In 2003 Dr Louise Brinton, the US National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Chief of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, served as chairperson at an NCI workshop to assess whether abortion was implicated as a breast cancer risk. In the opinion of "over 100 of the world's leading experts", said the subsequent NCI report, including Dr Brinton, the answer was an emphatic no.

But now Dr Brinton has recently published research, in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, which concluded the risk of triple-negative breast cancer rises 40 per cent if a woman has had an abortion. This caused the Irish Medical News to ask: is it fair to link cancer to abortion? They asked Dr Seán Ó Domhnaill to reply.

YES

Dr Seán Ó Domhnaill, consultant psychiatrist

"The importance of the fact that US National Cancer Institute researcher Dr Louise Brinton, the chief organiser of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) workshop in 2003 that persuaded women that "abortion is not associated with increased breast cancer risk" (April 2009) has reversed her position and now admits that abortion and oral contraceptives raise breast cancer risks, cannot be over-emphasised.
Dr Brinton's admission that abortion raises breast cancer risk by 40 per cent per cent is no surprise to those on the anti-abortion side who have repeatedly stated that abortion is bad medicine; that surgical or medical intervention is inappropriate for psycho-social stress that could be better relieved by more compassionate, albeit time-consuming, intervention.

We should be willing to give that time, rather than jump to the supposed "quick fix" that leaves one dead and one wounded, the latter physically, psychologically and quite often spiritually. The importance of the spiritual element cannot be ignored in a society such as ours, where women often suffer tremendous spiritual angst as a result of their abortions.

The "anniversary reaction", where women have attempted to take their lives on the anniversary of their abortions, or the anniversaries of the baby's expected date of delivery, is well-recognised. I have been working in the area of post-abortion counselling since 1998, when I returned from the Channel Islands where I first encountered post-abortion psychological sequelae.

In 2003, I published and distributed 30,000 copies of "Women Have a Right to Know", having been commissioned to write this report by the Mother and Child Campaign (now the Life Institute). My research horrified me when I realised that there were over 33 epidemiological studies worldwide at that time, of which 27 showed a higher risk of breast cancer in women who underwent induced abortion.

This risk does not follow natural miscarriage, probably due to the fact that the body's own endocrine system is prepared for the loss of the pregnancy by the changes in the reproductive hormones pre-miscarriage, unlike the abrupt endocrine "shock" which occurs in induced abortion. In January 2002, an Australian woman reached an out-of-court settlement with an abortionist whom she had sued for failing to inform her about the research linking abortion to breast cancer.

This was a precedent. The award (which included substantial damages for psychological distress) was settled out of court when it was revealed that the abortionist was fully aware of the cancer link.

Abortion is a serious issue, as is cancer. My research in 2003 found 34 peer-reviewed articles linking abortion and breast cancer and 10 articles linking abortion with cervical, ovarian, and rectal cancer. Women have the right to know."

A member of the (very small) grouping Doctors for Choice, GP Juliet Bressan argued against Dr Ó Domhnaill. She skated over Dr Brinton's finding and accused doctors who believed that induced abortion was a factor in breast cancer of not understanding statistics.

Read her full reply here: http://www.imn.ie/index.php/view/3998-is-breast-cancer-linked-to-abortion

http://www.thelifeinstitute.net/opinion-blog/is-breast-cancer-linked-to-abortion/