ARTICLES
OCTOBER 2001 ARTICLES
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Every Woman Deserves to Know
Lawsuit Wants PP to Disclose Abortion/Breast Cancer Link
By Maggie Garcia
"I don't want other women to get harmed," said Pam Colip of Loma Linda regarding the lawsuit that she and two other women filed against Planned Parenthood on August 15 in the San Diego Superior Court. Colip and the two other plaintiffs named Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties, as well as the national Planned Parenthood organization, as defendants. The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages (although attorneys for the plaintiffs say that they might amend the complaint) but seeks to force Planned Parenthood to disclose the link between abortion and breast cancer in women.
The connection between breast cancer and abortion is based on the changes that a woman's breasts undergo when she becomes pregnant. Before a woman is pregnant, the gland cells in her breasts are immature and incapable of lactating (producing milk). When a woman becomes pregnant, her body releases a surge of estrogen which in turn causes the gland cells to mature and prepare to lactate. If the process is allowed to come to completion, i.e. the gland cells are allowed to mature and produce milk, the breast cells function as they should and no longer undergo changes.
If the woman undergoes an abortion during the early part of her pregnancy -- and 90 per cent of abortions are done during the first trimester -- the gland cells are not allowed to mature and produce milk. In effect, the cell maturing process is interrupted at this very unstable time of rapid change. Studies have shown that at this point, women become more susceptible to breast cancer. If a woman undergoes an additional abortion, the chances for her to develop breast cancer increases even more. Even if a woman has a future full-term pregnancy, the risk of developing breast cancer is still present.
Colip said that she feels betrayed by Planned Parenthood for not informing her about the connection between abortion and breast cancer. "Thirty-one years ago I had an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic," said Colip. "Planned Parenthood told me that my pregnancy was a microscopic egg and a D&C (Dilation and Curettage) would take care of it. When I went to [the Planned Parenthood clinic] I had terrible misgivings." Colip said that now she fears that she is at risk for developing breast cancer. In the lawsuit, Colip spells out that she feels women need to be told about the risk that abortion carries. "Colip believes that every woman deserves the respect to be fully informed about all of the consequences surrounding an abortion, including the increased risk of breast cancer," reads the complaint.
The Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan is representing Colip and the two other plaintiffs, Agnes Bernardo of Chula Visita and Saundra Duffy-Hawkins of Sacramento. Attorney Bruce Fagan of San Diego, who is serving as local counsel, said that the litigation came about because of expert witness testimony by researcher Dr. Joel Brind who has studied the connection between abortion and breast cancer. Lead attorney Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center said that Planned Parenthood "consistently misleads women about the safety of abortion by obscuring evidence that induced abortion causes breast cancer." Gillen said that the suit is asking the court to force Planned Parenthood to "inform women that abortion poses a significant health risk in the form of increased vulnerability to breast cancer, the leading cause of death among middle-aged women in America."
Colip said that she became involved with the litigation after speaking with a pro-lifer in Texas who told her that many studies showed a link between abortion and breast cancer, something that Colip said she found disturbing. Gillen said that the Thomas More Center became interested in the large body of medical research literature that shows the link between abortion and breast cancer. "We contacted a sister organization to see if we could find a plaintiff," said Gillen. "While we were doing this, two of the Plaintiffs contacted us about their concerns." Gillen said that the fact that the plaintiffs lived in California was a plus because California laws are very strict about protecting consumers. The lawsuit alleges that Planned Parenthood is violating the state's business and professions code section by making "statements [which] are unfair, incomplete, confusing and misleading and cause women to make critical health care decisions without full, clear complete, and accurate information about the safety of abortion, the safety of abortion vis-à-vis childbirth and the scientific/medical literature showing the link between induced abortion and breast cancer."
Planned Parenthood cites political opposition to abortion as the main reason that the connection between abortion and breast cancer is being highlighted. On their website, www.plannedparenthood.org, Planned Parenthood dismisses the findings of medical research: "The link between induced abortion and breast cancer is a theory whose principal promoters oppose abortion regardless of its safety. The theory has not been borne out by research. While Planned Parenthood believes that women should have access to information about all factors that influence the risk of disease, PPFA also believes that women deserve information that is medically substantiated and untainted by a political agenda. Because the research community has not reached a consensus on breast cancer and abortion, Planned Parenthood advises women who are considering terminating a pregnancy that there is no currently demonstrated health risk from abortion that would warrant basing a decision on that factor alone".
Other groups have differing views. The lawsuit is supported by some women's groups such as the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, who, according to a Coalition press release, "is an international women's organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer." Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer president Karen Malec told me that her group thinks the Thomas More Law Center will "force Planned Parenthood to inform their current and former patients of the increased risk for breast cancer that abortion causes. This is going to have enormous implications for Planned Parenthood" she said.
Malec added that the work of Joel Brind, an endocrinologist at Baruch College of the City University of New York, shows that there is a large body of scientific literature that shows the link between abortion and breast cancer has been known since a 1957 study conducted in Japan. "Out of 37 independently published studies, 28 show a causal connection," noted Brind. "And of those, 17 provide positive associations that reach statistical significance suggesting a 95 per cent certainty that this is not due to chance. That is scientific evidence which simply cannot be ignored," he said. Brind added that the earlier a woman has a baby, the greater the protection she will have against developing breast cancer. "Correspondingly, the younger she is when she has an abortion, the more prone to cancer she will likely be."
Planned Parenthood's attorney of record in this litigation, Tracy Richmond, was on vacation and could not be reached for comment.