Nothing too Sacred

October is breast cancer awareness month. A time for pink ribbons, fund-raisers, and anti-choice extremists. Anti-choicers have always been eager to capitalize on any issue where women may feel vulnerable and helpless. What better approach than to blame one of the most common cancers on abortion?

Billboards, placards, ads, articles, and blogs are "informing" the public about their abortion-breast cancer hypothesis. Here is a sample of some particularly awesome letters-to-the-editor and articles published in the last few weeks:

• “How many women has [abortion] put at risk for breast cancer?"

• “There is also evidence that abortion raises a woman's risk of breast cancer.”

• “obstetricians should tell women considering an abortion that it does carry a risk of cancer."
  

• “When you talk to women that have had abortions they often times have a higher rate of breast cancer and they have emotional problems.”

Now let’s contrast that with...

• The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: “More rigorous recent scientific studies demonstrate no casual relationship between induced abortion and subsequent increase in breast cancer risk” (2009)

• The Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology of Canada “A history of induced or spontaneous abortions is not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer” (2005) (pdf file)
  

• The Canadian Cancer Society: “At the present time, the body of scientific evidence does not support an association between abortion and increased breast cancer risk.”
  

• The National Cancer Institute: “newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.”
  

• The Lancet: a “collaborative re-analysis of 53 epidemiological studies including 83,000 women with breast cancer” concluded that “pregnancies that end as a spontaneous or induced abortion do not increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer” (2004)

Despite the ever growing evidence and the firm statements from major medical organizations, the abortion-breast cancer myth persists. Several organizations exist with the sole purpose of spreading these lies to as many women as possible. This is repulsive on many levels. The research they cite is often so flagrantly distorted that it can only be published by the most obscure medical journals (This widely touted study was published in a journal with an abysmal impact factor of 1.0)* Seriously, this level of scientific rigor** wouldn’t even be allowed in junior high. Furthermore, it is insulting that they would use such a serious and debilitating disease as a scare-tactic to advance their anti-choice (and anti-women) goals.

Our breasts, our uteri, our choices, and our lives have been made into their battlefields. Nothing about us is too sacred to be exploited for their ideological gain. And yet they tell us that we lack respect for the sacredness of life. Perhaps the irony escapes them. More likely, though, they just don't care.




footnotes:

* impact factor is a measure of a journal's relative importance in the scientific community. The higher the number, the better.

** This"research" actually consisted of looking up abortion rates and breast cancer rates in different countries. Some countries with high breast cancer rates also had high abortion rates; therefore, the "logical" conclusion was that abortion is a risk factor for breast cancer!