Letter From Congress Prompts NCI To Pull Abortion Fact Sheet From Web

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on email
Share on print

Responding to Congressional pressure, NCI has removed from its Web site a “fact sheet” discussing the risk of breast cancer in women who have had abortions.

Late last month, NCI officials pulled Fact Sheet 3.53, titled “Abortion and Breast Cancer,” from the Cancer Information Service site that provides information to the public.

The document, which said recent studies have found that women who have had abortions “have the same risk as other women for developing breast cancer,” was removed as a result of a June 7 letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson signed by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and 27 other members o Congress known to oppose abortion.

Smith’s letter criticized changes made to the fact sheet last March, and asked for the page to be removed from the Web site for review.

An NCI spokesman said the fact sheet was under review. “After several members of Congress voiced concern about the accuracy of the fact sheet and requested a review of its contents, NCI removed the sheet and is in the process of reviewing it,” said Peggy Vaughn, a spokesman for the Institute. “After that review process, it will be returned, but there is no set timetable for that.”

NCI Defended Fact Sheet In 1999

Antiabortion activists have targeted the NCI fact sheet for several years. In 1999, Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA), then-chairman of the House Committee on Commerce, wrote a letter to then-NCI Director Richard Klausner with extensive questions about the fact sheet. Klausner responded with extensive answers defending the information provided in the fact sheet.

The fact sheet originally had been developed in 1996 in response to inquires about the controversial advertisements posted by antiabortion groups in public transit systems in Philadelphia and other cities linking abortion and breast cancer.

The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy has called the alleged breast cancer link the “latest antiabortion scare tactic” not based on scientific consensus. Antiabortion activists have aggressively pursued the issue at the state level. More than 15 states have considered new laws that would require doctors to provide patients with “medically inaccurate and alarmist information” about the “alleged link,” the center said. Two states, Montana and Mississippi, have passed laws referring to breast cancer as a possible risk from abortion, though they only require doctors to mention such a risk “when medically accurate.”

Antiabortion activists have taken the issue to the courts, too. Last March, a judge in Fargo, ND, ruled in favor of an abortion clinic that that distributes information stating that abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer. An antiabortion protestor had sued under the state’s false advertising law to stop the Red River Women’s Clinic from distributing pamphlets on abortion, claiming that the clinic’s pamphlets provided misleading information.

In developing its brochure, the clinic said it relied on scientific data provided by NCI and the National Abortion Federation.

Also last March, a judge in California dismissed a suit filed against Planned Parenthood of San Diego by the same attorney who filed the Fargo case.

The Congressional letter to Thompson repeated the statement often made by antiabortion activists that the majority of studies worldwide “show a positive association between abortion and breast cancer risk,” and accused NCI of “glossing over the weight of published scientific evidence” in its fact sheet.

Most of those studies were small and relied on self-reporting of abortion. Women who have had breast cancer may have been more likely to report having had an abortion, NCI has said.

In his 1999 response to Bliley, Clinton appointee Klausner wrote that, “The only cohort study published before 1996 found a statistically significant negative association (that is, abortion was associated with reduced risk for breast cancer). Of the 18 case-control studies published through 1996, most found no statistically significant association, positive or negative. Most of these studies did not control for known risk factors, or were limited by inadequate or possibly biased reporting of abortions.”

In 1997, a large study using Danish health registries found no association between abortion and breast cancer risk. The 1999 version of the NCI fact sheet called the overall evidence “inconsistent.”

NCI Strengthened Fact Sheet In March

Last March, NCI strengthened the fact sheet, updating it with information from four newer studies and concluding that “it appears that there is no overall association between spontaneous or induced abortion and breast cancer risk.”

As governor of Wisconsin, Thompson signed legislation prohibiting the use of government funds for family planning and pregnancy programs that include abortion-related services. He also has stated that abortions should be illegal except in the cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment.

Groups on both sides of the issue are watching to see how Bush appointee von Eschenbach will respond to the latest salvo.

Following is the text of the NCI “Abortion and Breast Cancer” fact sheet that was removed from the NCI Web site:

The relationship between abortion and breast cancer has been the subject of extensive research. The current body of scientific evidence suggests that women who have had either induced or spontaneous abortions have the same risk as other women for developing breast cancer. Until the mid-1990s, results from studies of breast cancer and induced or spontaneous abortion were inconsistent. Some investigators reported an increase in risk, typically from interview studies of several hundred breast cancer patients compared to other women. Other studies found no evidence of increased risk.

Recent large studies, particularly cohort studies, generally show no association between breast cancer risk and previously recorded spontaneous or induced abortions. In a large-scale epidemiologic study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, researchers compared data from Danish health registries that included 1.5 million women and more than 10,000 cases of breast cancer. The registry data on abortions was collected before the diagnosis of breast cancer was made. After adjusting the data for several established breast cancer risk factors, the authors found that “induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer.” The strengths of this study include its large size, the ability to account for breast cancer risk factors that may differ between women who have had abortions and those who have not, and the availability of information on abortion from registries rather than having to rely on a woman’s self-reported history of abortion.

In 2000 and 2001, additional findings were reported from studies that collected data on abortion history before the breast cancers occurred. These studies showed no increased breast cancer risk in women who had induced abortions. In three of the studies, information on abortion was based on medical records rather than on the woman’s self-report; in another study, interview data was collected before any breast cancer diagnosis. The studies were conducted in different populations of women, and varied in size and the extent of details on established breast cancer risk factors.

Most of the early studies necessarily relied on self-reports of induced abortion, which have been shown to differ between breast cancer patients and other women. Other problems with these studies included small numbers of women, questions of comparability between women with breast cancer and those without, inability to separate induced from spontaneous abortions, and incomplete knowledge of other breast cancer risk factors that may have been related to a woman’s history of abortion.

Even though it appears that there is no overall association between spontaneous or induced abortion and breast cancer risk, it is possible that an increased or decreased risk could exist in small subgroups of women. For example, the large Danish study found a slightly lower breast cancer risk in women with abortions occurring before 7 weeks gestation, and a slightly higher risk in women who had abortions at 7 or more weeks. The National Cancer Institute is currently funding one study looking specifically at the association of induced abortion and the risk of breast cancer. Three other NCI sponsored studies are examining a variety of possible breast cancer risk factors, including induced abortion.

Well-established breast cancer risk factors include age, a family history of breast cancer, an early age at menarche, a late age at menopause, a late age at the time of the first birth of a full-term baby, alcohol consumption, and certain breast conditions. Obesity is a risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Additional information about breast cancer risk factors is found in NCI’s publication What You Need to Know About Breast Cancer.

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN

U.S. Deputy Secretary for Health and Human Services, Andrea Palm, and Sweden's Minister for Health Care, Acko Ankarberg Johansson, signing the agreement. Credit: Joel Apelthun/Government Offices of SwedenThe United States and Sweden signed an agreement to step up collaborations in science and technology by focusing on cancer research.

Login