Jan 15 2010
Cancer risks and double standards
Lorne Gunter has a column about the abortion/breast cancer thing Andrea mentioned earlier. Personally, I’m not all that excited. I find that being afraid of getting breast cancer is not exactly a stellar reason to choose not to abort a pregnancy, and besides, it’s not right to scare people with risks that appear to be (if I understood correctly) fairly small. But there is a but. Two, actually.
One: If there is a reasonably good reason to believe that a procedure might increase certain risks (cancer, depression, etc.) and/or have undesirable side effects, it simply is wrong not to mention those risks and side effects and make sure the patient understands them before performing the procedure. If relevant information is suppressed, the choice can’t be free.
Two: If we decide that low risks of getting cancer are not worth mentioning, then maybe we could lay off the double standard and give smokers a break. As Lorne says:
There is plenty of hypocrisy in this, too. Second-hand smoke increases non-smokers’ risk of lung cancer by less then 20%, even with prolonged, heavy exposure. That’s about half the apparent increased risk of developing breast cancer from having an abortion. Yet governments have passed all sorts of laws shielding the public from secondhand smoke at work, the arena, the mall and the stadium.
I don’t want laws banning abortion. I just want people to stop treating abortion as though it were as simple and consequence-free as brushing your teeth in the morning.
No related posts.
The Russians and Japanese have seen links to abortion and breast cancer for years. Do proper studies and publish them. Let everyone see this is what tax dollars are going to.
Can you send any links to Russian sources? Russia has, I believe, the highest abortion rate in the world, and as a result I’ve always wondered if they have higher rates of breast cancer.
I think the discovery is important because it will reveal just how pro-woman pro-choicers are. If they ignore the information and fail to seriously rethink what they are advocating, then whole pro-choice movement will be exposed for what it really is: a liberation movement for lustful men at the expense of feminine dignity.
“Russia has, I believe, the highest abortion rate in the world, and as a result I’ve always wondered if they have higher rates of breast cancer.”
They also have one of the highest rates of alcoholism, a terrible record on pollution of all types, and a rather poor healthcare system. Good luck trying to isolate the cause, even if their breast cancer rate is high.
This is why any good study has a control group.