I have no doubt that what I write here will be misinterpreted. For that reason, I want to forego literary style and be absolutely blunt. I am not writing a column about abortion, either pro or con.
Yes, I have very strong personal opinions about the issue, but I am not writing about them now. Instead I am writing about another issue, an issue that has begun to play a role in the abortion debate, and an issue that undermines our society's ability to make rational decisions. Regardless of what many may claim, this is not a column about abortion.
My home state of Indiana stands ready to enact legislation that will require any woman seeking a legal abortion to undergo "medical" counseling. As the bill in the Indiana Assembly is currently written, part of that counseling must include informing the woman that terminating a pregnancy early will increase her chances of developing breast cancer.
Independent of any of the myriad issues that could be raised about this piece of legislation, the largest problem is that there is absolutely no medical data supporting the conclusion that legislators have built into the bill. The medical community, after extensive study, has come to as firm a conclusion on this issue as they have on any issue: early termination of pregnancy is unrelated to risk of developing breast cancer.
Many, including some legislators, prefer a different conclusion, but the data simply don't support their desires. The data are independent of religious conviction and political persuasion. The data provide no reason to believe that abortion and breast cancer are causally linked.
When wishes trump science, when desire pushes data aside, pseudoscience reigns.
Let's look beyond the rhetoric and at the studies themselves. The American Cancer Society (ACS) has a very informative page summarizing the largest and most important studies. Here's what it has to say about three of them:
The largest, and probably the most reliable study on this topic was done during the 1990s in Denmark, a country with very detailed medical records on all its citizens. In that study, all Danish women born between 1935 and 1978 (a total of 1.5 million women) were linked with the National Registry of Induced Abortions and with the Danish Cancer Registry ... After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found that induced abortion(s) had no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. The size of this study and the manner in which it was done provides good evidence that induced abortion does not affect a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.Another large, prospective study was reported on by Harvard researchers in 2007. This study included more than 100,000 women who were between the ages of 29 and 46 at the start of the study in 1993. These women were followed until 2003 ... After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found no link between either spontaneous or induced abortions and breast cancer.
The California Teachers Study also reported on more than 100,000 women in 2008 ... There was no difference in breast cancer risk between the group who had either spontaneous or induced abortions and those who had not had an abortion.
There's more. In 2009 the Committee on Gynecologic Practice of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued Opinion 434: Induced Abortion and Breast Cancer Risk. The abstract of that opinion leaves no opportunity for confusion:
The relationship between induced abortion and the subsequent development of breast cancer has been the subject of a substantial amount of epidemiologic study. Early studies of the relationship between prior induced abortion and breast cancer risk were methodologically flawed. More rigorous recent studies demonstrate no causal relationship between induced abortion and a subsequent increase in breast cancer risk.Similarly, the ACS concludes, in no uncertain terms, that "the public is not well-served by false alarms. At this time, the scientific evidence does not support the notion that abortion of any kind raises the risk of breast cancer."
And yet Indiana is now poised to join five other states (Alaska, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia) in requiring that women be misinformed about this critical issue.
It's one thing to ignore well established scientific data but quite another to promote a position that has been demonstrated to be false. Those pushing this bill are, apparently, well aware that there's no medical evidence to support their demand that women be (mis)informed about the link between breast cancer and abortion. After all, they voted down a simple amendment that required that all information presented to women be "medically and scientifically accurate."
Yes, emotions run high when abortion is discussed - but that's no reason to lie to women in an attempt to scare them.
The rise in scientific illiteracy in society is a growing problem, a problem that has massive economic and health consequences. When some among us purposefully promote scientific illiteracy to advance their personal agendas, the problem is significantly increased. When those personal agendas are tied to religion, as they so often are in the debate over abortion or in the manufactured controversy over evolutionary theory, public passion is easily aroused. But arousing the public duplicitously should be acknowledged by all as the disgrace it is. Aiding and abetting ignorance via any means, but especially by lying, is immoral, even for those who may be doing so in the name of religion.
Women in Indiana and women across the world have a right to the best scientific information available. For politicians to require medical personnel to misinform women about something as basic as cancer risks is indefensible -- for any reason. That politicians opposed to abortion feel strongly about the issue does not justify their behavior.
This is not a column about abortion. Rather it is about those who would knowingly hijack science and willfully pervert its conclusions for partisan gain. We, regardless of our political or religious convictions, must make our voices heard.
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I'm sorry to sound insulting, but that statement is very naive. Here's how this stuff works: someone does make it up out of thin air to promote their agenda. Then they tell their friends who have a similar agenda and who trust this person and fail to fact check. They then tell their friends, who also have a similar agenda and who also fail to fact check. Eventually, so many people believe it that it becomes "fact" and no one can trace back to where the information originated.
Germany requires counseling prior to abortion. Some women change their minds as a result of this counseling, thus reducing abortion. There is no evidence they lie to women to achieve that, which is what Indiana seems to want to do.
I always want to know where those same people are when the child(ren) are born and the women can't afford to feed/house/whatever... these same Republicans are opposed to most social services. And I don't see them running out ready to adopt babies born addicted to drugs or with fetal alcohol syndrome.
I'm pro-life personally, but if other people need to make a hard choice, I'm not going to be one to fault them for it. I don't even think the issue should ever come into the public debate, it's a private medical concern and none of government's business (or the business of all the old busybodies who march around with foolish signs at abortion clinics).
Science changes, we learn new things, we refine our studies, it's how the process works. If this becomes law, it's going to have to be repealed and adjusted constantly. How much is all that tweaking going to cost the taxpayers?
If the Republican/Tea Party really wants smaller government, why are they constantly trying to expand their reach into non-governmental areas?
You just opened a can of worms by bringing science into the abortion debate. I don't think this is the path you want to go down.
Science says that any living organism, from a paramecium to a blue whale is "viable" once it displays the "fight or flight" response, which in mammals occurs in utero. If science were to decide the abortion question, there wouldn't be any.
So stick to the political and anti-religion arguments. Don't go down the science road.
However, couldn't we argue (and prove) that people who have children are exponentially more likely to commit child abuse and neglect, or worse, raise children in ignorance that leads them to support this kind of legislation. This is what everyone should be concerned about - raising more people who are ignorant to what the issues really are.
Let x be any number greater than zero
x > 0
x/0 = infinity
So people who have children are infinitely more likely to commit child abuse and neglect, or worse, raise children in ignorance that leads them to support this kind of legislatioÂn.
Keep up the good work.
Norm Morford
The conservative Judge Jones III (appointed by George Bush) nailed the hypocrisy on page 137 of his findings in the 2005 Federal trial of the Dover School District when he said, “It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the[ir] real purpose...”
http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf
I am deeply dismayed that some people's God and Christ are so different from mine – in that theirs accepts deceit, lying, etc. Their extreme hypocritical actions are not only injurious to the citizens of our country, but also cause thinking people to wonder “If this is what religion leads to, why should I be part of religion?”
In the politics of America that IS what religion is all about. The answer is "You shouldn't".
Their beliefs to father their thinking,
And their wishes to father their facts.
How is this possible? The language they speak and think with is unrelated to reality.