Abortion and breast cancer: a medical journal tells it like it is.(Karen Malec's article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons)

NRL News readers are familiar with accounts of how political bias distorts mainstream reports of anything to do with abortion. Thus, a baby is described as anything but a baby, and abortion is described as anything but taking the life of a baby. And of course, abortion is always described as safe, safe, safe.

How refreshing it is to find, in a mainstream medical journal, a no-punches-pulled expose of the politics that keep the lid on the abortion-breast cancer link (ABC link).

Karen Malec's "The abortion-breast cancer link: how politics trumped science and informed consent," appears in the September issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Malec begins by making a crucial point: published evidence of the ABC link appeared as early as 1957, preceded Roe v. Wade by 16 years. Had such evidence not been suppressed, Malec notes, "The court's opinion of abortion safety might have been different."

From there, Malec succinctly catalogs the history of epidemiological research, including some of the breathtaking omissions, misrepresentations, and denials by many of the scientists involved. And she names names. And Malec cites her sources, with two pages of references.

Among the most glaring omissions Malec details occur in the high profile review of cancer incidence and mortality which appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2001. Although the first two authors of that study had previously published evidence of the ABC link, the word abortion never appeared in the review.

That omission was shown to be doubly significant when one actually examines the data presented in the review. The data clearly show that the increase in breast cancer incidence from the mid-1980s to the end of the century occurred only among women young enough to have obtained legal abortions.