No Excuse for Hiding Medical Facts

(Planned Parenthood's take on the Abortion/Breast Cancer Connection)

by Jennifer Taylor

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among middle-aged women in America.  In fact, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that one out of every eight women will develop breast cancer in the course of her lifetime, 20 percent of whom will die within five years after diagnosis.  Each year 175,000 women develop breast cancer, and 43,000 women die from it.  Isn’t it ironic, then, that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) continues to deny the link between abortion and breast cancer?

According to PPFA, “[w]omen deserve information that is medically substantiated and untainted by a political agenda.”  Based on this belief, PPFA does not inform women considering abortion of the potential risk of getting breast cancer.  Planned Parenthood holds the position that “abortion poses no demonstrated health risks,” and it “awaits conclusive confirmation” before it will inform women of available studies.  Yet, 44 years of medical research and 28 out of 37 worldwide studies show the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link, 17 of which, according to Dr. Joel Brind, an endocrinologist at Baruch College, “provide positive associations that reach statistical significance suggesting a 95 percent certainty that this association is not due to chance.”

Because Planned Parenthood—the herald of “choice”—is not permitting women to make an informed choice, three California women filed suit against Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties as well as PPFA on 15 August 2001.  Patrick Gillen, the Thomas More Law Center’s lead attorney representing the women, states, “Planned Parenthood advocates a woman’s right to choose.  Our clients want all women to have free access to the truthful and accurate information that they need to make an informed choice.”  Hence, the women are not seeking monetary damages; rather, they are asking the California court to compel Planned Parenthood to inform women of their substantial risk of getting breast cancer following an induced abortion.  Currently, four states—Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and Kansas—already require abortion providers to inform women of the possible ABC link.  

In response to the lawsuit, a Planned Parenthood attorney labeled the action as “an attempt by anti-choice extremists to manipulate the media into disseminating an inaccurate message to women.”  Does, then, Planned Parenthood consider the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG) to be “anti-choice extremists?”  On 13 March 2000, the RCOG became the world’s first organization to warn its abortion providers that the ABC link “cannot be disregarded,” and that the 1996 meta-analysis done by Dr. Brind was “carefully conducted” and had “no major methodological shortcomings.”  Do they also consider the members of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) to be “anti-choice extremists?”  On 27 February 2001 the British paper, The Observer, reported that the RSS in a paper titled, “Legally Induced Abortion, Fertility and Age at First Birth as Risk Factors in Female Breast Cancer” states, “British women are harboring a breast cancer ‘time-bomb’ because of the high abortion rate and low number of children.”  The paper quotes a study showing that “having an abortion before a child, rather than the other way around, increases the chance of breast cancer by up to four times.”  The reason for this is that when a first-term pregnancy is interrupted, it leaves a woman overexposed to high levels of estrogen while foregoing the protective effects naturally available to her later in her pregnancy.  Miscarriages do not pose the same risk because, according to Dr. Brind, “pregnancies that end in spontaneous abortion seem to be characterized by very low levels of estrogen.”  In fact, many miscarriages occur because there is not enough of the hormone progesterone (the hormone producing estrogen) to maintain the pregnancy.

In light of these recent announcements, why does Planned Parenthood—the nation’s oldest and largest abortion provider—hold the position that there are no “demonstrated” health risks and that the ABC link is “medically unsubstantiated,”  “tainted by a political agenda” and “inaccurate?”  Good question.  John Kindley, an attorney with the Thomas More Law Center, argues that it is because “they cite five studies that say the connection is unclear, while ignoring the overwhelming preponderance of the scientific evidence to the contrary.”

Planned Parenthood primarily cites evidence from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the American Cancer Society (ACS), the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) to argue “that the most reliable studies show no increased risk, and. . . .the entire body of research [is] inconclusive.”  All three organizations, however, have since revised their positions.  The NCI now admits of “small elevations in risk.”  Similarly, the New England Journal of Medicine changed its tune, albeit quietly, in 2000 when it published an article stating, “[o]ther risk factors have been less consistently associated with breast cancer (such as diet, use of oral contraceptives, lactation and abortion).”  

Despite these changes, Georgia Sadler, associate professor of surgery at the UCSD School of Medicine, when asked about the ABC link in response to the lawsuit, cited not the most recent study published by NEJM, but the 1997 study stating, “there is no increased risk of breast cancer for women who have undergone induced abortion” (emphasis added).

Planned Parenthood’s position is that women “deserve information that is medically substantiated.” Planned Parenthood must acknowledge, then, how “medically substantiated” is elsewhere defined.  According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “even a 1 in 10,000 risk of death must always be disclosed.”  Likewise, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA) “considers just one statistically significant epidemiological study ‘as sufficient to establish hazardous effect’ which must be disclosed.”  In upholding the district courts findings in Harbeson vs. Parke Davis, Inc., a case investigating “the liability of three physicians for failing to discover and disclose the potential risks of birth defects from taking Dilantin during pregnancy,” the Ninth Circuit stated, “we believe a risk must be disclosed even if it is but a potential risk rather than a conclusively determined risk. . . .It may be that those risks had not yet been documented or accepted as a fact in the medical profession.  Nonetheless, under the doctrine of informed consent, those risks should have been disclosed.  Medical knowledge should not be limited to what is generally accepted as fact by the profession.”  In light of the above information, all that is left to ponder is whether or not Planned Parenthood’s own views on this issue are “tainted by a political agenda.”


Jennifer Taylor is a freelance writer for HLI.