Network Holds Abortion and Breast Cancer Summit

by Lisa Cox

Last summer through the Network News (March/April 1996), the Network was the first group to alert you to the appearance of an anti-choice advertising campaign which used the fear of breast cancer to scare women away from abortion. Their ads, largely financed by an organization called Christ's Bride Ministries, read "Women who choose abortion will suffer more and deadlier breast cancer."

A year after swinging into action with its own "Get The Facts" public education campaign combating these misleading messages, the Network brought together a number of leading health organizations to discuss the origins of this controversy, celebrate our victories, examine the newest findings, and identify future challenges.

Groups in attendance included Planned Parenthood Federation of America; National Abortion Federation; National Breast Cancer Coalition; American Public Health Association; and the National Abortion Rights Action League. Educating the public about the unproven link between abortion and breast cancer is a unique issue which has brought together a broad range of diverse organizations to focus on the promotion of accurate science and women's health.

The meeting began with a brief look back to the roots of this controversy. This issue is not new; its beginnings can be traced back to 1993, when an antiabortion group published “The Link Between Abortion and Breast Cancer", which claimed that a conclusive link between the two existed. In 1996, when Christ's Bride Ministries began to place ads claiming that "Women who choose abortion suffer more and deadlier breast cancer", the Network and other groups mobilized to counter these messages.

A large part of the meeting focused on recent studies to date involving abortion and breast cancer. A Danish study published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that women who received abortions up to 18 weeks gestation were not more likely to get breast cancer than those women who had never had an abortion.

The study is promising because it lacked the biases that plagued many previously conducted studies, which relied on self-reporting by study participants to obtain data. It has been shown that women who have had serious illnesses are more likely to give researchers a full medical history including any experiences with abortion, in the belief that this will help in their treatment.

Even though this latest study has the fewest number of flaws, the meeting participants talked extensively about the remaining unanswered questions. For instance, does the age at which a woman has an abortion influence any possible effect it may have on breast cancer? How does this possible relationship affect women of color communities? Is there any difference between induced abortion and spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) in later risk of breast cancer? Does it make a difference at which stage abortion occurs?

All advocates agreed that anti-abortion groups could potentially use these significant unknowns to continue to assert that there is a proven link between abortion and breast cancer and because of this, responding proactively with balanced information is crucial. Groups pledged to work together to get balanced information out to women and to alert other organizations when anti-choice ads appear in cities and towns.

If you are interested in learning more about the Network's "Get the Facts" campaign or want to report the appearance of misleading ads in your community, please call Lisa Cox at 202-347-1 Wt She can also be reached by e-mail at LisaCox@compuserve.com

Lisa Cox is the Network's Program Director.