By France Bissonnette
The Interim
If you have not had a full-term pregnancy and are taking the Pill – STOP. According to the research of Dr. Chris Kalenbourn, taking the Pill before a full-term pregnancy increases a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer by between 40 and 220 per cent. The following is a summary of a talk given at the Human Life International conference in Toronto last April.
The Pill is a combination of synthetic hormones, estrogen and progestin. It works in three ways: it suppresses ovulation to prevent conception; it thickens cervical mucus to discourage sperm travel; and it thins the wall of the uterus to make it inhospitable to conceived babies. Of course it is not always possible to know which method has worked in a given month. It is estimated that between 10 and 20 per cent of the time conception will occur, making the Pill an abortifacient.
During a first pregnancy, a woman’s breasts will go from an undeveloped state to being capable of producing milk. In order to achieve this development cells divide, prompted by the increase of hormones in the body. The Pill speeds up the rate of breast cell division 25 to 30 per cent, even when a woman is not pregnant. It is during this time that breast cells are susceptible to cancer-causing agents. Dr. Kalenbourn likened it to teaching your child to ride a bike by giving her a big push instead of running gently beside her. He also suspects that an increase of hormones due to conceived babies that were aborted in their first week of life will also increase the risk of breast cancer.
Studies everywhere have confirmed this link. So why aren’t doctors informing their patients of the risk? Because there are other studies that don’t show any increased risk. But these studies have inherent flaws.
Firstly, there is a failure to examine the right group of women. Women who have had a full-term pregnancy are less susceptible to breast cancer than those who have not. The two should not be mixed into one group. Secondly, meta-analyses that use studies from before 1980 skew the data, since the Pill only came out in the 1960s. You can’t wait only five or 10 years and say that there’s no link to breast cancer.
Lastly the “Stack Effect” is that there is a different grouping of women using the Pill the today than in the 1960s. Back then the typical woman taking the Pill was married with children. Today the typical woman is in her teens with no children.
Dr. Kalenbourn goes through a series of large studies that do not show a link between the Pill and breast cancer and explains what was done wrong in each case. He then states that the 18 studies done after 1980 with proper groupings of women show an overall increased risk of breast cancer of between 40 and 220 per cent, with a meta-analysis giving a mean increase between 60 to 70 percent. Your chances of getting breast cancer in the U.S. are one out of eight women, or 12.5 per cent. So with the use of the Pill, an increased risk of 60 per cent will bring your chances of getting breast cancer up to 20 per cent.
Dr. Kalenbourn also says that the new “mini-Pill,” which has less synthetic estrogen, is just as dangerous as the old pill, and that the abortion-causing drugs Norplant and Depo-Provera can also cause breast cancer.
As for the “benefits” of the Pill in treating pre-menstrual syndrome, there are many medical alternatives, such as blood-pressure pills, calcium and magnesium supplements, and non-steroidals. And while the Pill is said to decrease ovarian and uterine cancer, it increases liver cancer and cervical cancer (the latter by 45 per cent).
Knowing this information we all have a duty to inform our doctors so that they may in turn inform their Pill users. Dr. Chris Kalenbourn will soon be distributing his book discussing in detail the above information. The book will be available through One More Soul Publishing.
