Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 30, 1993 TAG: 9307300060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BONNIE V. WINSTON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Farris said he wants the Virginia General Assembly to hold hearings on the medical evidence. Lawmakers then can decide whether to draft a statute requiring doctors to inform women that some experts say abortion dramatically increases their risk of breast cancer, Farris said.
Virginia already has a general law requiring doctors to outline health risks to women before performing an abortion.
Farris, a political novice whose staunch anti-abortion stance has been portrayed as extreme by Democrats, discounted the views of medical experts who have called the abortion-breast cancer research "inconsistent."
Doctors from the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals in Richmond and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., said that Farris' claims belong in the medical arena and not in a campaign for statewide office.
"Making this an abortion issue is confusing. This is really a women's issue," said Dr. Christopher E. Desch, director of cancer outreach and control at MCV's Massey Cancer Center.
"Without proof, without data, all this will do is embarrass the candidate . . . and scare women," Desch said. "If he wants to do something, he should work at the national level to get the National Cancer Institute or the Centers for Disease Control to look at this."
Farris' Democratic opponent, incumbent Donald Beyer, said he is "very skeptical of government interfering" with the doctor-patient relationship, especially if it dictates that doctors inform patients of "unreliable, unreplicated" study results.
Beyer said the incidence of breast cancer in women who have had abortions may relate more to their putting off child-bearing until a later age, one of the risk factors for breast cancer that is generally accepted by the medical community.
"It is a political extreme to impose one's religious views on all women. Grabbing at straws like this is an example of that," Beyer said.
"The only extremist in this situation is the person who wants to hide the evidence," Farris said.
Denying that his sole motivation is to stop abortions, Farris conceded that informing women of a breast cancer link may push some away from having an abortion. He said he is pushing the issue both because "I don't like killing babies and because I don't want women to die from breast cancer."
Farris also was angered by Beyer's remarks, saying Beyer was "making fun" of his religion.
"No religious doctrine is on the table here," Farris said. "That's religious bigotry."
After Farris told reporters last week that a woman's chance of getting breast cancer increases 90 percent after having an abortion, and up to 300 percent after multiple abortions, his campaign provided about 20 studies showing at least a 50 percent increase in breast cancer among women who had had abortions.
The campaign also offered in support Dr. Joel L. Brind, a 10-year breast cancer researcher with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, physiology and immunology, who calls the silence of the medical community a "conspiracy."
Brind, who has done primary research on the effects of hormones on breast tissue, is working on an analysis of all the abortion-breast cancer data worldwide. He said there is enough "consistent evidence" that Farris "should raise this as an issue."
Major medical journals in the United States are "unabashedly pro-abortion" and refuse to publish many of the studies, Brind said.
Desch and Dr. Louise A. Brinton, chief of the environmental studies unit at the NIH's National Cancer Institute, said more investigation into the possible link is needed. But studies done to date have used small samples of women and have gotten inconsistent and inconclusive results, both said.
Because abortion was legalized only 20 years ago, "we are only now getting to the stage where we can adequately sample the group," Brinton said.
She said the National Cancer Institute soon will release its study on breast cancer and abortion, while the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is about to launch its own five-year look into the link.
She also noted that some anti-abortion groups are trying to use the same issue to block the confirmation of Dr. Jocelyn Elders as the U.S. surgeon general.
"It is an erroneous use of studies," Brinton said. "In a political setting, you need to rely on the truth, and that is not the truth."
"The bottom line is to let women know the risk associated with abortion," Farris said.
A Virginia law enacted in 1979 requires doctors to obtain a woman's informed, written consent before performing an abortion.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB