Abortion and Breast Cancer: The Stubborn Link Returns

By: American Decency Staff

Prominent abortion practitioner and promoter David Grimes bemoans that bumper stickers still warn that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, even though, he asserts, that “theory . . . was debunked long ago.” So begins Grimes’s recent piece on the Huffington Post’s blog Healthy Living. “Long ago” was, though Grimes doesn’t say so, 1997 to 2008, when there flowed a stream of “debunking” publications — largely studies that were methodologically flawed — reporting that no abortion–breast cancer (ABC) link existed. They were effective in fading the ABC link from public consciousness. But now the ABC link has returned, stubbornly, provoking renewed efforts to debunk it.

Being real, the ABC link is showing up, conspicuously, as millions of women worldwide who have had abortions over the past several decades are coming down with breast cancer at alarmingly increased rates. Dozens of papers are being published that show the trend. Grimes does not acknowledge the recent studies, however, relying rather on the discredited arguments of “long ago” — and some clever sleight of hand — in his shoddy attempt to disprove the link.

The first epidemiological study to show a link between induced abortion and breast cancer was published in 1957. In 1996, a research team I headed up published a comprehensive review and meta-analysis of worldwide research on the subject — some 23 studies. Our finding of a statistically significant, 30 percent increase in breast cancer among women who had had an abortion prompted a major, decade-long backlash from many mainstream medical organizations, medical journals, and government public-health ministries.



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