By Hilary White
June 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A study purporting to disprove the causal link between abortion and breast cancer is rife with errors of fact and methodology, a research organization says. The flaws and omissions are serious enough, one group says, that the study is being denounced as “fraudulent” and an openly biased attempt to discredit the evidence showing the link.
“This fraudulent study provides further strong evidence of the continuing, wilful misrepresentation by prominent scientists of the well-established link between abortion and breast cancer,” said Joel Brind, Ph.D., president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (BCPI).
The study, by Katherine DeLellis Henderson was called the California Teachers Study and was published recently in the journal Contraception. It was funded by several governmental agencies including the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the California Department of Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In it, the researchers claimed their data refuted two breast cancer risks associated with abortion – loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy and the so-called “independent link”.
Researchers have found a connection between the interruption of the normal hormonal development of pregnancy by abortion and the development of the cancer-susceptible breast lobules. These multiply under the influence of an increased estrogen level early in a normal pregnancy. These breast lobules do not mature until the last months of a full term pregnancy, leaving the woman cancer-resistant. Interruption of the pregnancy after the increase of estrogen, especially in the later stages of pregnancy, can cause the cells to become cancerous. The interruption of pregnancy also leaves women with more places for breast cancers to start; this is what BCPI calls the “contested” “independent link”.
DeLellis Henderson’s team claimed that women who have abortions and those who have full term pregnancies have a “similar risk” of breast cancer. But standard medical texts have acknowledged the risk-reducing effect of a full term pregnancy for decades.
The biases of the research teams were revealed by Dr. Leslie Bernstein, a senior author in the study, who told CancerPage.com in 2003 that she has a deep-seated dislike for the ABC link.
She said, “The biggest bang for the buck is the first birth, and the younger you are, the better off you are. I would never be a proponent of going around and telling them that having babies is the way to reduce your risk. I don’t want the issue relating to induced abortion to breast cancer risk to be part of the mix of the discussion of induced abortion, its legality, its continued availability.”
The BCPI alleges that the study’s serious flaws have resulted in a false downplaying of the risk of abortion as a factor in breast cancer. These flaws, the group says, include, the fact that nearly one in five of the women with breast cancer in the study were counted as not having breast cancer.
One of the main contentions of the study is undermined by the researchers’ use of an inappropriate comparison group. Instead of comparing women who aborted their first pregnancy to women who had carried their first pregnancy to term, they compared women who had aborted their first pregnancy to women who had never been pregnant.
Most western cancer organizations, including the Canadian Cancer Society have vigorously denied the link and ignored the mounting medical and statistical evidence that a history of abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer by as much as 160%. Since the advent of legalized abortion, however, most groups and medical organizations have attempted to deny or cover up the link.