The Much Disputed Abortion-Breast Cancer Controversy

I'm not going to bother to cite studies saying that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, because there are probably an equal amount of studies saying that it doesn’t. There is a reason that I love logic: when all else fails, there’s nothing like some good old deductive reasoning.

Earlier this week a prominent surgeon, professor,  and president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, published a paper in the medical journal Linacre Quarterly about this link. I read her report, and decided to give a simplified version of it on here. She doesn’t cite any specific studies, but her logic is irrefutable.

It’s an undisputed fact that a woman who goes to term with a pregnancy reduces her risk of breast cancer. Before she’s pregnant, her breasts aren’t fully developed, and thus cancer vulnerable. When a woman becomes pregnant, the amounts of the hormones estrogen and progesterone increase radically, stimulating breast growth in the mother. The number of underdeveloped cancer-vulnerable breast cells multiply dramatically during the pregnancy, and it isn’t until the 32^nd week or so that the new breast cells actually mature and become cancer-resistant. About 85% of all the breast cells (both old and new) become cancer-resistant after the first full pregnancy. More and more cells become cancer-resistant with each subsequent full pregnancies, even further reducing the chances of developing breast cancer.

When a woman gets an abortion, however, she ends the pregnancy before her breast cells finish developing, and the body stops sending the hormones that would eventually “finish” the breasts. This leaves many more underdeveloped cancer-vulnerable breast cells than the woman would have had if she hadn’t gotten pregnant at all.

Abortion still increases the risk of breast cancer even after a mother has had a full pregnancy. The breasts change every pregnancy. Also, an abortion increases the risk of having a miscarriage and/or a premature birth, if the cervix or another part of the woman’s body is damaged. A natural miscarriage occurs because of insufficient amounts of progesterone and estrogen, and a woman’s breasts won’t develop with insufficient amounts anyway, while abortion-caused miscarriages can occur for other reasons. A premature birth, if it occurs before 32 weeks, increases the risk of breast cancer because the breast cells are not finished developing.

If you have the time (or even if you don’t), I urge you to read at least in part Dr. Lancranchi’s paper. It contains much more scientific, specific information than I put in here, and she explains it much more thoroughly. She also explains a link between breast cancer and some types of birth control.

A few side notes:

1. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

2. I decided to change my posting days to Tuesdays and Fridays, so that I can have a more equal amount of time to prepare each post.

3. I intend to be picking up pretty much where I left off: finishing my “ultimate pro-choice argument” rebuttal and a summary of our presidential candidates.

4. I now have an email address, grace.prolife@gmail.com, to which you can email me about anything related to this blog.

5. Thank you so much for your patience. I’m eager to get back to work!

Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.