Canada MPs Speak Out Against Forced Abortions, Cite Breast Cancer Link 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 12, 2006
Ottawa, Canada (LifeNews.com) — While thousands of Canadian participated in the annual March for Life in the nation’s capital on Thursday, two members of the Canadian parliament held a news conference with a breast cancer surgeon and a researcher to tell the media that women are at a higher risk for breast cancer if they have an abortion.
Paul Steckle, a Liberal, and Maurice Vellacott, a Conservative, were joined by New Jersey breast cancer surgeon Angela Lanfranchi, who has written extensively about abortion’s link to breast cancer.
Vellacott and the others also discussed how women are increasingly pressured by a boyfriend or husband to have an abortion, according to a Toronto Globe and Mail report.
"We are opposed to unwanted abortions that do happen in this country where women are coerced, pressured, harassed, badgered if you will, by a boyfriend, by a husband, by a doctor, an employer, friends, family circumstance," he said.
Saying that women need to be informed about the link between abortion and breast cancer, Steckle said "we have issues that we believe are important and we believe it’s important that Canadians are informed."
In explaining the link, Dr. Lanfranchi said there had been a 40 percent increase in the incidence of breast cancer in the last 30 years — when abortion has been allowed in both the U.S. and Canada.
"It’s the women of the Roe v. Wade generation that account for most of this increase," Lanfranchi explained, according to the Toronto newspaper.
"Dramatic lifestyle changes brought about by the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement are largely responsible for the rampant breast cancer we see today," she added.
Unfortunately for women in Canada, the Canadian Cancer Society denies the link’s existence even though most statistically significant studies show it exists.
"The total body of scientific evidence does not support a relationship between abortion and increased risk of breast cancer," the Canadian cancer group says about the abortion-breast cancer link.
Lanfranchi pointed to a 1996 report published by the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health looked at 23 previous studies and found abortion increases the breast cancer risk by 30 percent.
Research and biochemist Joel Brind, also appeared at the conference and said that abortion exposes women to high levels of estrogen and affects the breast in a negative way, allowing a greater chance of contracting breast cancer.
Vellacott did not respond directly when asked if he would propose legislation that would ban or limit abortions. He indicated that he and Steckle are part of a parliamentary pro-life caucus of lawmakers from various parties.
