PUBLICATION:        The Ottawa Citizen

DATE:                         2003.09.22

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  News

PAGE:                         A17

COLUMN:                  Lorne Gunter

BYLINE:                     Lorne Gunter

SOURCE:                   The Edmonton Journal

DATELINE:                 EDMONTON

ILLUSTRATION:     Photo: Tom Kurtz, Agence France-Presse / SILENT: Pro-choiceadvocates fear the link between abortion and breast cancer will hurt their cause. 

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Abortion's deadly secret: Why the pro-choice lobby won't tell women an abortion increases the risk of getting breast cancer.

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EDMONTON - Let me begin by declaring that I think abortion is morally repugnant, but I wouldn't pass a law against it -- not yet at least. In democracies under the rule of law, the threshold for public consensus on what should or shouldn't be criminal should be about 85 per cent. That would ensure few laws are ever passed, but each one would be widely supported and obeyed.

This stance pleases almost no one with a passionate conviction about abortion. The pro-lifers recoil at my opposition to outlawing murder (which abortion certainly is), while the pro-choicers reject any suggestion that abortion is morally wrong.

Oh, well.

That being said, it would appear the pro-choicers, who are largely in charge of our culture, politics, universities and media, have been doing their level best to keep women from learning about the elevated risk for breast cancer that comes from having an abortion.

In the summer 2003 issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, author Karen Malec forcefully lays out the case that induced abortions raise women's risk of developing breast cancer, by 30 to 100 per cent or more. Miscarriages do not. The key is the artificiality of on-demand abortions.

There are a lot of immature, cancer-vulnerable cells in breasts until a woman becomes pregnant -- then there are lot more.

If the pregnancy goes to full term, very near the end of the seventh month, hormones release these mature cells into lactating ones less susceptible to cancer.

But when a healthy pregnancy is abruptly terminated, the hormones have too little chance to mature the breast tissue, so what is left behind is an increased number of vulnerable cells, which raises the risk of cancers developing.

Ms. Malec contends this is well-known among cancer researchers -- or should be -- but is denied or even deliberately covered up, either because the researchers themselves are so pro-choice they cannot bear to bring bad news about the abortion-breast cancer link, or because they cannot withstand the slings and arrows of feminists and pro-choice advocates.

Cancer societies, government research institutes, pro-abortion politicians, even medical associations continue to deny the increasing bulk of evidence. Of the 40 or so major studies on the ABC (abortion-breast cancer) link, nearly three-quarters have shown a statistically significant correlation.

Aborting a first pregnancy can double the risks for women with family histories of breast cancer. For women with no family history of cancer or who are aborting a second or subsequent pregnancy, the risk increase would be less.

But any woman having an abortion stands a greater chance of developing breast cancer than a second-hand smoker living with a chain smoker does of developing lung cancer (at least 30 per cent versus no more than a 16- or 17-per-cent greater risk).

Yet, we continue to broaden access to abortion while doing our level best to outlaw public smoking.

In fairness, Ms. Malec is president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, which is opposed to abortion on demand (www.abortion

breastcancer.com). And the medical journal in which her paper appeared -- which is largely supportive of her thesis -- did append an editor's note stating the U.S. National Cancer Institutes has declared that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk."

To judge for yourself, read her article at www.jpands.org .

The irony (or tragedy) is that the breast cancer establishment, while denying the truth about ABC, seems gripped by the notion that environmental risks -- particularly pesticides -- are a leading cause of breast cancer, even though no major study has yet found any link at all. In 1997, the Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres found no "existing evidence to suggest that crop protection chemicals, and lawn and garden products are ... a major cause of cancer." The American Cancer Society says the risk is "negligible" at best. A 1999 Queen's University study said that while it was "biologically plausible" that pesticides could cause cancer, "several studies are beginning to show ... it's not a strong risk."

PCBs, perhaps, but pesticides? Unlikely. The New England Journal of Medicine says no link can be found between weed and bug killers and breast cancer. And last spring, while Toronto city council was debating a pesticide ban, the city's director of public health produced an 80-page report that concluded there was no reason to believe exposure to low-level pesticides "can result in either short- or long-term health effects." Councillors went ahead and approved the ban anyway.

Environmentalists, such as the Sierra Club, also continue to insist pesticides cause breast cancer. And even the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, which sponsors the annual Run for the Cure, is hoping to raise $10 million over the next five years, not to spend on research into cures, but to "move upstream and look at stopping breast cancer before it starts," according to the organization's Ontario executive director, Sharon Wood. "The connection is environmental ... occupational and chemical exposures."

Why the blindness to the documented abortion-breast cancer link and the eager grasping of the pesticides-breast cancer link?

Easy. The first would require pro-choicers to kill one of their sacred cows -- abortion --while the second permits them to blame corporatism (which is both capitalist and masculine) for a disease only women can get. Politicized science too often trumps natural science.

Lorne Gunter is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal.