The issue of abortion should not be used as a litmus test in electing our presidents.
Presidential candidates should stay out of these highly personal and religious matters. They already have enough problems they can't seem to solve.
We have noted in previous columns that an individual's position on this emotional and controversial issue is more likely based on one's own spirituality than on scientific fact. W e have also disclosed previously that one of these writers is pro-choice and the other pro-life.
All that said, and hopefully putting politics aside for a while, there is a new study yielding information that women should be aware of if they someday have to make the difficult and emotional decision to abort or not.
An article in the fall issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons by actuary Patrick Carroll shows that induced abortion, especially nulliparous abortion, is the reproductive risk factor that most accurately predicts breast cancer incidence.
"During National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it is fitting and proper that women be informed about any newly discovered dangers, even as the public groans under the weight of all the warning surrounding the mere act of living," writes Dennis Byrne (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 22, 2007).
Byrne notes the contrast between mainstream media reporting a 13 percent increase in breast cancer risk for women who have just a couple of alcoholic drinks each day with the "snubbing" of the abortion connection.
Noting that national data in most countries tends to underreport abortions, Carroll uses data from eight European countries believed to have nearly complete official abortion counts. Using a model based on data up to 1997, Carroll correctly forecast 100.5 percent of the cancers observed in 2003, and 97.5 percent of those observed in 2004.
Carroll projects his forecasts to 2025. If present trends continue, the incidence of breast cancer in England and Wales is predicted to increase by 51 percent by 2025.
An increased incidence is also predicted for Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Sweden, and Czech Republic. A 6.8 percent decreased incidence is predicted for Finland, based on its declining abortion rate and some recovery in its birth rate, and a 4.1 percent decreased incidence for Denmark because of a declining abortion rate.
Correlation, of course, does not prove causality. But Byrne notes that a causal effect is biologically plausible. An abortion interrupts the hormonally induced growth of breast cells before they differentiate, leaving them more susceptible to carcinogens.
"The problem with dismissing the Carroll study because it is epidemiological is that you'll also have to dismiss a multitude of public health studies, Byrne observes.
Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of AAPS comments, "Part of the choice that young women face when considering an
abortion — especially if they have never given birth — is to have the baby, and a reduced risk of breast cancer, or abort their baby and be left with a higher risk of breast cancer.
"This added risk is considered controversial and some authorities deny it. But studies have repeatedly found an added
risk since the 1950s."
Orient further notes, "Most women would like to know about these studies and determine for themselves whether to take this risk into account in their decision making."
Whatever your position, we now have nearly 35 years experience with the effects of legal and presumably safe abortion and people's beliefs, whether religious or ideological, should not be allowed to trump reality.
The effects of abortion, physical and psychological, are not in and of themselves reasons for banning the procedure. But they must be faced. In this matter as in all else, actions have consequences. Perhaps those who still wish to think it's totally without consequences are doing, in their own way, as much harm as those who would ban it totally.
In making the decision to give consent for a medical procedure it is always preferable that the consent be informed. In fact, the law requires it.
Editor's Note: Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., submitted this week's column.
Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., comments on medical-legal issues and is a visiting fellow in Economics and Citizenship at the International Trade Education Foundation of the Washington International Trade Council.
Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a senior fellow and board member of the Discovery Institute and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
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