Some of you may have heard about the so-called link between abortion and breast cancer and how it’s suddenly, magically been proven (Oh and maybe Oral Contraceptives cause a risk too).
Which is funny, cause the NCI, the American Cancer Society and countless other Cancer societies and scientists (pg 23) around the world deny this link.
However, I read a review of the study and I started to wonder if it was true and what it could mean for the pro-choice movement.
Shaken, I went to RHRealityCheck and looked into their archives (link above).
And that’s where I found a link to The American Cancer Society and their article on it. I dug through it and suddenly found this:
Research on abortion and breast cancer
Research study problems
Many studies have looked at a possible link between abortions and an increased risk of breast cancer. But because of the nature of the topic, these studies have been hard to do. This may help explain why study findings vary.
Before 1973, induced abortions were illegal in much of the United States. So when researchers asked a woman about past pregnancies, she may not have been comfortable saying that she had an illegal abortion. Even though abortion is now legal, it is still a very personal, private matter that many women do not like to talk about.
Studies have shown that healthy women are less likely to report that they have had induced abortions. In contrast, women with breast cancer are more likely to accurately report their reproductive histories. This may be because they are looking for anything that may be linked to the cancer.
The likelihood that women who have breast cancer will give a more complete account of their abortions than women who do not have breast cancer is an example of recall bias. Recall bias like this can cause studies to find links that don’t exist.
Research study design
Most early studies of abortion and breast cancer used a case-control study design, one that is very prone to recall bias (see above). In these studies, women with and without breast cancer were asked to report past abortions. The researchers then compared the frequency of abortions in women with breast cancer (the cases) to those in women without breast cancer (the controls). It is likely that the higher rates of reported abortions in breast cancer cases (versus the controls), as seen in many of these studies, were not true findings because of recall bias.
If you read the review, you will learn that this study is indeed a case-control study.
Just more bad science from the anti-choice media machine.
