Chinese Study Confirms Link Between Abortion, Breast Cancer
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Recently published research in China indicates a serious link between abortion and breast cancer. The research, authored by a dozen professors, doctors, and researchers from a variety of universities and public health entities throughout China, was derived from an analysis of 36 studies carried out in 14 Chinese provinces. The latest findings, published in the November edition of the international journal Cancer Causes & Control, concluded that induced abortion (IU) “is significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among Chinese females, and the risk of breast cancer increases as the number of IA increases,” according to the study’s abstract.

Writing on LifeNews.com, Dr. Joel Brind, a professor of biology and endocrinology at City University of New York and a founder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, noted that the latest study found that “combining all 36 studies on the ABC [abortion-breast cancer] link in China that have been published through 2012, the overall risk of developing breast cancer among women who had at least one induced abortion was significantly increased by 44%.”

Brind noted that the authors of the most recent study confirmed that their results “were consistent with a previously published systematic review” — one done by Brind and colleagues from Penn State Medical Center in 1996, which found “an overall significant 30% increased risk of breast cancer in worldwide studies,” wrote Brind.

Brind added that “since our study came out in 1996, the ‘mainstream’ abortion advocates entrenched in universities, medical societies, breast cancer charities, journals, and especially, government agencies like the National Cancer Institute [NCI] … have relentlessly targeted the ABC link with fraudulent studies and other attacks, culminating in a 2003 international phony ‘workshop’ by the NCI, which officially declared the ABC link non-existent.”

Among the groups attempting to discount the abortion-breast cancer link has been the Susan G. Komen organization, which in 2011 released a statement denying the connection. “Scientific evidence from the most comprehensive and well-designed studies in the U.S. and around the world does not support the conclusion that induced abortion or miscarriage raises the risk of breast cancer,” read the Komen statement, citing the NCI research.

Brind called the Chinese study a “game changer” in the efforts of pro-life groups and researchers like himself to warn women of the dangerous connection between abortion and cancer. He noted, for example, that the 44 percent increase in cancer risk connected with induced abortion cited by the Chinese study is greater than the 30 percent his own study found.

He added, among other positives, that the Chinese study “shows what is called a ‘dose effect,’ i.e., two abortions increase the risk more than one abortion (76% risk increase with two or more abortions), and three abortions increase the risk even more (89% risk increase)…. Risk factors that show such a dose effect have more credibility in terms of actually causing the disease.

The Chinese study noted that the “lack of a social stigma associated with induced abortion in China may limit the amount of underreporting.” Brind pointed out that “underreporting of abortions by healthy women has been routinely invoked to discredit the ABC link — the lack of credible evidence notwithstanding. This line of attack — variously called the ‘response bias’ or ‘recall bias’ or ‘reporting bias’ argument, has now been neutralized.”

Brind, using sarcasm, told the Blaze.com that the irony of the most recent study “is that you find the truth coming out in studies that are published in wonderful bastions of free speech like Iran and China … and politically correct garbage coming out of the National Cancer Institute. If that’s not enough to make people wonder if our country is being lost or not, what will [be]?”

Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, which has been at the forefront of exposing routine forced abortion in China as a way of enforcing its so-called one-child policy, applauded the research, noting that it confirms the abuse of women that exists in the country. “The strong association of abortion and breast cancer established by this study brings the women’s rights violations under the one-child policy to a new level,” she said in a statement. “A woman pregnant in China without a birth permit is subjected to both government imposed forced abortion, and also breast cancer as a result of it. Where abortion is forced, the subsequent development of breast cancer becomes a violation of women’s rights in itself,” she continued.