In early December 2001, the anti-abortion group LIFE released the results of an independent study that claimed to find overwhelming evidence that abortion contributes to breast cancer. Upon closer examination, however, this study does not offer any new information.
If the study’s supporters are to be believed, the research by Populations and Pensions Research Institute is a smoking gun that abortion and breast cancer are causally related. Researcher Patrick Carroll told the BBC, “There is no doubt there is a causal relationship.” Carrol want on to claim that fully half of new breast cancer cases in Great Britain were directly attributable to abortion.
But the study’s methodology does not warrant such claims. All the researchers here did was compare breast cancer rates and abortion rates for Great Britain, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic. They found an association — namely that both the abortion rate and the breast cancer rate have been rising, and conclude that, therefore, the increase in the abortion rate is responsible for the increase in the breast cancer rate.
This is completely specious reasoning — correlation is not causation, no matter how much Carroll and others would like to think it is.
Sources:
Anger over abortion cancer study. The BBC, December 5, 2001.
Abortion link to rise in breast cancer. Michelle Nichols, The Scotsman (UK), December 5, 2001.