Originally aired August 2017

Bob is 60, lying in hospital bed, breathing with difficulty after having one cancerous lung removed. He smoked for 40 years.

Laura is 40; she too is lying in a hospital bed, after having a double mastectomy. The breast cancer spread to her lymphatic system and she has been given 6 months to live.

If someone asked you whether smoking caused lung cancer, you would likely reply “yes.” The average person’s risk of contracting lung cancer is 7%and smoking like Bob did increases one’s relative risk to 17%. Yet doctors are certain that smoking caused Bob’s lung cancer.

But what about Laura? Is there a behavior that, like smoking and lung cancer, is so strongly correlated in our minds that we automatically blame it for her condition? A meta-analysis, published in 2014, reveals there is a behavior that dramatically increases a woman’s risk of contracting breast cancer and it happens to be the most common surgery in the world. This study and many more, show a 44% relative risk increase of breast cancer after one abortion and a 76% risk increase after two or more!

If we are willing to believe that smoking causes lung cancer, why is there such silence in the face of overwhelming scientific data demonstrating the link between breast cancer and abortion?