To The Joint Legislative Committee On Health Care

My name is Maria Parker. I am the Associate Director of Public Policy of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, which represents the four Roman Catholic Dioceses in the Commonwealth.

I am here today to testify in favor of House Bill 815 and Senate Bill 609. These are identical versions of a bill that would protect women by requiring doctors performing abortions to give women a written summary of current information linking abortion to breast cancer. The bill also directs the doctors to encourage each woman obtaining an abortion to learn more about when she should begin routine or baseline mammograms.

At one level, this whole subject has been a battle of the experts and researchers. To date, at least 27 of 35 scientific studies have reported a connection between obtaining an abortion and an increased risk of getting breast cancer.[1] On one hand, the growing body of medical evidence prompted the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Britain, the first medical organization in the world to do so, to issue a warning last year that this evidence "could not be disregarded."[2] On the other hand, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (the largest abortion provider in this country) asserts, and I quote: "Cancer researchers at the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and major universities say that the most reliable studies show no increased risk, and they consider the entire body of research inconclusive", end of quote.[3]

It all depends, I think, on what the words "reliable" and "inconclusive" mean. Shouldn’t women be given the information to decide for themselves? After all, it’s their lives that are at stake. An abortion decision will be the most important decision a woman will ever make, given that abortion takes the life of her child and risks the very life of the woman. We all know that breast cancer is not a minor side-effect—it can be fatal to women. Why not give women the right to know the facts and to judge for themselves?

In a major article published in the Wisconsin University Law Review, John Kindley makes a compelling case that there is at least a preponderance of scientific evidence supporting the abortion-breast cancer link.[4] Kindley concludes that physicians therefore have a legal duty to disclose this information, and that the failure to do so exposes doctors to malpractice liability. Ultimately, it’s not going to matter what Planned Parenthood or even members of this committee think about the sufficiency of the evidence. The proof of risk is already serious enough to raise substantial legal problems for those who refuse to give women the opportunity to weigh the risks themselves. For example, a New Jersey doctor faces what is believed to be the first lawsuit of its kind brought last year by a 19 year old Pennsylvania woman. The woman claims that she was not informed about the abortion breast cancer studies and would not have consented to an abortion if she had been given the information.[5]

Abortion advocates argue that, and I again quote: "to force this [evidence] on women is just cruel." I disagree entirely.[6] It empowers women. Listen to what Dr. Stuart Donnan, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health and who identified himself as pro-choice, had to say in 1996:

Some . . . may consider that the calculations . . . of possible numbers of breast cancers following—conceivably caused by—induced abortion is alarmist. . . . . However, in the light of recent unease about appropriate but open communication of risks associated with oral contraceptive pills, it will surely be agreed that open discussion of risks is vital and must include the people—in this case the women—concerned. I believe that if you take a view (as I do), which is often called "pro-choice," you need at the same time to have a view which might be called "pro-information" without excessive paternalistic censorship (or interpretation) of the data.[7]

This committee is concerned not only with the health choices of individuals, but also must consider those major health issues affecting the general welfare. David Weldon, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a physician, advised his congressional colleagues recently that "As legislators, we . . . have an ethical responsibility that we are not facilitating or promoting a procedure which poses a significant health risk to women. Approximately 1.5 million abortions [a year] are performed in the United States, making the prospect of increased breast cancer cases a health care time bomb."[8]