Abortion and Breast Cancer: Once Again AGI Misses the Link.

In reading the Alan Guttmacher Institute's (AGI) latest tome, "Abortion in Women's Lives," it would, of course, be shocking to discover any retreat from AGI's mantra that abortion is not only safe but wonderful for women. Likewise, it is no surprise that this "special research affiliate" of Planned Parenthood would tell the reader that an "exhaustive literature review and analysis" confirms that there is no link between having an induced abortion and having a higher risk of breast cancer years later (known as the abortion-breast cancer link or ABC link).

But when read carefully, the new AGI volume, written by Heather Boonstra and three colleagues, also reveals some important nuanced changes that suggest AGI is straining under the burden of declining credibility.

The authors begin a chapter entitled "Abortion is not associated with an increased risk of cancer" with an accurate account of the conclusions of a 1996 comprehensive review and meta-analysis of the ABC link compiled by myself and several associates. AGI's characterization was another matter.

"Abortion opponents," we're told, "seized upon" the analysis because it "combined the results of multiple studies and reported that women who had had an abortion had a significantly elevated risk of breast cancer." Boonstra and her colleagues then write, "Other researchers and medical groups, however, found this study to be flawed, largely because the data were collected only after breast cancer had been diagnosed."

It gets harsher. Our study was "further flawed," they say, since it relied on medical histories supplied by the women themselves, rather than from medical records.

All epidemiological studies have their strengths and weaknesses. But when it is said that a study is "flawed," that means that there is some serious error in the way the study was conducted and/or the results compiled or interpreted. Also notice the implication that our study was only endorsed by "abortion opponents," while "other researchers and medical groups" (presumably more legitimate) rejected our "flawed" research.

The anti-ABC link rhetoric has hardened quite a bit over the last decade. When our meta-analysis came out, leading "pro-choice" researcher Janet Daling called it "very objective and statistically beyond reproach." The 2000 clinical guide on abortion practice published by the United Kingdom's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (no friend of pro-lifers) said our meta-analysis "had no major methodological shortcomings and could not be disregarded."