Abortion & Breast Cancer Hardest Case -- or Cruelest Myth?(the case against therapeutic abortion)

We all know that abortion was marketed to American society through appeals based on the hard cases. The hardest of these is when the life of the mother is at stake.

Perhaps the most common indication for a "life of the mother" abortion is the diagnosis of breast cancer in a woman who is pregnant. Heart-rending stories of such cases appear with some regularity in the popular press, most recently last fall in the WebMD Medical News.

Author, Beatrice Motamedi describes the emotionally crushing scenario of "Jana," 38, who was finally pregnant after years of trying, including two years of fertility treatments. However, just three weeks after learning she was pregnant, Jana was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in her breast.

Typically, the doctors recommended an abortion "to make sure that Jana could be treated as aggressively as possible" with chemotherapy, following surgical removal of the tumor. But "Jana said no," according to Motamedi.

Motamedi then discusses a little-known but highly important development: "a small but growing body of evidence indicates that women who are pregnant can be successfully treated for cancer without compromising the health of their unborn children."

In 1956, Drs. White and White reviewed the worldwide literature on "gestational breast cancer" (as this particular situation is referred to). Their conclusion, published in the Annals of Surgery, was that "no definite benefit could be claimed from therapeutic abortion."

Twenty years later, French doctor P. Juret wrote in his review of the literature that "the total inefficacy of therapeutic abortion is now certain." This conclusion was echoed in the 1980 German review of Schweppe et al.: "There is no medical indication for an abortion."