Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Deconstructing Elaine

Planet Jackson Hole, Oct 8, 2008.

"Interruption during the first trimester of a first pregnancy causes a cessation of cell differentiation..."
Well, yeah.
If a pregnancy ends, the body will respond accordingly and stop performing functions that go with pregnancy, such as changes in breast tissue, whether the interruption is spontaneous or induced.

"...which may result in a subsequent increase in the risk of cancerous growth in these tissues."
Hmm. Really? I see the word "may" there as well as no quantification of the amount of risk.
According to Elaine's ad, this was found on the Planned Parenthood website on Sept. 5 1997. A quick search of PubMed finds some interesting results. Several articles concerning a link between abortion and breast cancer came out in the late 90s, a majority of which reported a link.
5 or so years later, a new round of articles came out, pointing out biases in previous papers and/or correcting poor experimental design. It is tricky to ensure that you don't bias your results, and multiple areas of concern must be addressed (are you comparing spontaneous abortions to induced abortions? women who have birthed to those that haven't? were these first pregnancies and abortions or were there completed pregnancies before the abortion? etc.)
I was intrigued to find that political bias is allowed to shine through your "journal." I hadn't encountered it so directly before, but my previous searches on this website were for work and didn't address this issue or similarly political issues. There's a pro-life journal (I see you and your bias, Issues in Law and Medicine) that regularly publishes papers and submits them to PubMed. Hope my taxes aren't funding that research!
Anyway, the latest papers (2007, 2008) seem to still have some mixed results on this issue. Those that found a strong link usually have authors that always find a strong link but most papers conclude there is very little to no increased risk of breast cancer linked to abortion.

1 comment:

Emma Goldman said...

And let's not forget that carrying a pregnancy to term is significantly more dangerous than abortion, something they often forget to mention.