By Michelle Martin
STAFF WRITER

he possibility of a link between abortion and breast cancer has been studied for decades.

Now, after more than 30 studies have been completed, some anti-abortion proponents claim that the ideological views of some scientists have clouded their judgment.

“Obviously, there’s an awful lot of political capital invested in the myth of safe abortion,” said Joel Brind, an endocrinologist and founder of the Breast Cancer Research Institute. “When you say that there’s a risk, you’ve got to warn patients before you submit them to an elective procedure.”

In 1996, Brind published a study in the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health analyzing all the studies that had been done on abortion and breast cancer to that point. He and his team concluded that abortion can raise a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer by 30 percent or more.

This year, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Great Britain took notice, issuing guidelines that suggest doctors discuss abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer with their patients.

Organizations in the United States, where abortion is more controversial, have not followed suit.

So far, the only notice from the U.S. National Cancer Institute is to question the methodology of the studies that have found links between abortion and breast cancer. Many of them rely on women self-reporting abortions, creating the possibility that those who later developed breast cancer will admit to having had an abortion and those who have not developed breast cancer will not. Others used samples too small to be considered statistically valid.

“The relationship between abortion and breast cancer has been the subject of extensive research,” according to a fact sheet distributed by the National Cancer Institute. “However, evidence of a direct relationship between breast cancer and either spontaneous or induced abortion is inconsistent. Some studies have indicated small elevations in risk, while others have not shown any risk associated with either induced or spontaneous abortions.”

The Illinois Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is trying to get the word out about a possible link, distributing brochures to crisis pregnancy centers, supporting legal action against abortion providers for not giving patients full information, and maintaining a web site with information about the studies linking abortion to breast cancer.

Its efforts have intensified during October, which is both Respect Life Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Karen Malec, chairman of the coalition, said she thinks most scientists who consider themselves pro-abortion simply have too much invested in their beliefs to take a clear look at the evidence.

“It could be just denial. It’s kind of like a person who has cancer but is unwilling to go to the doctor because they are unwilling to know,” Malec said. “I think it’s ideology. Politics has a great deal to do with it. There’s a considerable amount of money involved, and a lot of women’s organizations are invested in it. For them to come out and admit that abortion is harmful to women—American women would feel very angry and betrayed.”

‘It could be just denial. It’s kind of like a person who has cancer but is unwilling to go to the doctor because they are unwilling to know.’

The coalition trumpets Brind’s study, which found that 19 of 23 previous studies did show a link between induced abortions and breast cancer. Of 11 studies that have been published since then, eight have found a correlation.

Brind undertook the study because he thought evidence of an abortion-breast cancer link was being covered up and that a correlation between abortion and breast cancer made biological sense.

Scientists have long known that the younger a woman is when she carries her first pregnancy to term, the less likely she will have breast cancer. Newer studies are looking at a link between the use of birth control pills and breast cancer. The connection is the presence of high levels of estrogen in the woman.

Early in pregnancy, the level of one type of estrogen skyrockets to nearly 2,000 times normal, Brind explained. That stimulates immature breast cells to begin to grow and divide, preparing the breast for lactation. The process is completed when a pregnancy is carried to term; if an abortion ends a pregnancy in the early stages, the woman has more immature cells that may mutate into cancer cells, Brind said.

At least one breast cancer researcher who considers herself pro-choice on abortion agrees there might be a link and considers Brind’s study “very objective and statistically beyond reproach.”

Janet Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle said that while she doesn’t question Brind’s research, she does have doubts about his reasons for doing it. His anti-abortion views “dictate his research interest,” she said.

Daling authored one of the studies Brind analyzed. In 1994, Daling’s study appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It found that “among women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those who had experienced an induced abortion was 50 percent higher than among other women.”

Daling’s study also found that teenagers under age 18 and women over age 30 who have an abortion more than double their breast cancer risk. Those with a family history of the disease increase their risk 80 percent. Daling’s most dramatic finding was that teenagers with a family history of breast cancer who procure an abortion face a risk of breast cancer that is incalculably high. All 12 women in her study with this history were diagnosed with breast cancer by the age of 45.

Because the study relied on self-reports of abortions and because the risk did not vary consistently with the number of abortions, the woman’s age or the length of pregnancy, a commentary published in the same issue of the journal said the evidence of an abortion-breast cancer link remained “weak and inconsistent.”

“I do think there may be a link,” Daling said recently. “I think it is most important if the abortion occurs in the teens, and the risk is increased for 15 to 20 years.”

Malec and Brind both are convinced that early abortions—especially performed on teenagers who are pregnant for the first time—pose the greatest risk.

“This is what makes it more important for there to be parental notification laws,” Malec said. “So many of us have risky behaviors in our teen years, but we come out of it. How many teens really know their family histories?”

The coalition has supported a North Dakota lawsuit filed by Wisconsin attorney John Kindley on behalf of a North Dakota woman against an abortion clinic in Fargo. The woman, Amy Jo Mattson, was a sidewalk counselor who tried to dissuade women from having abortions at the Red River Clinic when she saw a brochure the clinic distributed claiming that there was no evidence of a link between abortion and breast cancer. She sued for false advertising last December; the case has yet to come to trial.

Two years ago, Kindley wrote an article in the Wisconsin Law Review exploring the possibility of suing abortion providers for medial negligence if they did not inform women that an abortion could put them at an increased risk of breast cancer. This year, he is helping prepare what may be the first such case. It was filed in Pennsylvania by a young woman whose abortion made the news three years ago when her parents sued a school counselor and other school officials when the counselor took her from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to obtain an abortion without her parents’ consent.

“I’m trying to increase public awareness through the litigation,” Kindley said. “If the abortionists cared as much about autonomy and choice as they say, why aren’t they allowing women to make an informed choice? Even if it didn’t make a difference in a woman’s decision to have an abortion, a woman has a medical interest in knowing she has an increased risk.”

Brind has made himself available as an expert witness in the litigation, and he applauds the effort.

“I would say the tide is turning,” he said. “We are beginning to see litigation. The reality in the United States in 2000 is that what drives public policy is lawsuits.”

The lawsuits might be the best way of getting the message out to the public, Malec said. One of the biggest difficulties for the coalition has been getting through to women who consider themselves pro-choice. After all, women who consider themselves pro-life are less likely to have abortions in the first place.

Malec thinks her status as a cancer survivor might give her a bit of added credibility when she approaches women at walkathons and other cancer-related events.

“We think it’s pro-woman to share this information so they can make informed choices,” she said. “If you’re going to consider yourself pro-choice, then you also have to be pro-information. This is the bridge that may link the two sides together.”