Fraudulently claiming that abortion increases the risk for breast cancer WHILE AT THE SAME TIME cutting funding for breast cancer screenings - that's the anti-choice stance on women's health.

On the other hand pressuring one's daughter to forego HPV vaccination does in fact increase one's daughter's risk for cervical cancer, and this is a very very very very common, even universal, thing Christian parents do.

As someone who doesn't plan on having kids, I could swear I'd heard that breast cancer risks are higher for non-childbearers. And I suppose aborting a fetus is one way to stay a non-childbearer. Is that their screwed-up rationale?

Any tax-exempt group (i.e., churches) that makes demands about where tax dollars should go should immediately lose their tax-exempt status.

If you want to play, you have to pay.

@1 - so spot on.

And Cienna, this phrase in your second-to last sentence ("they're committed to ensuring their theological values trump women's health") is so well-distilled, it should be used in pro-women's health care and choice arguments. At least, I will use it in any discussions I have on this subject from now on. Because that's the clear truth of this shit.

Urgutha, I've been saying that for years and years. Hasn't made a bit of difference. Probably never will.

@7 We still have to keep saying it, 5280. If everyone stops saying it, that's when we know for certain it will never change.

How sad is it that Americans keep electing these theological-value-trumps-women's-health lawmakers. You'd never guess American woman have the right to vote, let alone serve as Senators and Congresspeople. I'd like to know if the 240 Congressional Representatives who voted to repeal Planned Parenthood live in cancer-free districts, and what legislation those districts have to keep them cancer-free.

Or it could be that most American voters and lawmakers are myopic "oh cancer can never happen to me or to a woman I love" twits.

@4,

It wouldn't surprise me if that's the source of any supposed link, but there are many women who get abortions who already have children, and most childless women who have abortions eventually become mothers.

The theory is that the abortion prematurely stops the breast cells from growing and then those cells have a higher of probability of turning into cancer cells. These studies have been debunked time and time again.

It's sad that this is still going on in 2011.

I too would like to thank you for this phrase. (committed to ensuring their theological values trump women's health) I wish I'd had it at my fingertips the other evening when I got into it on Facebook about Planned Parenthood with a young friend of mine.

@15: I couldn't agree more

Another thing that really gets to me about the persistent repetition of this myth is the impact that it has on women who have breast cancer - many of whom may also have had abortions.

A diagnosis of cancer is devastating. With so little known about what causes so many cancers, there is often a search for answers to the question "Why me?" Women with breast cancer who have also had abortions hear these false statements linking the two and are overcome with guilt that their cancer is now "their fault". Not to mention to impact on their loved ones.

Deliberately and knowingly propagating this myth is evil.

"tell pregnant women seeking abortions that fetuses can feel pain" I would like a law that force sellers to do the same whith meat.
"You want some beef? Ok, but you must now thats cows feel pain. Wanna see a picture of the horse you just bought?

@18: Thanks for pissing over a good conversation. Bye!

@20: Shush dear, the grown-ups are talking.