The Scourge of Women....Abortion and Breast Cancer

Those of us who have been around for a few years, have seen events evolve around health issues that are completely mystifying. One of these is the frequency of abortion and the other is the frequency with which we hear of women being diagnosed with breast cancer of one type or another. As a younger woman, I never heard of abortion, except as an unusual and necessary procedure used to save a woman's life....and I never thought breast cancer was something I had to worry about.

Now both of these scourges are common conversation and medical procedures....and for about twenty years, I have been putting two and two together and finally had decided (for myself) that abortion and breast cancer were linked. Those of my friends who have died of breast cancer had also had abortions when quite young....and so when I read the article printed below from the HUMAN EVENTS WEEKLY NEWSPAPER I felt validated....but more than that I was deeply saddened by the whole turn of events. It became very important to me, then, to share this information with the Hope that it might prevent some frightened, young woman from doing something she would regret to her dying day and beyond.

I am hoping to inform, before it is too late, any woman who is considering abortion....hoping to convince her that 'abortion' is not a free ride'....hoping she will understand there is a high human and Spiritual price to pay in the form of lasting, emotional and other physical suffering and powerful karmic indebtedness. This she is rarely told.

The pro-life movement quietly achieved a significant victory last month that had nothing to do with Congress. For the first time, some success in a lawsuit over the connection between abortion and breast cancer was achieved when the abortionist defendants had to settle.

'Represented by attorney J. P. S., a Pennsylvania teenager had sued abortionist C. B. and the C. H. Women's Center.

She successfully settled her medical malpractice case on October 17, 2003, the eve of trial, in a Philadelphia County Court', announced the Women's Injury Network (WIN). 'Her case is the first medical malpractice lawsuit in the United States to reap a settlement based on a claim over the failure of an abortionist and or clinic to inform a woman of the increased risk of breast cancer due to abortion. The clinic required that the settlement amount be kept confidential'.

The victory was achieved with help from WIN which (helps to) defray the costs of lawsuits filed in connection with abortion. 'The purpose of WIN is to help abortion injured women in their lawsuits and malpractice action', said Susan Maire Gertz , a Cincinnati attorney who is an executive director of the 501(c)3 organization.

'When Sarah (not her real name) was 17 her high school guidance counselor facilitated her second-trimester abortion in New Jersey without her parents' knowledge,' WIN reports.

'Now, 22, Sarah has suffered tremendously in the aftermath of her abortion. While Sarah is not currently diagnosed with breast cancer, it has been shown that an abortion increases the statistical odds of developing breast cancer in two ways: 1) It delays first term pregnancies and 2) It increases the number of cancer-vulnerable breast cells due to estrogen overexposure early in pregnancy.'

Even though Sarah was not physically injured, the defendants in the case, based on their failure to warn Sarah of an abortion breast cancer connection....felt they had to settle.

'Sarah did not suffer with any physical injury' said Gertz. 'She did suffer psychological injury'.

Pennsylvania law requires 'informed consent' before a procedure such as abortion, she said.

increases a young woman's risk of breast cancer, if without the abortion that young woman would have carried her unborn child to term.

'Carrying a child to term and giving birth', said Gertz, 'triggers a protective effect in young women.' 'The earlier in life a woman has a full-term pregnancy,' she said, 'the less likely it is she will have breast cancer later. If she has one by age 18 there is a one-third cut in risk'.

WIN summarizes the science behind the phenomenon. 'Estrogen is connected with the development of most breast cancers. It stimulates the increase of normal and cancer-vulnerable breast cells. An abortion causes a woman to lose the benefit of a third-trimester protection process, which would have neutralized estrogen over-exposure by maturing her breast cells into milk-producing cancer resistant tissue.'

Asked whether abortion directly increases a woman's risk of suffering from breast cancer, Gertz said,

'There is much that is controversial but there is a lot of evidence to support this research.'

Gertz said that the abortionists' rhetoric about a mature woman's making a responsible decision on her own is often a myth.

'Many women have abortions as minors and then suffer psychologically from them later,' she said 'Many of these clinics do not do a good job determining what's going on with these young woman when they come in for this elective procedure. They present the decision as being one made by a woman in private with her doctor.

Sarah was counseled by 'college-age-people making $8 an hour,' she said....'a not unusual situation'.

Gertz said she believed that the resistance to acknowledging the abortion-breast cancer connection will break down. 'I think this will be very similar to the tobacco-lung-cancer connection,' she said.

'In the 1920s studies were coming out about the tobacco-lung cancer link. It was not until the 1960s that warnings were required on cigarette packages.

In 1957 the first study, on Japanese women, showing a link between abortion and breast cancer was published.

Spiritual Instruction today rarely addresses the Issue of 'reaping what we sow' for injury and pain we may inflict on another Soul.

Nor is it taught that for every abortion, as decreed by Karmic Justice, the guilty receive the identical punishment as for murder. This is a very heavy debt which cannot begin to be repaid until the guilty repent, until they are taught to call on the Law of Forgiveness and until they set to work to balance that karmic burden which they themselves have created. This may be the work for the rest of this embodiment or for many embodiments to come. Murder is a very heavy debt!

Strive with all your hearts and Soul to put an end to abortion or be responsible for losing not only your own lives but the Life of the Nation....the Life of all Nations.

As long as abortion continues, calamities of all kind, including war, will continue. Calamities exist to awaken people....and when speaking of abortion, it is to awaken those people who are determined to have their physical pleasure (usually men) and the women who are impregnated accidentally or against their will and who use abortion as the way out of the unwanted pregnancy, birthing and rearing of a child. Few understand that the aborted child may be a Soul the aborting couple or individual may have agreed to sponsor and bring into embodiment on Earth.

Abortion is, among other sad human realities, a broken promise. One that must, in time, be fulfilled or renegotiated at Spiritual levels and fulfilled on Earth.

And then if that is not enough to awaken you to the monstrosity that is the 'abortion beast' please read on....

Fetuses and Pain
April 19th, 2006

Can fetuses feel pain? The question has moved beyond the realm of science into politics, with powerful overtones for the general public’s understanding of abortion itself. Regrettably, politics is trumping science in some quarters.

There have been at least two prominent medical journal articles written in response to fetal pain legislation proposed at the federal and state level over the last year. Senator Sam Brownback and Rep. Chris Smith reintroduced the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act in the Senate and House, which would require doctors to inform women seeking abortion after 20 weeks that the fetus can feel pain, and to provide fetal anesthesia on request. The debate surrounding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, currently under review before the Supreme Court, sharpened public awareness about some of the gruesome methods used to terminate the lives of the unborn in the second and third trimester, which involve collapsing the fetal skull, sucking out the fetal brains, or actual dismemberment.

In spite of appearing in well-known medical journals, these fetal pain articles are simplistic hit pieces specifically created to counter the proposed bills. They contradict good research, as well as the clinical experience and observations of the many physicians who care for these fetuses during fetal surgery or when the fetuses are born prematurely. These articles are reminiscent of the old volumes of Williams Obstetrics still in circulation in the 1980’s that stated that newborns could not feel pain because the spinal cord’s myelin sheath was not fully developed at birth. This mistaken belief allowed newborns to experience circumcision and even heart surgery without pain relief.

There were physicians then, as now, capable of rationalizing obvious screams and signs of distress when newborns and fetuses undergo medical assault. There was little medical literature on the newborn response to pain before the 1980’s. When the ability to measure stress hormones was developed, it was discovered that not only did newborns have similar hormonal responses to pain as older children and adults, but also that procedures on newborns had better outcomes when anesthesia was used.

The study of fetal and neonatal pain is an evolving discipline. In 1987 a landmark article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Pain and its effects on the human neonate and fetus,” forever changed the perception that newborn reaction to pain was just a “reflex” and reformed the practice of omitting anesthesia for newborn medical procedures.

When writing about fetal pain, the classic issue of the mind-brain problem is always present. It is impossible to prove what another being perceives and difficult to ascertain which anatomic structures and physiologic processes are necessary for the experience of pain. The authors who dismiss the possibility of fetal pain not only reiterate this point, but also attempt to relate pain to the brain structures that develop very late in gestation.

The most recent of these articles by Stuart Derbyshire, a lecturer in the School of Psychology of the University of Birmingham with ties to the pro-choice movement, does not contain any new information and merely repeats what is known about neurobiological development. His article in the British Medical Journal states

The subjective experience of pain cannot be inferred from the anatomical developments because these developments do not account for subjectivity and the conscious contents of pain.

Derbyshire also makes an argument about immature circuitry that has been made in the past, and has been used in omitting of anesthesia on newborns and children. The intent of the author, as he himself states in the introduction, is a politically-motivated attempt to influence U.S. legislation.

Another of these studies, “Fetal pain: a systematic multidisciplinary review of the evidence,” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) purports to be an objective review of the literature on fetal neurodevelopment and pain. It is co-authored by a medical student and director of the abortion unit at San Francisco General Hospital, among others. The article states

For fetal surgery, women may receive general anesthesia and/or analgesics intended for placental transfer, and parenteral opioids may be administered to the fetus under direct or sonographic visualization. In these circumstances, administration of anesthesia and analgesia serves purposes unrelated to reduction of fetal pain, including …prevention of fetal hormonal stress responses ….

But, one might ask, why would surgery provoke a stress response on fetus unless it were noxious and painful?

Currently there are several centers in the U.S. doing surgery on second and third trimester fetuses, typically using general anesthesia for both mother and the unborn child for the more invasive procedures. It is clear from a study of fetal surgery that the unborn benefit from sedation and anesthesia. Vivette Glover, a researcher at the Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London has stated that not only third trimester fetuses should have pain relief, but also that

...between 17 and 26 [weeks] it is increasingly possible that it starts to feel something and that abortions done in that period ought to use anesthesia”

Her studies document the beneficial effect of analgesics on the second and third trimester fetus when they are undergoing medical procedures. Moreover, premature babies, who are born at the same gestational ages as those who are aborted, are exquisitely sensitive to painful stimuli, and have many fewer severe complications such as brain hemorrhages if this sensitivity is taken into account.

The foremost authority in fetal and neonatal pain, K.J.S Anand, was a researcher at Harvard when he co-authored the 1987 landmark study on neonatal and fetal pain, and now holds an endowed chair in critical care medicine, pediatrics, anesthesiology, pharmacology, neurobiology and developmental sciences at the University of Arkansas. Anand was critical of the JAMA article, stating that even though it purported to be a “systematic multidisciplinary review,” the authors utilized ambiguous scientific methodology in selecting only the articles that supported their point of view.

Unlike the authors of the articles dismissive of fetal pain, Anand actually takes care of babies at the same gestational ages as the fetuses under discussion. He has done extensive research in the area, authoring dozens of articles, and has no axe to grind in the abortion debate. He has testified before Congressional committees in the debates on the Partial Birth Abortion Act and, more recently, in relation to the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act.

The main point he makes is that pain perception is not a hard-wired system and has multiple layers. He believes that the structures for pain in fetuses are not the same as in older children and adults, and the lack of mature structures should not lead to the conclusion that fetuses do not feel pain. Anand states that pain is an integral part of the nervous system and that fetuses will use whatever structures are available.

The recent reviews in the British Medical Journal and Journal of the American Medical Association were written to deliberately dehumanize second and third trimester unborn human beings, not only to justify aborting them but to deny them even the pain relief that animals are allowed. It is distressing to see these distinguished journals publish articles of limited scientific merit that are motivated solely by attempts to influence legislation.

They illustrate the success of radical abortion advocates in achieving elite positions of influence in medical practice, as well as the collusion or ignorance of journal editors who allow abortion politics to interfere with scientific discourse.

Mary L. Davenport, M.D is a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist and a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Mary L. Davenport, MD

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Further, if it is still possible for you, pray that you may have a family and may again be given the opportunity to sponsor the Soul or Souls you may have aborted, whether through ignorance or fear or from having been misled about the very precious and Sacred Life that may one day grow in your womb.