Don’t ignore cancer link to birth control

There is an important, missing component in the debate regarding the Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring taxpayers/consumers to pay for contraceptives, abortifacient (abortion-causing) drugs and sterilizations, despite their religious beliefs or conscience. The abortion lobby inaccurately calls this “preventive care,” although pregnancy is a natural process, not a disease. An honest definition of preventive care would be to provide women with some important health information.

First, the World Health Organization classified estrogen-progestagen oral contraceptives (the birth control pill) as a Group 1 carcinogen. It’s on the same list with asbestos and tobacco. The WHO said it raises risk for cancers of the breast, liver and cervix. Although it decreases the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers, cancer groups expect 27,000 more American women will die in 2012 from cancers of the breast, liver and cervix than will die from cancers of the ovaries and endometrium. It would not make sense for doctors to advise women to take a carcinogen to prevent cancer, although some still do.

Second, two recent studies have strongly linked use of oral contraceptives with a deadly, treatment-resistant form of breast cancer called “triple-negative breast cancer.” The latter study found that women who started using oral contraceptives before age 18 multiplied their risk of TNBC by 6.4 times. TNBC occurs most often among African-Americans and women under age 50.

Third, a 2006 meta-analysis in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings reported a 44 percent increased risk of premenopausal breast cancer among women who started using oral contraceptives before first full-term pregnancy.

Finally, experts agree that the best way to reduce breast cancer risk is by having more children, starting at a younger age, and breast-feeding them more.

Karen Malec

Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer

Hoffman Estates