The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month—an occasion to promote knowledge about the disease and commemorate those who have battled it. But in the hoopla of pink ribbons and 5k runs, a vital medical fact has gone unnoticed by the mainstream media: Abortion is an independent risk factor for breast cancer.

To the great detriment of women, this fact is little known. Radical feminists have successfully hijacked breast cancer awareness month as a time to spur their liberal propaganda, and have bullied a handful of breast cancer organizations into doing the same.

However, the biology of the breast confirms that induced abortion is indeed a risk factor for breast cancer. In developmental biology a lobule, or a unit of breast tissue, can undergo four stages. An infant is born with Type 1 lobules. After puberty, the number of Type 1 lobules increases, and some Type 1 lobules become Type 2 lobules.  Both Type 1 lobules and Type 2 lobules are vulnerable to cancer. During the first half of pregnancy, the number of Type 1 and Type 2 lobules greatly increases. However, around 20 weeks after conception, these cancer vulnerable cells mature into cancer-resistant Type 4 lobules. After 32 weeks of pregnancy, sufficient Type 4 lobules have developed that a mother is protected against breast cancer, and she begins to incrementally gain the benefit of risk reduction that will maximize at 40 weeks. By the end of a normal pregnancy, 70 to 90 percent of the mother’s breast is composed of cancer-resistant Type 4 lobules. After birth and after a mother has lactated and breastfed, Type 4 lobules regress to Type 3 lobules, which retain the epigenetic changes that protect against the development of cancer. With each additional pregnancy subsequent to her first, a woman’s risk of breast cancer will decrease another 10 percent.

Therefore, disruption to a pregnancy—and the corresponding termination of lobule development—can leave a woman with an excessive amount of Type 1 and Type 2 cancer-vulnerable lobules that have not yet maturated.  As a result, an induced abortion (presumably prior to 32 weeks) as well as a miscarriage in the second trimester increase the risk of breast cancer.

In the case of an induced abortion, the woman’s breasts contain an increased number of cancer-vulnerable Type 1 and Type 2 lobules, but hav not yet developed cancer-resistant Type 4 lobules. The longer a woman is pregnant before an induced abortion, the more cancer-vulnerable Type 1 and Type 2 lobules she will develop.

A miscarriage (also known as spontaneous abortion) may increase a woman’s risk factor for breast cancer, depending on when the miscarriage occurs. First trimester miscarriages do not increase the risk factor for breast cancer. First trimester miscarriages generally occur because a woman has not produced enough estrogen and progesterone to sustain the pregnancy. These low levels of estrogen and progesterone are also insufficient to stimulate breast development (ie. increase the number of Type 1 and Type 2 lobules). However, a second trimester miscarriage does increase a woman’s risk factor for breast cancer. These miscarriages generally occur due to physical abnormalities. Therefore, the breasts have an increased number of Type 1 and Type 2 lobules that have not yet matured into Type 4 lobules. Sadly, the same applies to premature deliveries prior to 32 weeks.

Because radical feminists distort this information, millions of women have been deprived of basic knowledge of medical care. However, the Marriage and Religion Research Institute is committed to empowering women by providing the facts and statistics for them to make their own informed decisions. Therefore, we have composed two easily accessible reports on the abortion breast cancer link: first, “Induced Abortion and Breast Cancer (Short version)” summarizes the most important biological facts about the link; second, “Induced Abortion and Breast Cancer” delves into specific scientific explanations. Both reports include easy-to-read diagrams, and explain why studies claiming to debunk the abortion-breast cancer link are fatally flawed.