(There are many a priori reasons why abortion is wrong, the primary one being that it snuffs out the life of the unborn child. The same with contraception, which vitiates the integrity of the marital act. Both are grave sins, crying out to God. But both also have deleterious a posteriori health consequences for mothers and would-be mothers, and here contributor Paddy Knap outlines some of them).
When Dr. Angela Lanfranchi left medical school in 1975, women who got breast cancer were overwhelmingly older. Then as a breast surgeon she began seeing younger and younger women with breast cancer. In the 1990’s, she became alarmed by the dramatic increase.
“I became concerned because I saw a lot of women in their 30’s with breast cancer. In one month I saw three women with breast cancer in their 30’s.” Lanfranchi shared in a Human Life International interview. “None of them had a genetic reason to have breast cancer. It was really heartbreaking because all three had young children….so I started looking into risk factors.”
Research had already shown that if you smoked and had a child, your risk of breast cancer was 69% increased, but if you smoked and had no children, the risk was increased by 649%. What was it about having a child that protected women from getting breast cancer, Lanfranchi wanted to know.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows the cancer incidence in young people (under 50) from 2010 to 2019 increased, especially among women, with the highest number of early onset cases in the breast. The report cited a 5.3% increase in breast cancer for women ages 20-19 and 19.4% for those 30-39.
Most alarmingly, late stage, less curable breast cancer rate under 40 has increased 3% per year during the same period. So the increase was noticed; what wasn’t cited was the causes that had already shown up in many studies done since the 1957.
“To have an average single breast cancer cell to form and grow to about three-quarters of an inch so it can be detected takes 8-10 years. To find breast cancer in 30-39 (year-old) women that cancer cell was initiated in her 20s, when the use of hormonal contraception with abortion back up is the greatest. It’s time to connect the dots,” says Lanfranchi.
In 1996 Dr. Joel Brind, endocrinologist and professor at Baruch College of the City University of NY, undertook a meta analysis of all published research papers on abortion and breast cancer and found a 30% increase in breast cancer. Just in the past year, a study of 10,000 premenopausal U.K. women showed a 20% increase, “risk of breast cancer with current or recent use of the combined estrogen-progestin pills (the pill) and progestin-only formulations.”
Brind cited similar studies in Denmark, Japan, Canada, Israel, France, and the US that found the same link.
At the pregnancy center where I work, I speak to young women who use hormonal birth control, but had no idea it’s a risk factor for breast cancer. The same for those who’ve had an abortion; most were unaware of the abortion breast cancer (ABC) link. Neither the medical groups or the media informed them, and certainly Planned Parenthood, our country’s biggest abortion business, is telling them. So much for ‘choice.’
Sadly, ignorance on these crucial risk factors remains the same today. There’s a tragic irony when a cancer institute or organization ignores or downplays such a significant risk factor.
Lanfranchi continues, “I saw one 30 yr old who’d had 7 pregnancies and 5 abortions; another with 5 pregnancies and 3 abortions, and they had very aggressive breast cancer, and they died within a year or two.”
How many studies do we need before health and medical organizations are compelled to talk about it?
“Informed patient consent for medical treatment is required by both law and medical ethics. Yet, both federal agencies and academicians are participating in the suppression of information about the heightened risk of breast cancer posed by oral contraceptives and induced abortion. There is historical precedent in the long-delayed acknowledgment of the smoking/lung cancer link, “Lanfranchi points out that,
At a breast conference of oncologists, radiation therapists, surgeons, radiologists, Lanfranchi heard a talk on breast cancer risk given by a woman doctor from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Twenty minutes of her 30-minute lecture focused on the genetic predisposition for breast cancer, which only accounts for 6-8% of all breast cancer.
“After the talk I went up to her and said, ‘you didn’t talk about abortion.’ The response was, ‘Well, some studies say yes, some say no.’ I said, ‘You can’t say that any more…I pulled out a sheet of paper and showed her all the studies that had been done up to that point…. ‘She said, “Well, really it’s a pro-life/pro-choice issue.”
Later this doctor admitted to Lanfranchi that she knew abortion was a significant breast cancer risk factor, “but said she wouldn’t bring it up. She said, ‘you can talk about it if you want, but I’m not going to.'” ,
“I have spoken to many authorities and people in a position to be well-informed,” said Lanfranchi. They’ve stated they knew abortion was a risk factor but it was too political to speak about. They had found, as I did, that cases of breast cancer in young women are associated with an abortion history.”
Dr. Brind had been trying to get the research results out in the media for years but was meeting a brick wall. He referred to the ABC link as a “bombshell” and said, “This has been known for years now. But the abortion industry,” along with the media, wouldn’t touch it.
Seeing an overall black-out on the ABC link, she and Brind founded the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (BCPI) to try to break through the wall of silence. Their research and publication of other research from around the world, their seminars and talks and literature have greatly expanded the knowledge of the ABC link, as well as that of the risk of hormonal contraception as another major risk factor for breast cancer.
Yet for the most part the topic remains a political issue that – shockingly – even the cancer institutions won’t acknowledge. Apparently, the pro-abortion bias overrides any desire to inform the public of the full truth.
In Lanfranchi’s report, she cites examples of governmental research fraud, textbook omissions, and the National Cancer Institutes, “flagrant violation of one of its major missions of “new information dissemination mandates” as required by Congressional legislative amendments to its original National Cancer Program.”
Big media’s also not interested in the conflict of interest between large breast-cancer advocacy groups that raise large sums of money for research and have political influence through lobbying. “They also sponsor medical society meetings and give awards to academics. Often the leaders of these lay groups have ties to abortion-rights and abortion-providing organization,” Lanfranchi points out. “For example, the founder of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, a breast cancer advocacy and research group, was founded by a Nancy Brinker, who also was a board member for Planned Parenthood, this nation’s largest abortion provider.”
The Komen website offers paragraphs about risk factors like the consumption of meat, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, soy, vitamin D, exercise, age. Even the mere ‘being female” is considered a risk factor worth mentioning…yet abortion which has a 20-30% risk factor is either flat out denied, or seriously downplayed, with dozens of recent studies overlooked and flawed studies highlighted.
Regarding birth control pills, Komen states they, “have some risks including a small increased risk of breast cancer (recent or current use). However, in addition to preventing pregnancy, birth control pills decrease the risk of uterine and ovarian cancers. Before making any decisions about birth control pills (or if you’re currently taking them and haven’t done so already), talk with your health care provider about the benefits and risks.”
The Breast Cancer Research Institute has a very different take on birth control pills: “Yes, they do decrease risk by suppressing ovulation and differentiating the uterine lining. However, according to the American Cancer Society, out of 100 women with cancer, 31 have breast cancer, 6 have endometrial cancer and only 3 have ovarian cancer, so it is not a good “trade-off” in risk.”
Komen also states: “Findings on depo-provera have shown no link to breast cancer risk overall. Yet BCPI states, “The progestin only injection, depo-provera, also increases breast cancer risk like the pill.”
The National Breast Cancer Foundation has page after page of detailed info on every aspect of breast cancer including recipes and “mindfulness” tips, but just one paragraph on the birth control pill factor.”
In a search for the abortion factor on the same site, here’s what came up: Nothing Found.
Even the FDA hides the ABC link. As The Federalist notes, a 2019 Contraceptive Study Group (CSG) submitted a Citizen Petition to the FDA urged a black box warning be added to hormonal contraceptives. Cited in the petition was yet more evidence confirming the breast cancer risks for ever-users of the birth control drugs. 2023 research by the Oxford Population Health’s Cancer Epidemiology Unit found that progestin-only hormonal contraceptives, long-billed as the, “safest” birth control option because of their lack of estrogen, definitively raises one’s risk of breast cancer, similarly to combined hormonal contraceptives (which contain both synthetic estrogen and progestin).”
It took the FDA an entire three years to respond by saying, no, they would not add the crucial warning.
“One wonders what leg they have to stand upon now, and if they’ll continue to ignore these significant risks to women — which can be entirely avoided through the use of highly effective, drug- and side-effect-free measures for family planning known as fertility awareness-based methods,” The Federalist notes.
Now another significant risk factor showing up in the research , linking cannabis use to breast cancer. As some states legalize cannabis, it can now be found in various foods and some livestock feed. The breast cancer link was prominent especially in states where cannabis is legal and includes the medical use of cannabis as well. There have been other studies linking cannabis and various other cancers but until now, not breast cancer.
Abortion and use of hormonal birth control have both increased greatly in recent decades, and these two factors are significantly impacting the incidence of breast cancer in younger women. Tragically, when women are making a decision to abort or use hormonal birth control, they are being denied this crucial information.
As it is now the world’s most commonly diagnosed cancer, cancer and medical groups, doctors, and media have a responsibility to broadcast these risks far and wide. Women must be told the risk they are putting themselves at before they make these choices..
He looked at a dozen studies including:
– A 1981 Los Angeles study that found a 2.4-fold higher incidence of breast cancer among women younger than 33 who had had an abortion before a live birth; a NY study by Dr. Holly Howe of women between 1976 and 1980 who developed breast cancer before age 40, which showed a 90% increase among women who aborted their first pregnancy. All 10 women who had had two consecutive abortions developed breast cancer.
– A study done by Janet Daleon in 1984 for the National Cancer Institute found an 800% increase in breast cancer among women 18 and under who aborted at 8-24 weeks of pregnancy.
– In 1989, a NY Department of Health study showed a 90 percent risk increase for women with any history of abortion, and a 300 percent increased risk for those who had two in a row.
– A 1990 Russian study published by Larissa Remennick showed that women who had aborted one or two pregnancies had a 200% chance of developing breast cancer. Those with three or more tripled their risk.