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Originally Posted by baloney_detector  I'm sorry, but your links, and the studies that are contained therein, are unconvincing for the following reasons (among other reasons):
1. All case-control studies in the medical fields are notorious for containing "recall bias," whereby a healthy person is less likely to be honest about all of their actual health-related experiences/actions than an unhealthy person is since the unhealthy person has more at stake and, thus, greater concerns than the healthy person for being treated properly. In essence, there is a great possibility that there would be an under-reporting of induced abortions for women who DON'T have breast cancer...which would skew the "results" of any case-control study trying to link induced abortions and breast cancer. So, anyone who points to case-control studies to find a link between induced abortion and breast cancer would be adopting an inherently biased method to discover any correlation between the two.
And, historic cohort studies, studies that don’t rely on any subject’s self-reported, health-related experiences/actions, are essentially free of bias recall-at least in the sense that one or more induced abortions HAVE occured-since those studies rely, instead, on data gathered from actual hospital/clinic visitations by a population of people. And, a major historic cohort study performed in Denmark in 1997 which analyzed the data gathered from 1.5 million Danish women hospital/clinic visits since 1973 found zero increased risk of breast cancer for women who had an induced-abortion by the 14th week of pregnancy…a gestational age with which the majority of induced abortions will-at least in the United States-occur by.
2. Since there doesn’t appear to be any link between miscarriages and breast cancer, why should there be any link between induced abortions and breast cancer? In short, the speculation that ONLY induced abortions suddenly “interrupt the estrogen surge” within pregnant women and NOT miscarriages is misleading at best and fraudulent at worst. In essence, the exact same “interrupted estrogen surge” would occur in the vast majority of pregnant women who either have miscarriages OR induced abortions. So, there doesn’t appear to be any basis for women, in general, to be at any greater risk of developing breast cancer caused by an “interrupted estrogen surge” due to induced abortions over and above the baseline risk of women developing breast cancer by an “interrupted estrogen surge” due to miscarriages. Hence, this proposed mechanism doesn't make any logical sense in light of objective data. | From the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute: Quote:
Chapter 7:
Reproductive History & Breast Cancer Risk
During a normal pregnancy, estrogen levels rise 2,000% by the end of the 1st trimester. During the first 2 trimesters, the breasts grow because there is an increase in the number of immature Type 1 and 2 lobules. During the 3rd trimester, the breasts stop growing but lobules mature into Type 3 & 4 lobules. During the growth phase of pregnancy, the breasts become sore and tender.
Sometimes, a woman will miscarry during the first trimester. These miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) do not increase breast cancer risk, since they are associated with low estrogen levels that do not cause breast growth. Approximately 23% of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortions and approximately 90% of spontaneous abortions occur in the first trimester. Many times women who miscarry will say they never felt pregnant because their breasts did not change and they did not get nauseous from high estrogen levels. However, miscarriages in the 2nd trimester can increase risk.
A first trimester miscarriage is quite a different situation from induced abortion of a normal pregnancy in its effect on the woman's breasts. The longer a woman is pregnant before an induced abortion, the higher her risk of breast cancer. This is because high estrogen levels of the 1st and 2nd trimesters cause breast growth of Type 1 & 2 lobules. When her pregnancy is terminated before the breast cells reach full maturity, she is left with more immature Type 1 & 2 breast lobules than before her pregnancy started, and therefore is at increased risk. Simply stated, she has more places for cancers to start. Her breasts do not mature to Type 3 & 4 lobules, which would have occurred in the 3rd trimester and would have lowered her risk. This risk is especially high for teenagers who have an abortion in the late 1st or 2nd trimester and for those women who have never have a child, since their breasts never mature. Premature deliveries before 32 weeks are known to double breast cancer risk, again because they leave these mothers with more places for breast cancers to start.
Induced abortion-especially in teenagers-also increases the risk of very premature delivery in subsequent pregnancies. This further increases the breast cancer risk of the mother, as well as the risk of cerebral palsy in the prematurely born child.
In one prominent study, if a teenager also had a family history of breast cancer, her relative risk was reported as infinity because all 12 such women in this study developed breast cancer by the age of 45. This does not mean every teenager that has an abortion and a family history of breast cancer will get breast cancer by the age of 45. However, it does show a high risk.
| But yeah, I'm sure they're lying too.
Sure. Abortion is really safe...  |