Mark Robison, a journalist at the Reno Gazette Journal who calls himself a "fact checker," erroneously claimed in a story dated April 28, 2014, there is a scientific consensus that abortion is not linked with increased breast cancer risk. 1 As our reader, you know this is untrue.
For instance, the American Cancer Society, which does not tell women the truth about the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link, admits that:
"Much of the historic increase in breast cancer incidence reflects changes in reproductive patterns, such as delayed childbearing and having fewer children, which are recognized risk factors for breast cancer." 2
"Breastfeeding has consistently been shown to decrease a woman's risk of breast cancer, with greater benefit associated with longer duration." 3
Canadian researcher Brent Rooney explains it so well: "Childlessness is an accepted risk factor for breast cancer. If a woman aborts all of her pregnancies, will she be childless?"
Babette Francis cleverly asks, "Can a woman breastfeed her aborted fetus?"
Similar questions can be asked about the effects of abortion on delayed childbirth and smaller family size. These are troublesome facts that journalists cannot justify censoring.
Why hasn't the cancer establishment brought these facts to women's attention? The American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the National Breast Cancer Coalition, and other so-called cancer charities seemingly lack the political courage, integrity and intellectual honesty that is needed to admit that abortion contributes to the breast cancer epidemic in these ways. (I hate to call cancer groups "charities" because it's uncharitable to keep women in the dark about an avoidable risk.)
Robison inaccurately claimed there is a scientific consensus that abortion is not linked with breast cancer. I informed him that eight medical organizations have issued statements acknowledging abortion is independently linked with breast cancer. That means abortion raises a woman's risk - not counting the loss of the protective effect of childbearing - by leaving her breasts with more places for cancers to start. Among four ways that abortion raises risk, the independent link is the only one that scientists still debate, and there are dozens of epidemiological studies from many countries around the world and biological and experimental evidence to support it. It's not Robison's right to discount these facts.
Ladies, you don't need to bother your pretty little heads with too much information! Mark Robison will decide what you need to know!
Robison decided to ignore two, egregious examples of misconduct at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI). First, Dr. Leslie Bernstein was a leader/moderator at the agency's sham workshop on the ABC link in 2003. After the three-day workshop, she told Rachel Lowe, a journalist at CancerPage.com why she didn't want women to know about the link. Explaining that the best way to prevent breast cancer is by having an early first full term pregnancy, 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. I think it should not be part of the argument." (Links to MP3 recording and pdf file available in citation below.) 4
Robison is worried about bias, but his concern is one-sided. He suggested that people like you and me have a "moral agenda." It's cynical to believe that no one would undertake a mission to educate women about the ABC link out of concern for women's health (although I'm a 23-year cancer survivor). He's seemingly unconcerned about the ramifications of a dangerous kind of bias - like that of Leslie Bernstein who wants to conceal the ABC link from women. That kind of bias will result in millions of women who will develop breast cancer because of their abortions in many parts of the world. That's why it's so peculiar Robison argued I have a moral agenda. The concealment of the link is a crime against humanity.
Second, further misconduct at the NCI involves Dr. Louise Brinton. She serves as branch chief for that agency's Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch in the Division of Cancer, Epidemiology and Genetics. She was the chief organizer of the NCI's phony workshop in 2003. Brinton and her NCI colleagues told the public to disregard all of the retrospective studies that had reported an ABC link - including two of Brinton's ABC studies published in the 1990s - because they were supposedly flawed studies.
A few years later, Brinton and a group of colleagues led by Jessica Dolle used that supposedly flawed data from the 1990s studies (frozen tissue samples from study subjects who'd reported on their abortion histories) for their 2009 study on the link between oral contraceptives (the Pill) and the deadly, triple-negative breast cancer. 5 When designing their study, researchers wrote that they had included abortion and oral contraceptives among "known and suspected breast cancer risk factors," and they reported a statistically significant 40% risk elevation among women with abortions. In their conclusions, they included abortion among the risk factors for breast cancer. You can read more about Brinton's misconduct here and here .
These shocking facts produced little more than a yawn from Robison. If this had been any other risk factor for cancer involving gross misconduct at the NCI, journalists would be all over it; but the bar gets raised higher for abortion.
It's predictable that abortion providers would deny an ABC link, just as a tobacco executive in the 1950s would have denied the tobacco-cancer connection, but Robison still relied on statements from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG) for his story.
I wonder if it ever occurred to him that abortion providers may fear massive medical malpractice lawsuits? There are five known successful malpractice lawsuits (two in the U.S., three in Australia) in which women sued their abortionists for having failed to inform them about the ABC link. 6
Robison should ask doctors at the RCOG how their patients, the BBC and The Guardian received the news when on March 13, 2000, it became the first medical organization to warn its abortion practitioners about the ABC link, saying that the 1996 meta-analysis by Professor Joel Brind and his Penn State colleagues (which found a 30% risk elevation for women with induced abortions) was methodologically sound and that the ABC research "could not be disregarded."[7], 26
Later that summer, after the London press learned of the RCOG's warning, the BBC and The Guardian strenuously objected. Angry, post-abortive women, who hadn't been informed of the breast cancer risk, called their doctors to learn what they could do to reduce their risks and otherwise protect their health. After being intimidated by members of the press, the RCOG put its tail between its legs and dutifully withdrew the warning.
Robison criticized the Brind-Penn State meta-analysis, but he never attempted to interview Brind in connection with his "fact-checking" story. Robison alleged that 1996 meta-analysis and the 2014 Chinese meta-analysis by Yubei Huang's team found risk elevations among women who'd had abortions, not because abortion really does raise breast cancer risk, but because breast cancer patients are more likely than healthy women are to honestly report their abortion histories. 7 , 8 That's a hypothetical problem called "recall bias." There is one, small problem. There are no scientists who presently claim they have found credible evidence of recall bias, although the question has been examined extensively in studies. 9
Scientists conduct similar retrospective studies in which they ask study subjects to report their histories involving other controversial behaviors (i.e., HIV infection and sexual orientation or cervical cancer and multiple sex partners), yet scientists don't tell the public to disregard them because they are methodologically flawed. ABC link critics keep raising that smoke screen nonetheless.
Two studies reporting an ABC link bypassed any possibility of recall bias because they did not rely on women's reports of their abortions. The studies, Howe et al. 1989 and Carroll 2007, relied on: 1) fetal death certificates and medical records of breast cancer in the former study; and 2) national databases in the latter study. 10 , 11 Howe's team reported a statistically significant 90% risk increase among post-abortive women in the state of New York. Patrick Carroll conducted an ecologic study on eight European nations and found abortion was the "best predictor" of future breast cancer rates.
Robison's sources must have neglected to inform him of those vexatious studies. ABC critics behave as if the two studies are non-existent whenever they discuss their red herring, recall bias.
Robison mischaracterized a 1996 study by Karin Michels and Walter Willett in the journal, Epidemiology , as a meta-analysis (a study of studies in which the results are pooled). As a matter of fact, these authors wrote a review. You can read more about Michels' and Willett's bias and the serious errors in their Nurses Health Study II by clicking on the links listed in the citations below. 12 , 13 ,24,25
Robison cited the 1996 Danish study by Mads Melbye's team in support of a denial of an ABC link. 14 In the "Results" section of the paper, however, researchers reported a statistically significant 89% risk increase for women who'd had abortions after 18 weeks gestation, which is called a "dose effect," meaning that the later an abortion took place in pregnancy, the greater the risk. Researchers found a 3% per week of gestation increased breast cancer risk. A dose effect is one of the criteria scientists use to establish a cause-effect relationship.
The study received harsh criticism for having grave errors in the paper. 15 , 16 For example, Melbye's team underestimated the risk of abortion by misclassifying 60,000 women who'd had abortions as not having had them. They found an unadjusted relative risk of 44%, but didn't report it. Then they did statistical adjustments (including for a cohort effect) and reported no overall increased risk, but this graph shows that abortions and breast cancer rates rose and fell together for Danish birth cohorts in the 20th century through the 1958 birth cohort.
Two years later in 1999, Melbye's team conducted a study showing a premature birth before 32 weeks gestation more than doubles breast cancer risk. 17 It provides biological evidence for an ABC link. The only difference between induced abortion and early premature birth is between a dead or living baby. The hormonal changes to the mothers' breasts are identical. In either case, both mothers are left with more places for cancers to start in their breasts. Angela Lanfranchi, MD, FACS explained the biological reasons for the ABC link and the early premature birth-breast cancer link here . It makes good biological sense. Scientists have never challenged the biological rationale because it's physiologically correct.
Robison claimed the 2000 Iowa Women's Health Study by Lazovich's team did not find an ABC link. 18 On the contrary, in his critique of that study (and others) for the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons , Brind pointed to a statement in their paper saying they'd "observed no excess risk among women who reported having an induced abortion," and he noted the authors' claim their "data do not provide support for" a cause-effect relationship. Brind wrote, "However, it is also clear that their data are in no way inconsistent with such a link."[15] Lazovich's team found an ABC link among certain high risk groups that other investigators had identified earlier. They included women with abortions: 1) taking place before age 20 (50% risk elevation); 2) occurring at age 30 or older (70% risk elevation); and 3) who continued to remain childless (70% risk elevation).
Robison identified more studies claiming no ABC link. He expressed confidence in cohort studies, believing them to be better quality, but all of these received heavy criticism in medical journals for having grave flaws. There is such a thing as a "cohort effect" discussed in item #6 below that is problematic with cohort studies. The studies he listed include: the California Teacher's Study (which Brind publicly called "fraudulent" and which Dr. Leslie Bernstein co-authored five years after telling CancerPage.com why she didn't want women to know the truth about the ABC link), the EPIC study, the E3N Cohort Study and the Nurses' Health Study. Citations for those studies and some of the criticisms they received are listed below:
At the end of his story, the "fact checker" assigned the claim that abortion raises breast cancer risk a score on his "Truthometer," an imaginary scale of one to ten. He gave it a one. I give Mark Robison's claims a big, fat zero. His female readers deserve to know the truth.
1 "Fact checker: Is abortion linked to breast cancer?" by Mark Robison, Reno Gazette Journal , April 28, 2014. Available at: http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2014/04/26/fact-checker-abortion-linked-breast-cancer/8035531/ . [ Back ]
2 Breast Cancer Facts & Figures , American Cancer Society, 2013-2014, p. 3. [ Back ]
4 Lowe RM, NCI scientific panel concludes abortion has no impact on breast cancer risk. CancerPage.com , March 3, 2003. Available at: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/docs/CancerPage.com-Web-Page-on-Leslie-Bernstein.pdf . Audio clip of interview of Dr. Leslie Bernstein at: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/docs/Leslie-Bernstein-interview.mp3 . [ Back ]
5 Dolle J, Daling J, White E, Brinton L, Doody D, et al. Risk factors for triple-negative breast cancer in women under the age of 45 years. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(4)1157-1166. Available at: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/download/Abortion_Breast_Cancer_Epid_Bio_Prev_2009.pdf . [ Back ]
6 See the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer's web page entitled, "Legal Issues," at: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/Your_Rights.htm . [ Back ]
7 Brind J, Chinchilli V, Severs W, Summy-Long J. Induced abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer: a comprehensive review and meta-analysis. J Epidemiol Community Health 1996;50:481-496. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1060338 >. [ Back ]
8 Huang Y, Zhang X, Li W, Song F, Dai H, Wang J, et al. A meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females. Cancer Causes Control . 2014;25(2):227-236. Available at: http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Huang-2013.pdf . [ Back ]
9 See the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer's web page, "Bias," at: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/recall_bias/ . [ Back ]
10 Howe HL, Senie RT, Bzduch H, Herzfeld P. Early abortion and breast cancer risk among women under age 40. Int J Epidemiol 1989;18:300-304. [ Back ]
11 Carroll, P. The breast cancer epidemic: modeling and forecasts based on abortion and other risk factors." J Am Phys Surg Vol. 12, No. 3 (Fall 2007) 72-78. Available at: http://www.jpands.org/vol12no3/carroll.pdf . [ Back ]
12 To read more about Karin Michels' bias, see Dr. Brind's 1999 lecture on the ABC link and scroll down to the last two paragraphs under the heading, "Recall Bias." Available at: http://abortionbreastcancer.com/Brind_Lecture.htm . [ Back ]
13 "Medical journal: Flawed study underestimated breast cancer risk of abortion," press release, Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, June 4, 2007. Available at: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/press_releases/070604/index.htm . [ Back ]
14 Melbye M, Wohlfahrt J, Olson JH, Frisch M, Westergaard T, Helweg-Larsen K, Andersen PK. Induced abortion and the risk of breast cancer. N Engl J Med 1997;336:81-85. Available at: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199701093360201 . [ Back ]
15 Brind J. Induced abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer: A critical review of recent studies based on prospective data. J Am Phys Surg Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter 2005) 105-110. Available at: http://www.jpands.org/vol10no4/brind.pdf . [ Back ]
16 Brind J, Chinchilli V, Severs W, Summy-Long J. Letter. Induced abortion and risk for breast cancer: Reporting (recall bias) in a Dutch case-control study. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 1997;89:588-90. [ Back ]
17 Melbye M, Wohlfahrt J, Andersen A-M N, Westergaard T, Andersen PK. Preterm delivery and risk of breast cancer. Bri J Cancer 1999;80:609-13. [ Back ]
18 Lazovich D, Thompson JA, Mink PJ, Sellers TA, Anderson KE. Induced abortion and breast cancer risk. Epidemiology 2000;11:76-80. [ Back ]
19 Reeves G , Kan S, Key T, Tjønneland A, Olsen A, et al. Breast cancer risk in relation to abortion: Results from the EPIC study. International Journal of Cancer 2006;119;7: 1741-1745. [ Back ]
20 Brind J. Letter. Breast cancer in relation to abortion: Results from the EPIC study. Int J Cancer 2008;122:960-961. [ Back ]
21 DeLellis Henderson K, Sullivan-Halley J, Reynolds P, Horn-Ross P, Clarke C, et al. Incomplete pregnancy is not associated with breast cancer risk: the California Teachers Study. Contraception 2008;77:391-396. [ Back ]
22 Brind J. California Teachers Study report on incomplete pregnancy is flawed. Contraception 2009; Mar;79(3):240. [ Back ]
23 Paoletti X, Clavel-Chapelon F, and the E3N group. Induced and spontaneous abortion and breast cancer risk: Results from the E3N cohort study. Int J Cancer 2003;106:270-276. [ Back ]
24 Michels K, Xue Fei, Colditz G., Willett W. Induced and Spontaneous Abortion and Incidence of Breast Cancer Among Young Women. Arch Int Med 2007;167:814-820. [ Back ]
25 Brind J. Letter. Induced abortion and breast cancer: A critical analysis of the report of the Harvard Nurses Study II. J Am Phys Surg 2007;12(2)38-39. Available at: http://www.jpands.org/vol12no2/brind.pdf . [ Back ]
26 "Evidence-based Guideline No. 7: The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion" (2000) RCOG Press, p. 29-30. [ Back ]