In November, I noted that pro-abortion Liberals and some in the media attacked Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott for his pro-life statements that abortion might not be to the benefit of women. Vellacott has long sought to educate the public and his parliamentary colleagues of the link between abortion and breast cancer. Because so many pro-abortion journalists are heavily invested in the narrative that abortion is a social good and a woman’s right, apparently the media is required to ignore the evidence for the well-established ABC link. (If it isn’t well-established, it is at least noteworthy enough to cover as a controversy.)
Well, on the weekend, Gloria Galloway, whose stories in the past have often used abortion as a wedge issue to attack the political right in Canada, noted on the Globe and Mail’s Ottawa blog, that Vellacott and ABC link researchers might have had a point. Galloway reports:
Three years ago, the Saskatchewan MP helped to bring an American doctor and activist to Parliament Hill to tell Canadian women that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. It turned out that the doctor, Angela Lanfranchi, was speaking from a defined religious point of view that had little apparent basis in science.
And, at the time, the link between the procedure and the disease had been discounted by the National Cancer Institute in the United States, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (and their U.S. counterparts), as well as the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Breast Cancer Network.
But a study released last fall (available here but only for a fee) by the respected Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle by a number of distinguished cancer experts including Louise Brinton, the chief of the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute lists induced abortion as being “associated with an increased risk for breast cancer.” Background documents further suggest that it increases the risk of the disease by 40 per cent.
I agree (as do other pro-lifers) with Galloway’s conclusion:
And trying to prevent abortions by scaring women with breast cancer would truly be wrong. But so too would be suppressing the risks of abortion or any medical procedure.
Of course, the media has played its role in suppressing information about the risks of abortion, and not only the ABC link but other health issues, too.
