even bother with data. For example, nozzles in Philadelphia proclaimed a message from " Christ's Bride Ministries" warning that 'women who choose abortion sufferers and deadlier breast cancer. "That's from 1999 – two years after NEJM study appeared.

Investigations that go forward and track data, rather than relying on women recalling an upsetting event, tell a different story.

"Induced and Spontaneous Abortion and Incidence of Breast Cancer Among Young Women: A Prospective Cohort Study, "published in J. AMA Internal Medicine countered the findings of the oft-cited small retrospective studies. And the title of this article in The Lancet reveals it's power: "Breast cancer and abortion: collaborative reanalysis of data from 53 epidemiological studies, including 83,000 women with breast cancer from 16 countries." They found no link . The paper explains the generalized and fundamental bias of retrospective studies in women with breast cancer.

(Caveat: Large numbers are more convincing, but breast cancer risk is also a personal matter, Genetics counts I breastfed 3 children, which lowers my risk, but my mother had breast cancer, and so do I. 1965, 1965 The official word: ACOG 19659005] The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Committee Opinion, Induced Abortion and Breast Cancer Risk from August 2003 and reaffirmed several times with new data, including in 2018.

This article is based on the analysis of the literature and the literature. hould be the gold standard for delivering information on the non-association of abortion and breast cancer. Yet Planned Parenthood offers abundant examples of abortion-breast cancer. Still

The NEJM paper on the 1.5 million women clearly showing a lack of a link between abortion and breast cancer has been known for 21 years. This study was published in the most prominent medical journal.

So I can only conclude that the cherry-picking of flawed studies, or providing information on how to get one, is not an honest misunderstanding of or lack of awareness of the findings of the 1997 study. It is actually much more likely to be a deliberate attempt at a religion-fueled, anti-abortion agenda.

Ricki Lewis is the GLP's senior contributing writer on gene therapy and gene editing. She has a PhD in genetics and is a genetic counselor, science writer and author of The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It, the only popular book about gene therapy. ORGANIC. Follow her at her website or Twitter @rickilewis .

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