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Supreme Court rejects suit on abortion-breast cancer link


WASHINGTON (BP)–The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to consider a suit involving Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s refusal to provide information on a possible link between abortion and breast cancer.

The high court announced without comment Oct. 18 that it would not review a California Supreme Court opinion dismissing a lawsuit by three women against Planned Parenthood and two of its Southern California affiliates.

Agnes Bernardo and two other Californians had asked a lower state court to require Planned Parenthood to inform its abortion clients that there is medical evidence of a link between abortion and breast cancer. The court dismissed the suit and ordered the women to pay more than $77,000 in fees for Planned Parenthood’s attorneys. A California appeals court and the state’s high court upheld the decision.

The head of an organization that educates women on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer called the Supreme Court’s order a “miscarriage of justice.”

“Women have the right to know the truth,” said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer. “The abortion and the cancer fund-raising industries value abortion and making money more than our lives. The writing is on the wall. If society can’t overcome its love affair with abortion, then we’ll see our daughters die from this disease too.”

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer contends abortion not only can place a woman at risk for breast cancer by delaying child bearing but by the changes it produces in her breast cells.

A woman who has never been pregnant has a “network of primitive, immature and cancer-vulnerable breast cells,” according to the ABC Coalition’s Internet site. These breast cells, plus her normal ones, multiply greatly when she becomes pregnant. At about 32 weeks gestation, however, cell multiplication concludes, and a process known as “differentiation” occurs, transforming the cells into “milk-producing tissue,” according to the website.

“If the pregnancy is aborted, the woman is left with more undifferentiated — and therefore cancer-vulnerable cells — than she had before she was pregnant,” the ABC Coalition’s site says. “On the other hand, a full term pregnancy leaves a woman with more milk-producing differentiated cells, which means that she has fewer cancer-vulnerable cells in her breasts than she did before the pregnancy.”

Of 41 published studies, 29 have indicated an increased risk of breast cancer for women who have had abortions, LifeNews.com reported. Sixteen of those studies demonstrate statistical significance, according to the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, LifeNews reported.
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