Komen Still Doesn’t Acknowledge Abortion-Breast Cancer Link

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Feb 1, 2012   |   1:25PM   |   Washington, DC

The pro-life movement is applauding yesterday’s news indicating the Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity has indefinitely stopped  its donations to the Planned Parenthood abortion business. However, the breast cancer group continues to refuse to acknowledge the link between induced abortion and breast cancer.

Karen Malec, the head of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, one of the main organizations educating about how abortions raise the risk for women when it comes to contracting breast cancer, tells LifeNews today she applauds the breast cancer group for discontinuing its grants to Planned Parenthood but it disappointed that Komen will still not tell women the truth about the link.

“Our group will remain as Komen’s critic as long as it continues to work against its own mission to eradicate breast cancer,” Malec told LifeNews. “Komen’s decision is a step in the right direction to protect women’s lives. However, I will not donate to Komen while it is still cooperating in the cover-up of the abortion-breast cancer link and downplaying the risk of using oral contraceptives.”

Malec says “Planned Parenthood is a primary cause of the breast cancer epidemic. It sells cancer-causing abortions and oral contraceptives.”

“Medical texts reveal that increased childbearing, especially starting early before age 24, substantially reduces lifetime breast cancer risk. Abortion not only deprives women of this protection, but 52 of 68 epidemiological studies show it raises breast cancer risk,” Malec explained. “Komen and the Institute of Medicine had an opportunity to reduce the incidence of breast cancer with its December 2011 study, “Breast Cancer and the Environment,” but they chose not to review reproductive risk factors and include avoidance of abortion and oral contraceptives among the ways to prevent the disease. We sincerely hope Komen will develop the political courage needed to fulfill its mission.”

Malec adds that “Planned Parenthood has done substantial harm to women’s health. Additionally, Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms, although Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards had led the public to believe otherwise.”

Malec urges pro-life advocates to contact Komen to thank the breast cancer charity for stopping Planned Parenthood donations, but she urges them to ask the group to acknowledge the abortion-breast cancer link.

The abortion-breast cancer link and the impact it has had is substantial, according to Professor Joel Brind, an endocrinologist at Baruch College in New York, who worked with several scientists on a 1996 paper published in the Journal of Epidemiol Community Health showing a “30% greater chance of developing breast cancer” for women who have induced abortions. Brind says abortion has caused at least 300,000 cases of breast cancer causing a woman’s death since the Supreme Court allowed virtually unlimited abortion in its 1973 case.

“If we take the overall risk of breast cancer among women to be about 10% (not counting abortion), and raise it by 30%, we get 13% lifetime risk,” Brind explains. “Using the 50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade figure, we get 1.5 million excess cases of breast cancer. At an average mortality of 20% since 1973, that would mean that legal abortion has resulted in some 300,000 additional deaths due to breast cancer since Roe v. Wade.”

Brind said his estimate excludes deaths from the use of abortion to delay first full term pregnancies – a recognized breast cancer risk.

Malec says the number of studies showing the abortion-breast cancer link continues to grow in the years since Brind’s groundbreaking 1996 analysis of the major studies at that time.

“During the last 21 months, four epidemiological studies and one review reported an abortion-breast cancer link,” she noted. “One study included National Cancer Institute branch chief Louise Brinton as co-author. We count nearly 50 published epidemiological studies since 1957 reporting a link. Biological and experimental studies also support it.”

“Experts proved in medical journals that nearly all of the roughly 20 studies denying the link are seriously flawed (fraudulent). Like the tobacco-cancer cover-up, these are used to snow women into believing abortion is safe,” Malec added.

Surgeons like Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey who has extensively explained how abortion increases the breast cancer risk, have seen first-hand how abortion hurts women.

In 2002, Angela Lanfranchi, MD testified under oath in a California lawsuit against Planned Parenthood that she had private conversations with leading experts who agreed abortion raises breast cancer risk, but they refused to discuss it publicly, saying it was “too political.”

As the co-director of the Sanofi-aventis Breast Care Program at the Steeplechase Cancer Center, Lanfranchi has treated countless women facing a breast cancer diagnosis. Lanfranchi was named a 2010 Castle Connolly NY Metro Area “Top Doc” in breast surgery.

In an article she wrote for the medical journal Linacre Quarterly, Lanfranchi talks about why abortion presents women problems and increases their breast cancer risk:

Induced abortion boosts breast cancer risk because it stops the normal physiological changes in the breast that occur during a full term pregnancy and that lower a mother’s breast cancer risk. A woman who has a full term pregnancy at 20 has a 90% lower risk of breast cancer than a woman who waits until age 30.

Breast tissue after puberty and before a term pregnancy is immature and cancer-vulnerable. Seventy five percent of this tissue is Type 1 lobules where ductal cancers start and 25 percent is Type 2 lobules where lobular cancers start. Ductal cancers account for 85% of all breast cancers while lobular cancers account for 12-15% of breast cancers.

As soon as a woman conceives, the embryo secretes human chorionic gonadotrophin or hCG, the hormone we check for in pregnancy tests.

HCG causes the mother’s ovaries to increase the levels of estrogen and progesterone in her body resulting in a doubling of the amount of breast tissue she has; in effect, she then has more Type 1 and 2 lobules where cancers start.

After mid pregnancy at 20 weeks, the fetus/placenta makes hPL, another hormone that starts maturing her breast tissue so that it can make milk. It is only after 32 weeks that she has made enough of the mature Type 4 lobules that are cancer resistant so that she lowers her risk of breast cancer.

Induced abortion before 32 weeks leaves the mother’s breast with more vulnerable tissue for cancer to start. It is also why any premature birth before 32 weeks, not just induced abortion, increases or doubles breast cancer risk.

By the end of her pregnancy, 85% of her breast tissue is cancer resistant. Each pregnancy thereafter decreases her risk a further 10%.

A woman can use this information to make an informed decision about her pregnancy. If she chooses to abort her pregnancy for whatever reason, she should start breast screening about 8-10 years later so that if she does develop a cancer, it can be found early and treated early for a better outcomes.