Biased Media Slam Trump Nominee Who Says Abortion's Linked With Cancer

Maureen Collins | May 26, 2017
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Editor’s Note: 5/26/2022 The National Cancer Institute says on its website: “The relationship between induced and spontaneous abortion and breast cancer has been the subject of extensive research beginning in the late 1950s. … The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.” In 2003, the institute held a workshop that brought together “over 100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer risk.” A summary of their conclusions published on the institute’s website says: “They concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.” The “Epidemiologic Findings” of this workshop concluded that: “Early age at first term birth is related to lifetime decrease in breast cancer risk. … A nulliparous woman [one who has not borne a child] has approximately the same risk as a woman with a first term birth around age 30. … Induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk. Recognized spontaneous abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk. Long duration of lactation provides a small additional reduction in breast cancer risk after consideration of age at and number of term pregnancies. Pregnancy-induced hypertension is associated with decreased breast cancer risk.”

Charmaine Yoest, the former president of Americans United for Life and President Donald Trump's nominee for assistant secretary of public affairs for Department of Health and Human Services, holds a perfectly reasonable position about the link between abortion and breast cancer. So, of course, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several other left-leaning outlets have run hit pieces on her this week.

A breast cancer survivor herself, Yoest has argued (as many others have) that having an abortion may increase a woman’s chances of breast cancer.

But writers at the NYT and the Post scoff at this claim as unscientific, saying it's based on an allegedly outdated study from 1996, in which researchers combined all the available studies and concluded that abortion upped a woman’s chances of breast cancer by as much as 30 percent.

Michelle Ye Hee Lee from the Washington Post thinks it is ridiculous to trust this statistic. Under the ominous subtitle “The Facts,”  Ye Hee Lee writes that, “Subsequent, methodologically sound studies consistently showed no association between induced abortion...and increased breast cancer risks.” She does not mention, of course, that of the 72 studies done on the topic, 21 have concluded that there is a significant link between abortion and breast cancer.

Then there is Emily Bazelon at the New York Times, who cannot fathom that Yoest thinks abortion hurts women. Bazelon dismisses the abortion and breast cancer link because it has been “decisively” rejected by organizations such as the American Cancer Society “based on an abundance of research.”

However, Bazelon does not comment on the “abundance” of studies that support Yoest’s claim.

Pro-abortion liberals claim to be on the side of science, and that anyone who disagrees -- regardless of whether they are actual scientists -- are wrong. But this narrative works the opposite way too: any study must conclude that abortion is 100 percent safe and right or it is not scientific.  

It makes sense that the progressive website Slate was also aghast at Yoest’s claim that “Scientists are under the control of the abortion lobby." Yet, Slate sees no irony their own dismissal of the studies Yoest and other pro-lifers cite as a furtherance of their own, pro-abortion agenda.

While the link between abortion and breast cancer is still up for debate, there are many scientific studies to support Charmaine Yoest’s claim. It is pretty unscientific to call a certain question “decided” while there is clearly still disagreement in the medical community -- a disagreement that could be putting millions of women at risk.

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