Every so often I receive a round-robin email headed by a list of other women also emailed, in which I am charged with passing on the urgent request to find a cure for breast cancer. The latest I received last week showed a picture of a pretty little girl toddler wearing a T-shirt with the slogan, “Find a cure before I grow boobs.” It is a very good cause and I am sure that much medical research is going on around the world with this specific aim, even as I type this. Because it is so common, we all know someone who has died of breast cancer; indeed, a very dear friend of mine lost her battle with it some years ago, leaving three young sons.
So why do I pause before pressing the “Forward” button to send on the message of this obvious good cause? Because what these round robins never say is “Spread the word! There is a proved link between induced abortion and breast cancer.” In other words, the sadly high rates of breast cancer would drop significantly – if there were fewer induced abortions.
Of course, there are other factors in breast cancer, such as childlessness, delaying first pregnancy, age and genetic inheritance. And of course we all hope for a cure. But as Dr Angela Lanfranchi, a breast cancer surgeon and co-founder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute in New Jersey, writes in an edited extract from a new paper entitled “The Abortion and Breast Cancer Link”, that has been published in Endeavour Forum Inc newsletter for May 2012:
“In the past 30 years, landmark advances in the developmental and molecular biology of the breast coupled with repeated epidemiological studies from around the world have more and more tightly linked induced abortion as an independent risk factor in breast cancer, ie that induced abortion before 32 weeks gestation will change the breast in a way that makes it more likely to develop breast cancer.”
She goes on to state that research shows that “Induced abortion increases a woman’s risk of premature delivery… In 2006, the Institute of Medicine listed induced abortion as an immutable cause of premature birth in its publication on prematurity… [because] during an abortion the cervix is forcibly dilated and subjected to injury. Due to use of instruments such as dilators during an abortion she may have a premature delivery in subsequent births. If the premature delivery is before 32 weeks, she will have an increased risk of breast cancer.”
I wonder how many of the millions of young, confused and frightened women who every year seek advice on their pregnancies come away unaware of the medical dangers of abortion – dangers that may come back to haunt them in later life.
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