Women’s Group Challenges Komen for the Cure to Debate Abortion, Breast Cancer
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 24, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A women’s group that educates the public on the link between induced abortion and breast cancer is challenging Komen for the Cure to a public debate. Komen has upset pro-life advocates for ignoring the abortion-breast cancer link and giving grants to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion business.
Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, talked with LifeNews.com about her debate challenge.
"We challenge Komen to debate the abortion- breast cancer link with us at the next Catholic Health Association meeting or another venue," she said. "Since science is on our side, we expect Komen will duck the debate, as others have."
An email to Komen asking for a response to the debate challenge has not yet been returned.
Komen’s founder, Nancy Goodman Brinker, was the keynote speaker at the CHA’s convention earlier this month.
Malec said Komen is doing a disservice to women by ignoring the numerous studies that have shown women are more susceptible to breast cancer when they have an abortion. Other studies have shown that women who carry their first pregnancy to term lower their risk.
"Susan G. Komen for the Cure is no friend of women," Malec said. "Komen perpetuates the breast cancer epidemic by withholding the truth that abortion increases breast cancer risk."
Malec told LifeNews.com that Komen "justifies its denial of an ABC link by using studies that were severely criticized in the medical journals, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and Ethics and Medics, for violating fundamental rules of epidemiology."
"No experts have ever challenged the conclusions reached in these journals. Komen must follow customary scientific procedure by sending letters to the journals proving that their conclusions are incorrect," she said.
Because abortion clearly hurts women in a myriad of ways and could cause the breast cancer that Komen purports to fight, Malec says the Race for the Cure group needs to disassociate with Planned Parenthood.
"Komen should stop giving funds to Planned Parenthood, an organization that has inflicted considerable harm on women’s health through its sales of abortions and hormonal contraceptives with estrogen and progestin (acknowledged by the World Health Organization as cancer-causing)," she said.
Meanwhile, Joel Brind, endocrinology professor at Baruch College, City University of New York, argued that donations to Komen may be doing more harm than good.
He says the studies show childbearing providing significant protection against breast cancer and said Planned Parenthood deprives women of that protective effect.
"Since Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the U.S., and since it is clear that abortion leaves a girl or woman with a higher long-term risk of breast cancer than had she chosen not to have the abortion, it is arguable that donations to Komen may actually serve to cause more breast cancer, rather than to fight against it," he said.
Brinker has served on Planned Parenthood’s advisory board and Malec tells LifeNews.com she thinks Brinker is using the CHA to "clean up Komen’s reputation among donors turned off by its gifts to Planned Parenthood."
Malec said she doesn’t think the public would "support the American Lung Association if it gave funds to tobacco companies to do lung cancer screenings on its customers."
"Why, then, support Komen’s grants to Planned Parenthood to do breast cancer screenings on its clientele, especially when legitimate medical providers that don’t damage women’s health are widely accessible?" she asks.
Related web sites:
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer – https://www.abortionbreastcancer.com
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