On this page: Dealing with post-abortive guilt in Korea       updated 8/8/2001 
 Silence in the abortion debate and attitudes are changing to allow real health concerns     updated 4/18/2001 
Concerned Women for America Declares NARAL's Campaign A Fight Against Women  3/29/2001
Breast Cancer: Abortion's Hidden Peril in Australia       updated 4/18/2001 

Elsewhere:     Breast Cancer Not Helped by Abortion, says Brind      updated 3/18/2001 
British breast cancer increase blamed on abortion      updated 3/2/2001 
What do you do when "the professionals" deny your grief?    updated 8/8/2001 
Health of the mother doesn't necessarily mean death of the baby.   updated 6/26/2000
Birth is healthier than abortion - data from Finland    updated 7/11/2000
Substance abuse is five times higher after abortion.
New book says abortion harms rape/incest victims.    Updated 6/26/2000

Guilt in Korea

A death is a death, and the oriental women who pray for the fetuses they aborted are well aware of the reality. A hundred women recently participate in a 49-day ceremony to help themselves deal with the guilt they feel. There are several such temples in Korea and the spokesperson for one of them said, 'Women come here to cleanse themselves of the guilt they feel at taking a life.’

‘By spreading our message, parents can teach their children about the dangers of abortion, so they are less likely to commit the same sins as their parents. Eventually, we hope that the number of abortions will be reduced.'

According to the article there are roughly twice the number of abortions as there are babies born, and the rate for young single women is rising.

The full article from the Straits Times (August 5, 2001) can be found at http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,1870,61976,00.html

Silence in the Abortion Debate?
By Frederica Mathewes-Green

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Frederica Mathewes-Green is the author of several books including Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion (Conciliar Press). You can order the book at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1888212071/roevwade26yearof]

Listen. Do you hear the turmoil simmering over the nation's most painfully divisive issue? Do you hear protesters and counter-protesters clashing in the streets? Do you hear opposing sides contending in a battle of rhetoric and passionate will?

Me neither. Pretty quiet out there. Once there were magazine covers devoted to the abortion debate, panels earnestly arguing on TV, politicians sweating out meticulously vacant sound bites.

No longer. The issue is fading away. Alert readers noted a milestone last fall, when Newsweek ran a six-page survey of the presidential candidates' views on various issues, yet did not include a section headed "abortion."

As someone who hopes to see abortion laws and attitudes change, I think this is a good thing. That might sound illogical; you'd think that the time for change is when ideas are in ferment. But there's such a thing as too much ferment. After twenty-something years of debate, nobody was listening anymore. The lines had divided as sharply and simply as at a football game. When the abortion topic came up, people wanted only to know which was the home team, and then they didn't want to think about it anymore.

Who can blame them? It's unpleasant to think about. The procedure itself is appalling and grisly. The women who seek abortions have complicated and tragic stories. The two opinionated sides are locked in a spitting, flailing embrace that any sensible outsider would drive two miles out of his way to avoid. No wonder public attention sidled away. Someone commissioned to figure out how to make people stay interested in the abortion debate would face a real stumper.

So there's a moment of silence. And in the silence some thinking can begin.

This is why the fading of controversy is a good thing. As a pro-choice friend once said, "Every thinking person has to be deeply ambivalent about abortion." As that ambivalence begins to surface it can teach us many things.

For example, it can help us realize how queasy we have always been about abortion. We know what's inside those garbage bags behind the clinic. We've seen our friend's sonogram, so we know.

We can admit, as well, that women don't leave abortion clinics whistling. For years we've had the circular idea that, sure, abortion kills babies, but it's what women want. But we know that it's not what women want, not in any reasonable sense of the word. It's what women choose when they run out of choices. They want it like a cancer patient wants to lose a breast. But this is even worse, because what you lose is your own child.

Time doesn't make this dandy. Abortion hurts women and breaks their hearts. We've seen our friend's face, so we know.

So a moment of silence is a good thing. In the quiet you can hear attitudes that were encased in ice begin to crack free. According to a recent Gallup poll, the balance is shifting on how people identify their beliefs. Between 1995 and 2000 the percentage of people using the "pro-choice" label fell nine points, and those who identified as "pro-life" rose 12 points.

This change is especially notable among the young. While graying Boomer women still run the feminist movement, the same Gallup poll found that young people 18 to 29 were the age group most likely to favor further restrictions on abortion. The average member of Planned Parenthood is almost 10 years older than a member of the National Right to Life Committee. The pro-life movement is becoming a movement of the young.

A year ago I was a guest speaker at a Rock for Life concert. As a graying Boomer ex-feminist myself, I felt a little out of place looking out at a sea of teen and twenty-somethings with tattoos, piercings, and black "Abortion is Mean" T-shirts. This is not your grandfather's pro-life movement.

When I was their age, I thought abortion meant liberation for women. For them, abortion means violence against children. The meaning of abortion is changing, and as it does, minds change as well. It's not surprising that this change would begin with the young. After all, it is their generation that is under attack: anyone under the age of 28 could have been killed this way. A fourth of their generation was.

A moment of silence can only help the pro-life movement, as it enables rethinking to begin. But there's another reason, or rather 40 million of them, that a moment of silence is appropriate. And for that may God have mercy on us all.

Source: Dallas Morning News; March 10, 2001 as quoted in Pro-Life Infonet 4/2/01 (#2) #2396   The Pro-Life Infonet is a daily compilation of pro-life news and information. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe" to: infonet-request@prolifeinfo.org. Infonet is sponsored by Women and Children First (http://www.womenandchildrenfirst.org). For more pro-life info visit http://www.prolifeinfo.org and for questions or additional information email ertelt@prolifeinfo.org

Concerned Women for America Declares NARAL's Campaign A Fight Against Women

Washington, DC -- The following was released today by Concerned Women for America:

Yesterday, NARAL introduced a 10 million-dollar campaign to smear President Bush's pro-life policy and to push abortion, a procedure proven to be dangerous to women's health. "Concerned Women for America is working to protect the lives and well being of women and children," said Wendy Wright, Communications Director for Concerned Women for America. "Any campaign that pushes abortion promotes the pain abortion inflicts on women." Numerous scientific studies confirm women are likely to suffer physical and psychological trauma from an abortion.

Abortion Kills: Dr. David Reardon, Director of the Elliot Institute for Social Sciences, discovered abortion is four times deadlier than childbirth based on a study of statistical information from Finland's National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health.

Sterility: Studies have found that 3 to 5 percent of women are left sterile by abortion.

Mortality Rates: Dr. Reardon showed that women who had an abortion were 252 percent more likely to die within the following year than women who carried to term.

Abortion Breast Cancer Link: A study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found 30 percent increased risk for breast cancer for women who had one or more induced abortions.

Post Abortion Syndrome: A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry reported that of 500 post-abortive women studied, 50 percent showed negative responses to abortion, and 10 percent suffered "serious psychiatric complications."

Suicide: A study published in the British Medical Journal shows post-abortive women are over four times more likely to attempt suicide than women who have given birth.

Even a study conducted by the radical leftist Center for Gender Equality concluded 70 percent of women favor more restrictions on abortions. These women have seen the effects of abortion in the lives of their sisters, daughters and friends. Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest public policy women's organization, expresses its concern over the extreme risks of abortion, and supports President Bush and his health policy to protect women.

Source: Concerned Women for America Press Release; March 29, 2001 as quoted in Pro-Life Infonet 4/2/01 (#2) #2396   The Pro-Life Infonet is a daily compilation of pro-life news and information. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe" to: infonet-request@prolifeinfo.org. Infonet is sponsored by Women and Children First (http://www.womenandchildrenfirst.org). For more pro-life info visit http://www.prolifeinfo.org and for questions or additional information email ertelt@prolifeinfo.org

Breast Cancer: Abortion's Hidden Peril in Australia

By Babette Francis

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Babette Francis is the national and overseas coordinator of the pro-life organization Endeavour Forum Inc.]

If 27 out of 34 mechanics had raised serious doubts about the safety of the brakes on your car, would you let your daughter drive the car? Twenty-seven out of 34 studies worldwide have shown a 30 per cent to 50 per cent increased risk of breast cancer after induced abortion.

Does the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance, which complains about President George W. Bush's refusal to fund abortions through overseas aid, want to unleash the same increasing level of breast cancer in developing countries as is now evident in the developed world?

The abortion-breast cancer hypothesis is now to be tested in a North Dakota court, where a woman is suing an abortion clinic for false advertising in a leaflet that claimed there was no link.

Thirty years after the de facto legalisation of abortion in Australia with the Menhennitt (Victoria, 1969) and Levine (NSW, 1971) rulings, the appalling consequences are becoming evident, with a 40 per cent increase in the incidence of breast cancer between 1987 and 1997 - while other cancers have declined. Medical experts cannot explain the rise. Reluctance to imperil the status of abortion as a "safe" procedure is apparent, because the abortion industry is worth $1 billion a year.

Women should ask whom they can trust: those who make money out of abortion or those who spend their own money on pregnancy support services.

The only study on Australian women shows that abortion is a greater risk factor than a family history of breast cancer. This 1988 finding was concealed for seven years and is still not publicised.

Federal Health Minister Michael Wooldridge and Victoria's Chief Health Officer, John Catford, are among those who claim that the evidence linking abortion and breast cancer is inconclusive - while failing to explain the rise in incidence.

Typical is the handout to clinicians at Peter MacCallum hospital by Robert Burton, director of the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria, which states: "Current epidemiological evidence does not allow any definitive statements on the association between breast cancer and spontaneous or induced abortion." The handout argues there is no plausible carcinogenesis in abortion.

There is no carcinogenesis either in early puberty, late menopause, late first birth, obesity or being childless, but these are all accepted as risk factors for breast cancer. What all have in common is greater cumulative exposure to oestrogen. The same factor operates in pregnancy - breast cells multiply but do not stabilise into milk-producing cells until the last few weeks of a full-term pregnancy. After abortion, breast cells are left vulnerable to carcinogenesis. Oestrogen is a tumor promoter.

Professor Burton has since acknowledged that second-trimester abortions and very premature births increase the risk of breast cancer. He wrote: "I regard the (Melbye) study as providing good, but obviously not perfect, data on a lack of risk for breast cancer and an induced first-trimester abortion. You will also note that I do not believe that this lack of risk extends to second-trimester abortions and very premature births."

Acknowledging breast cancer risk in double negatives makes it obscure to the public.

Professor Burton has also admitted that delayed first full-term pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer.

This leaves health departments with the responsibility of telling pregnant teenagers, hustled off to abortion clinics by distraught parents or boyfriends, that while their pregnancy may be a social problem, it is not a biological one and, carried to term, gives substantial protection against a major killer.

Women cannot give informed consent if they are not told about a risk that 27 out of 34 studies shows does exist. Breast cancer is not a minor side-effect - it is potentially fatal and always mutilating. Several states in the US have mandatory warnings about the increased risk of breast cancer to women presenting for abortion. Australian women deserve no less. They could at least be warned that if they have had an abortion, they need to be extra vigilant about breast examinations and mammograms.

Many risk factors are unavoidable, but women can avoid abortions. Sadly, many continue to suffer, and some die, unnecessarily, while anti-cancer organisations fail to give clear advice that women could reduce their breast cancer risk by carrying their babies to term and breastfeeding them.

Source: The Age (Australia); April 12, 2001 Pro-Life Infonet 4/12/01 #2405   The Pro-Life Infonet is a daily compilation of pro-life news and information. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe" to: infonet-request@prolifeinfo.org. Infonet is sponsored by Women and Children First (http://www.womenandchildrenfirst.org). For more pro-life info visit http://www.prolifeinfo.org and for questions or additional information email ertelt@prolifeinfo.org