Bill Sali Was Right About Abortion-Breast Cancer Link

Former Congressman Bill Sali took a lot of hell in 2006 for suggesting an abortion-breast cancer link leading to House Minority Leader Wendy Jacquet to break down on the floor of the State House. Sali’s position was pretty clear:

An outspoken anti-abortion advocate, Sali said: “Obviously I would hope that women would be discouraged from having abortions if they know that there’s an increased risk, but clearly if we care about women we should want them to know about this elevated risk. What’s the damage of women being told some people think there’s a link between abortion and breast cancer? What does that hurt?”

Wendy Jacquet’s response was emotional and completely irrational:

Jaquet said 12 percent of women today will get breast cancer, while 30 years ago it was just 5 percent of the population. She said she has a friend who just has been diagnosed with the disease who is only 35 and has two small children, and will likely lose both her breasts. Victims of the disease struggle to understand why it’s happening to them, she said. “You can understand the emotion that we feel with regard to someone accusing us of having had an abortion and therefore we got breast cancer.”

Sali said, “I’ve never said anything like that. For them to draw that inference is just unfair.”

Now, four years later, the science comes in and continues to vindicate Sali’s position:

A new study coming from researchers in Sri Lanka finds women who had abortions more than triple their breast cancer risk compared with wome who carry their pregnancy to term. The study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology and found a 3.42 odds ratio against women having abortions compared with those who kept their baby.

Abortion was the most significant factor in the study on breast cancer risk and researchers found a significantly reduced risk associated with prolonged duration of breastfeeding a newborn.

Malintha De Silva and colleagues from the University of Colombo led the study.

The Sri Lankan study is the fourth epidemiological study in fourteen months to report an abortion-breast cancer link, including studies from the U.S., China and Turkey…

In the one from the Unite States, Louise Brinton, a NCI branch chief, served as co-author.

She and her colleagues admitted that “…induced abortion and oral contraceptive use were associated with increased risk of breast cancer.” The authors cited a statistically significant 40% increased risk of breast cancer following an abortion.

Far from being an uncompassionate jerk out to hurt women, Sali was suggesting that women be notified of a risk that several scientific studies going back for decades suggested is a risk. Sali’s question still is a reasonable one. What’s wrong with notifying women of the potential risk?

Clearly, Jacquet is concerned with avoiding stigmatizing women with breast cancer, given the left’s failure to elevate abortion to a most-favored status among Americans, but as scientific studies come in suggesting the link, it’s irresponsible to keep this information from women. And as Sali explained, no one is saying that every case of breast cancer is a result of abortion.  And neither I, nor Sali suggested the evidence is 100 percent firm, but there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting this to be the case, and it shouldn’t be suppressed.

It seems that Wendy Jacquet and the feminist left would rather protect the emotional well-being of breast cancer survivors than provide women with information that could help them avoid developing breast cancer in the first place.

Beyond this, the left doubts the abortion-breast cancer link reflexively because of what it would mean. What if abortion is a culprit behind thousands of cases of breast cancer. To the left, it would mean accepting the idea that their greatest gift to women brought death and disease to thousands. It would destroy their credibility.

That’s why the left will never accept the abortion-breast cancer link, nor will the academic establishment, which if not avowedly leftist, doesn’t want to risk ticking off the feminist establishment. Thus the real health of women will continue to be sacrificed for the left’s women’s agenda.