American Cancer Society Still Says Abortion May Be A Factor Increasing Breast Cancer Risk.

No, I am not making this up, as Dave Barry would say.

I wonder why it is that doctors and researchers who have nothing to gain (and reputations to lose) from finding the existence of a link between abortion and breast cancer (ABC) believe there IS one, and the doctors who HAVE something to gain (career/job/fundraising in the billions of dollars) from the nonexistence of such a link either disbelieve or no longer believe there is a link?

I was commenting to a post of Emily's below when I found this and it's worth posting on our main blog not just in comments. The same "medical organization that exists to find cures for cancer" once held and apparently STILL DOES HOLD the opinion that there may indeed be an increased risk of breast cancer from having an abortion: the 1997 American Cancer Society document, "Cancer Facts and Figures - 1997," says so. Still. Right there on the A.C.S. website, in a PDF file apparently created 6/13/2001.

I just downloaded it and saved it to my PC. It says, and I quote, "Additional factors that may be associated with increased breast cancer risk and that are currently under study include pesticide and other chemical exposures, alcohol consumption, induced abortion, and physical inactivity."

Yet, at a local A.C.S. Relay For Life last year, the A.C.S. tried to boot me off the public property for standing in silent witness with a sign that showed the myriad doctors and researchers who had found there was in fact an ABC link. When I'd quietly told them I'd spoken with the police and had a right to stand there silently with my sign, the A.C.S. person replied angrily, "We HIRED the police for this; we'll call them and see about that!" I stood there for several hours, despite their having tried to violate my freedom of speech.

Looks like this medical website also quotes this A.C.S. document verbatim, still. And this one. And this one. There may be more, I just didn't have time to keep googling.

Dr. Clark Heath also said so, under sworn oath in a Pennsylvania court in 1998, apparently when he was an A.C.S. Vice President. And I find it strange that Phyllis Wingo was once a CDC researcher saying there was an ABC-increased-risk-link, then later went to work for the A.C.S. and did an about-face on her "opinion."

It isn't our opinions, it would seem, but those of A.C.S.'s own experts who've flip-flopped at politically-correct moments in their careers. It does call into serious doubt the "how" and "why" they changed their minds.

On Friday, March 14, 2003, Emily wrote a good post about this, worth reading, if you weren't reading her way back then.

I have great respect and daily prayers for cancer victims, true cancer fighters, survivors, families and caregivers. My own mother died of cancer in her fifties. But women have a right to know if something just might double or triple our cancer risk. I fear for my own increased risk because of my abortion, and I have friends who got advanced breast cancer in their early 30s, something becoming increasingly more common in the last 30 years only. And not just because of better detection methods alone.

And as pro-choice researcher Dr. Janet Daling said, in the N.C.I.'s own journal in 1994, "If politics gets involved in science, it will really hold back the progress we make. I have three sisters with breast cancer, and I resent people messing with the scientific data to further their own agenda, be they pro-choice or pro-life. I would have loved to have found no association between breast cancer and abortion, but our research is rock solid, and our data is accurate. It's not a matter of believing. It's a matter of what is."