Los Angeles Times Denies Abortion’s Link to Breast Cancer, Depression

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 18, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Los Angeles Times Denies Abortion’s Link to Breast Cancer, Depression Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 18,
2008

Los Angeles, Times (LifeNews.com) — The Los Angeles Times is coming under fire again for biased news reporting on the issue of abortion. This time, Times report Stephanie Simon has interjected her own views into an article on new figures showing abortion’s decline by claiming pregnancy centers mislead women about abortion’s risks.

In a passage on the activities at pregnancy centers, which provide tangible assistance and abortion alternatives to women facing unplanned pregnancies, Simon claims they give women wrong medical information.

"Some of the material given to women at such sessions [at these centers] is false or misleading — for example, warnings that abortion raises the risk of breast cancer or causes post-traumatic stress disorder," Simon claims.

But Dave Pierre, who writes for the Media Research Center’s blog Newsbusters, says the Time sis ignoring a wealth of evidence showing that abortion increases the breast cancer risk and that abortion leads to a myriad of mental health problems.

"The Times and Simon, despite the loads of evidence contradicting them, continue to deny the numerous studies asserting the link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer," Pierre writes.

In fact, an October study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons found abortion the best predictor of whether women will contract breast cancer.

As Joel Brind, a professor and leading researcher on beast cancer, has written, "abortion is the single most avoidable cause of breast cancer."

"No, that doesn’t mean that most women who have an abortion will get breast cancer, or that most women who get breast cancer have had an abortion. It just means that the effect of abortion is so strong that choosing abortion even once causes a measurable increase in breast cancer risk," he explains.

In analyzing the Times’ piece, Pierre also says the newspaper is "grossly irresponsible to deny that abortion causes post-traumatic stress disorder in many women."

As recently as December, a new Australian study showed women who have abortions are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol compared with those who carry a pregnancy to term.

Kaeleen Dingle, of the University of Queensland, found that women who have abortions were three times more likely to abuse hard drugs like heroin or meth than women who were never pregnant or kept their baby.

The women who had abortions were also twice as likely to be an alcoholic or engage in binge drinking and 1.5 times more likely to suffer from depression.

"So these women, from my findings, seem to be definitely more affected in some ways," Dingle concluded.

Her study follows on a January 2006 one from a New Zealand professor who found women who have abortions are more likely to become severely depressed.

Some 42 percent of the women who had abortions had experienced major depression within the last four years. That’s almost double the rate of women who never became pregnant. The risk of anxiety disorders also doubled.

"It should be extremely unsettling that the Times and Ms. Simon continue to prioritize political agenda over honesty and women’s health," Pierre concludes in his Newsbusters piece. "Why can’t the Times and Ms. Simon stop their misinformation campaign? Don’t they realize lives are at stake?"

ACTION: Share your concerns by contacting the Times at: Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, Phone: 213-237-5000,
Fax: 213-237-7679, or email [email protected]