A woman who is pregnant when diagnosed with breast cancer or who gets pregnant after breast cancer is much more likely to be cured if she has the baby, instead of an abortion 35.
Chemo causes early menopause in women who get breast cancer. So getting pregnant after breast cancer isn’t a likely scenario.
There was a study that said women who get breast cancer while pregnant or nursing are less likely to find their lump early - changes in breast tissue during pregnancy and while nursing make a lump harder to detect - and since lumpy breasts are often part and parcel of the hormonal changes and nursing (plugged ducts), it sometimes means that doctors aren’t as aggressive when a lump is found. That one sticks in my head because my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer when breastfeeding her son - and the study came out about that time.
Each of these women would have a breast cancer risk equal to that of any other women with one pregnancy carried to term with her same other risk factors (diet, smoking status, genetics, etc.)
I don’t know the numbers, so this isn’t at all accurate, but suppose the risk factors Emily has put her at about 12% likely to have breast cancer during her lifetime. Emily’s never been pregnant. If she never gets pregnant, or she has an early term abortion, then that 12% stays the same.* If/when she carries a pregnancy to term, that number goes down a little bit, say (number derived rectally), now she’s at a 10% risk. Breastfeeding may bring that down a little more, say to 9%.
Each life decision (pregnancy to term, breastfeeding) brings the risk from pre-any-pregnancy down a little bit. Having an abortion doesn’t increase it from pre-any-pregnancy at all.
*Yes, this is an overly simplistic way of looking at it, considering that other risk factors (like age) will be increasing as time goes on, but work with me here. The point is that abortion doesn’t increase anything off the baseline, but some other things may decrease it.)
When I do lectures on study biases, this is the example that I use to illustrate recall bias or response bias. This happens when some difference between the two groups being compared makes one group more or less likely to remember–or admit to–a distant risk factor.
The early studies that showed an increased risk were cohort studies based on interviews. This means that you take a group of women with breast cancer, you put together a group of women that is as similar to the first group is possible except that they don’t have breast cancer, and you ask all of these women if they’ve had an abortion. Some of those studies showed that women who had breast cancer were more likely to have had one.
But interview studies about abortion are notoriously lousy, because a lot of women won’t even admit to having had one even in confidential medical records, and certainly not to some researcher. For a variety of reasons, women with breast cancer are more likely to admit they had an abortion than those who don’t. Cohort studies that were based on comprehensive medical records rather than interviews, like the big one done in Denmark in 1997, showed no increased risk.
There’s no juice in this orange, and there hasn’t been for years, but it doesn’t mean the pro-lifers are going to stop squeezing anytime soon.
AFAIK, the breast doesn’t differentiate between induced and uninduced loss of pregnancy. All it knows is that the pregnancy is no longer there.
My former lab was a breast cancer research lab. The way I remember it was that the earlier you have a full-term pregnancy, the more protected you are against BC.
Mama Zappa your confounding variables are even wider:
Family history
Social class
Smoking status
Alcohol intake
Age at menarche
Age at menopause
Use of contraceptive pill and HRT
BMI
All of those affect your risk of breast cancer, and make comparing like with like extremely difficult.
It simply isn’t fair to compare:
Brenda, a non smoking middle class soccer mom and college graduate who drinks a bottle of Merlot every evening, who had 3 kids in her 30s and terminations at 18 and 42
with
Alice, a heavy smoking welfare mom who never graduated high school, drinks a glass of wine every Christmas, and who had 5 kids between 18 and 42.
Whatever result that would give you, you’d be hard pressed to attribute causation.
My response to the fundagelicals spouting this nonsense would be, “So to protect themselves from breast cancer, girls should start having unprotected sex as early and often as possible, so they’re constantly pregnant from menarche on, right?”
Dr. Koop refused to publicize this BS when he was Reagan’s Surgeon General. He is as against abortion as anyone, but he is also honest. As I recall his position of refusing to spread falsehoods nearly got him fired. IMO his honesty in the face of political pressure is one of the reasons he is still greatly respected by the public over two decades after he left office. His reasoned and compassionate approach to the AIDS epidemic is another reason, for another thread.
In my career as a breast cancer nurse, it was well understood that not having a full term pregnancy before the age of 30 increased the risk of developing breast cancer. This is well accepted evidence nationally and internationally. Whils…t there are lots of studies both demonstrating and refuting the abortion-breast cancer link, the pathophysiological basis for the argument of an increased risk holds up well to scrutiny. The issue becomes one of do we withhold information from women about the potential of the risk? Women have also won out of court settlements for not having been told this information as part of an informed consent process. These are post abortive women who have not developed breast cancer, but later discovered the risk. The fact that these cases are all settled quietly out of court demonstrates a desire on behalf of abortion providers to keep the evidence quiet as well. I am very critical of using unsupported arguments or facts to advance a ‘pro life’ position. It does more harm to women and great harm to those of us trying to improve things for women. I am comfortable from a medical and scientific point of view to let women know there is evidence of a link, whilst also pointing out the competing evidence. Keep in mind, there is also evidence that abortion increases the risk or suicide, and pre term labour of later pregnancies. These things are also disputed on lots of articles, yet they are listed as potential complications by some abortion providers.
Because I am not good at debating this stuff - and I’m sick of being talked circles around. Unfortunately I cannot avoide these people and it gets talked about all the time. When they start going on about estrogen and breast tissue I want to have a scientifically accurate comeback. For some reason I consider that there are people here who are much smarter than I am who I would like help from.
I want to know if this has any basis in reality:
My bullshit meter is going off - I think that if this has happened the plaintifs were probably anti abotion campaigners trying to score points. I however have no proof this is so and woukld like to know for sure either way.
If you do not wish to read/discuss this stuff you can go elsewhere
A quick rejoinder: Cite? What are these cases that “are all settled quietly out of court”? Since there is no demonstrable increased risk, who is supposedly collecting settlements?
And what are “post abortive women”? Sounds like an insult, or at the very least an inferior band name. :dubious:
I’m so stealing that phrase!