Author: Brian Carnell

Upcoming Abortion/Breast Cancer Trial in North Carolina

Women’s eNews recently reported about an upcoming trial in Fargo, North Dakota, in which a judge will be asked to weight the claims and counterclaims about whether or not abortion contributes to increased risk of breast cancer. Not only are anti-abortion advocates relying on junk science, but they’re own claims are deceptive. Rather than urge women not to have abortions, their advice would be more accurate if they said: have a child before you are 22 or face increased risk of breast cancer. Lets look at the epidemiological evidence before moving on to the biology of abortion, pregnancy and breast cancer.

Anti-abortion advocates always cite the same weak epidemiological data. There are quite a few studies showing that women who have induced abortions have increases risk of breast cancer anywhere from 20 to 30 percent higher than women who do not have induced abortions. The proper reaction to such studies is — big deal.

Those are very low increased risk levels for epidemiological studies — they are so low that it is difficult for even well-designed studies to accurately measure such low levels of risk.

This problem is compounded by the fact that most of these studies suffer from a number of flaws. The most obvious of these, which Womens’ eNews does an excellent job of explaining, is recall bias. Women’s who have breast cancer are far more likely to tell researchers that they had an abortion than are women who do not have breast cancer. A Swedish study, for example, found that women with breast cancer were 50 percent more likely to report having had an abortion than were women without breast cancer. Women’s eNews quotes Lancet Oncology editorial as saying that, “healthy control women have been more reluctant to report on a controversial, emotionally charged subject such as induced abortion, than have patients with breast cancer.”

Of course, a major study involving 1.5 million Danish women that relied on medical records rather than women’s recall. The results? No increased risk of breast cancer at all for women who had abortions compared to women who did not.

The claim that abortion increases risk of breast cancer is nonsense. Sort of. An interesting possibility is that some women may in fact increase their risk of breast cancer if they do something that is increasingly common in the Western world — delay the age at which they have their first child.

A recent study of 100,000 French women, for example, found that women who gave birth to their first child in their 30s were 63 percent more likely to develop breast cancer compared to women who gave birth to their first child by the age of 22. The study also found that women who started having periods the earliest also had a higher risk of breast cancer compared to those who began having periods the latest.

Why should the age at which women have their first child or begin menstruating have anything to do with breast cancer? Dr. Steven Austad offers an excellent summary of the link in his book, Why We Age,

Simply put, estrogen and progesterone increase the risk of breast cancer because they cause the cells lining the milk ducts in the breast to divide prolifically during the latter part of the menstrual cycle, when the body is preparing for pregnancy. When no pregnancy occurs, these newly formed cells die, returning the breast to its original condition. During the next cycle, there is another round of cell division and cell death if no pregnancy occurs.

And of course, the more this cycle occurs, the higher the risk of a mutation that might later develop into breast cancer. But once a woman gives birth, this cycle stops — the cells become permanently differentiated and the monthly division/death process comes to a halt.

So women who want to really reduce their risk of breast cancer should have a child as soon as possible after menstruating. Or if you want to do even better than that, go for a hysterectomy — studies have found that young women who have been forced to have hysterectomies for one reason or another have much lower rates of cancer than do healthy women. This applies to men as well — studies of men who have been sterilized find that they have far lower rates of cancer than men who have not.

If there is any increased risk of breast cancer attendant with abortion, it almost certainly is due to the women using abortion to delay the age at which they first give birth. Women who are on birth control or celibate will also experience the same risk, though this writer has to wonder if abortion activists are prepared to warn all childless women that they are endangering their lives. Would they require the Roman Catholic Church to inform childless women who want to become nuns that they are imperiling their health? Somehow I suspect now.

Sources:

Cancer risks for older mothers. The BBC, February 13, 2002.

Judge to Rule on Abortion, Breast Cancer Link. Margaret A. Woodbury, Women’s eNews, February 17, 2002.

Why we age. Steven N. Austad, 1997.

North Carolina Boy Wants Tryout for Girls Softball Team

Josh Godbold is in an odd position — the 8th grader desperately wants to obtain some experience so that he can have a shot at trying out for a high school baseball team next year. There’s only one problem. The middle school Godbold attends has a girl’s softball team but no boy’s baseball team — and the school and state law forbid him from trying out for the team.

Although there are a few hundred female athletes playing on boys teams in North Carolina, where Godbold live, Title IX has never been interpreted by courts to allow boys to participate in girls sports, even in cases such as Godbold’s where the school does not offer an equivalent boys version of a girls sport.

NewsObserver.Com notes that North Carolina relies on a 1994 interpretation of Title IX written by the then-director of the Southeast regional director of the Office for Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education. In language that is purely Orwellian, that interpretation maintains that,

For example, a male may not argue that his opportunities to play on a female volleyball or softball team have previously been limited because his school has never offered these sports for males. … Overall athletic opportunities for males are not limited because, at a particular school, females may be permitted to try out for all teams while males may not try out for female teams.

Godbold’s father, Ricky, offered a much more common sense interpretation of fairness saying, “He’s being discriminated against playing a sport because he’s a boy. If a girl has a chance to try out for any sport at a school, he should, too.”

Laws to alleviate sexual discrimination should, at a minimum, be symmetrical when it comes to sex — if it is wrong to sexually discriminate against women in a given situation, it should also be wrong to sexually discriminate against men in a similar situation. Godbold should be allowed to try out for the softball team.

Source:

Girls’ team only option, boy says. T. Keung Hui, NewsObserver.Com, February 15, 2002.

Does Ralph Nader Oppose Shays-Meehan?

Last week the House of Representatives passed the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill which is probably doomed to die in the Senate (which is a good thing). In a very confusing article, CNSNews.Com quoted Ralph Nader to the effect that he opposes Shays-Meehan, but is this accurate?

Quoting from the CNSNews.Com article,

Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader . . . criticized the Shays-Meehan campaign finance legislation Monday, arguing it would infringe on free speech without ending corruption in the system.

“It’s like trying to stop water from running downhill. It will squirt away and keep running downhill and take our democracy with it,” said Nader Monday at a Washington news conference.

If accurate, this is a bit odd considering that |Public Citizens| was jumping for joy at the passage of Shays-Meehan last week with a headline on its web site in large type reading simply, “We Won!” In a press release, Public Citizen’s |Joan Claybrook| gushed said, “Finally, it seems that enough lawmakers have become as disgusted with the shakedowns as the rest of us. We are truly heartened that soft money may soon be eliminated from federal politics.”

Shays-Meehan is, of course, a) unconstitutional and b) a backdoor to censorship.

The bill would ban all soft money donations, apparently ignoring that fact that in Buckley v. Valejo the Supreme Court already ruled that such a ban was unconstitutional. Perhaps the “reformers” are hoping that the Supreme Court will have a change of heart, but in order to do so it would have to grant federal authority over non-federal activities of political parties and, if anything, the current incarnation of the Supreme Court is moving in the opposite direction.

It is also a bit odd to see liberals, leftists and some conservatives celebrating a bill that includes blatantly unconstitutional censorship. Under Shays-Meehan ads, it is illegal for corporations, labor unions or nonprofits to broadcast ads that mention the name of a candidate for federal office within 60 days of an election. If somebody digs up dirt on a politician after that 60 day threshold, advocates will just have to cross their fingers that the press will make a big stink about it. Many of the ads run by labor unions and the NAACP in 2000 attacking Republicans for their positions on race and labor would have been illegal under this bill.

Shays-Meehan also requires full disclosure about donations from all advocacy groups that run independent ads. So Jesse Helms will be able to have a list of everybody who donated to groups running advertisements criticizing him for his stand on race or AIDS. Yeah, that’s a big improvement.

Interestingly, like all good state restrictions on rights, Shays-Meehan invents a whole new vocabulary for criticizing or praising candidates for office. Rather than speech, ads mentioning candidates would be categorized as “electioneering communications.”

Not that this will ever happen because, again, this portion of Shays-Meehan is clearly unconstitutional and will get the boot from the Supreme Court. But it is still interesting nonetheless to seem some politicians and commentators fall all over themselves to declare this sort of retrograde legislation as “progress” and “reform.”

Sources:

Third parties decry campaign finance bill. Jim Burns, CNSNews.Com, February 19, 2002.

Senators mull campaign finance bill. Las Vegas Sun, February 18, 2002.

Public financing is key to true campaign finance reform. Marie Cocco, New York Newsday, February 14, 2002.

House Vote Heralds New Era; Bush Should Approve Campaign Finance Reform Measure. Joan Claybrook, Public Citizen, press release, February 14, 2002.

Mauritius Presidential Revolving Door

Mauritius — an Indian Ocean island-nation of 1.3 million — has had a real problem lately finding someone willing to stay on as its figurehead president.

Mauritius is a parliamentary democracy that, like a number of such political systems, has a president whose job is largely ceremonial. The president of Mauritius has only two options when legislation reaches is desk — either sign the bill that Parliament has passed or resign from office.

The problem Mauritius is having is that two successive presidents chose to leave office in a space of three days rather than sign an anti-terrorism bill they believe took away too many of the rights of criminal suspects. Among other things, the proposed law extend the length of time that police can hold suspects without formally charging them.

Former Mauritius president Cassam Uteem resigned a few days ago rather than sign the bill. That elevated vice-president Angidi Chettiar to president, but Chettiar also resigned rather than sign the bill into law.

The line of presidential succession then fell on Supreme Court Chief Justice Arianga Pillay — who became the third president of Mauritius in five days (you have to wonder if these people were following New Jersey’s governor soap opera) — who promptly signed the bill.

Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth, who supported the bill, offered up a delicious Orwellian statement,

People have nothing to fear from the prevention of terrorism [act] which will only be applied against real terrorists.

But the Catch-22 is that the law also denies legal representation to suspected terrorists. So if the state accuses someone of being a terrorist, they have no legal recourse to challenge that classification! Prosecutors the world over would love that sort of authority.

Source:

President resigns over terror bill. The BBC, February 18, 2002.

Terror law ‘signed’ in Mauritius. The BBC, February 19, 2002.

Pentagon’s Policy of Lying

Donald Rumsfeld should be fired for simply publicly proposing that the United States might plant false stories in foreign media in order to shape public opinion.

The United States already has a credibility problem in much of the Arab world — witness the editorials in that part of the world blaming Israel for the 9/11 attacks and argued that the United States was covering up Israel’s involvement.

And the best idea Rumsfeld can come up with to improve America’s image and credibility is by floating this idea that the Pentagon might plant fake stories to serve U.S. foreign policy interests?

Then again this does make some sense in light of a story that was barely reported in the United States but was picked up by the European press. Guess who was hired to head up this Information Awareness Office?

John Poindexter. That’s the same John Poindexter who was convicted in 1990 of conspiracy for his role in masterminding the diversion of money from weapons sales to Iran to illegally provide aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. Poindexter’s conviction was overturned in 1991 and George H. Bush pardoned Poindexter in 1992, preventing a retrial.

It’s unbelievable that a major player in the Iran-Contra scandal is back in government heading up an agency within the Pentagon.