Our GAP sign highlights the fact that Komen is likely causing breast cancer deaths by supporting the abortion industry. An estimated 8,000 women die every year from abortion-related breast cancer.

Now that the Susan G. Komen Foundation is again funding the nation’s largest abortion provider, CBR is exposing the link between abortion and breast cancer.  What better venue than Komen for the Cure races in cities across the country?

CBR Maryland attended Komen’s Race for the Cure in Philadelphia just last weekend.

For more information on the statistical link between abortion and breast cancer, click here.  An estimated 8.000 women die from abortion-related breast cancer every year (source).

More photos from the Komen for the Cure race in Philadelphia here.

People passed our signs 3 times: coming to the race from the parking area, at the start line, and at the finish line.

Cristina Odone of The Telegraph

Blogging for The Telegraph, Cristina Odone wrote that CBR’s Gregg Cunningham got the better of BBC’s John Humphrys in their recent interview (reported here).

Professional pro-aborts learned not to debate us a long time ago — facts and logic make them look silly and they know it — but sometimes the amateurs think besting us will be easy.  This is the mistake that Humphrys made with Cunningham, and Odone pounced on it.  She wrote, in part:

Things, however, didn’t go according to plan.  Despite John Humphrys’s grilling – Humphrys brought up a comparison Cunningham had apparently made of abortion with the Holocaust – Cunningham struck a few blows himself. Yes, he was using horrific images to raise awareness of abortion – but abortion is horrific; and William Wilberforce, in his campaign to end slavery, also used disturbing images of slavery to bring home to the British public what British colonials were doing in the West Indies.

Commenters also chimed in.  Commenter Fallada wrote:

It was plain to me that, as Christina Odone suggests, Humphrys thought Cunningham would be easy prey – easily exposed as a nutcase – but Cunningham was quietly insistent, articulate, agile and sensible. In reaction, Humphrys, it seemed to me, grew increasingly irritated and slightly hysterical.  Cunningham proved one of the most effective interviewees in dealing with Humphrys that I have heard in a very long time while Humphrys sounded partisan.

Commenter JessicaHof wrote:

I, too, wondered at the idea of showing pictures, but Cunningham’s argument about Wilberforce showing pictures of the conditions in which slaves were kept seemed compelling. Slave-owners and their lobbyists, who argued that slaves were not fully human, found that one hard to support when people saw that they were.  I thought Humphrys ended up sounding shrill and somewhat indignant. How dare someone come on the programme and say something which so defied the liberal consensus, and how dare he do so in such a manner.  I have to say that Cunningham made me think again about my own attitude, which has tended to be somewhat liberal.

Entire column (including comments) here.

Tennessee Rep. John J. DeBerry, Jr., D-Memphis

From the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA):

On Friday, May 11, Governor Bill Haslam signed the new Tennessee sex education bill (SB 3310) into law. The bill was initiated in large part due to parental outrage over explicit sex education taught in Nashville schools. The new law sets a standard for other states to follow.  It places a clear priority on sexual risk avoidance abstinence education. The law also puts provisions in place that will prohibit explicit sex education from being implemented in classrooms  -- a first for any state. It also empowers parents to protect their children from harmful sex education through their right to pursue legal options should a school ignore the protective provisions of the law.

The sex education bill received broad bipartisan support in the Legislature. Tennessee Legislator, Rep. John DeBerry (D-Memphis) earned an enthusiastic standing ovation for his straight talking defense of the bill which  encourages youth to choose healthy behaviors.

Read the story on “gateway sexual behavior” here.  Be sure to read the entire story.  Opponents tried to lampoon the bill, saying it banned hugging and holding hands, but Rep. DeBerry (D-Memphis) stood up to set the record straight.  Watch Rep. DeBerry’s speech in the Tennessee Legislature here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRBUL8zV03Q

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Among all the pro-abortion myths, the assertion that the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link has been “disproven” is among the easiest to debunk.  But you have to have your references with you.  And to really close the sale, you have to understand some basic statistics.

Three factors make this discussion more complex:

1. Statistical analysis doesn’t “prove” anything, it only manages uncertainty.  An analysis that “shows a statistically significant relationship” between abortion and breast cancer doesn’t definitively prove a relationship exists, and a study that “fails to show a statistically significant relationship” certainly doesn’t prove that it doesn’t exist.  There is a big difference between failing to find something and proving that it’s not there.
2. Even if you find an independent statistical relationship in the data, that statistical link doesn’t prove that a causality link exists.  So even if the statistical link were undisputable, it would be wrong for us to say that abortion definitely causes breast cancer until the biological causal mechanism is established.  However, plausible causal mechanisms have been proposed.
3. The effect of delaying childbirth is also a risk factor.  Because abortion, by its very nature, causes a delay in childbirth, it is easy to see  how some might believe that the delayed-childbirth effect is the real culprit, and abortion is no more a risk factor than simply failing to get pregnant.  However, you need to know that the abortion effect has been measured independently of the delayed-childbearing effect.
4. The most self-assured antagonists in your audience are sometimes the ones who don’t have a clue about statistical analysis.  All they know is the party line, but they are quick to tell you how smart they are and how stupid you are. However, others in your audience are listening, and they are the ones you are patiently trying to reach.  Reach them with reason, not anger.

To paraphrase Alexander Pope, a little knowledge of statistics is a dangerous thing.  I had a boss once who had taken one class in statistics, and his statistical conclusions were downright horrific.  I got a PhD minor in experimental statistics, and the more I learned about it, the more I learned to be careful.  Therefore, I actually had one of my long-time-ago statistics professors review this post.

Here’s how to respond to the assertion that the ABC link has been “disproven”:

Step 1.  Show your audience a recent study that shows the statistical link; it helps if the paper is co-authored by a person who has previously denied the link.  Here is a paper that is important for two reasons: (a) it is recent and (b) it was co-authored by Dr. Louise Brinton, the chairperson of the 2003 NCI workshop that declared abortion not to be a risk factor for breast cancer.   This paper, which she co-authored in 2009, reported that abortion was indeed associated with a 40% increase in cancer risk.  (See the occurrence ratio of 1.4 reported for abortion at bottom of page 1158.)

The increase in cancer risk measured in this study was statistically significant at the 95% level, which means that there is less than a 5% probability of a “false positive.”   (A false positive, in this case, would mean that you detected a difference in cancer risk due to abortion that doesn’t actually exist, a difference that is based solely on random sampling error.)

Keep in mind that if there is no difference in cancer risk due to abortion, and you test at the 95% level of confidence, you will detect the non-existent difference (i.e., get a false positive) 5% of the time, or 1 time in 20, based solely on random sampling error.  Because of the possibility of false positives, we would want to see more studies.

Step 2.  Show your audience a compilation of studies.  The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (BCPI) has assembled a list of 68 studies that tested for the link.  Nearly half of the studies cited (31 of 68) found a statistically significant increase in cancer risk associated with abortion.  In other words, in 31 studies, the data shows that the abortion group has a higher risk than the non-abortion group.  That’s still not enough to prove causality, but we can be confident that the statistical link is real.

When you produce this list for your audience, be sure to disclose that the BCPI has a pro-life agenda, and that your audience should read the studies and decide for themselves.  I say to students, “Don’t let people with opinions, including me, tell you what to believe; you have to do the research yourself.”

The other 37 studies ”fail to show that the cancer risk is elevated due to abortion.”  But ”failing to show” an elevated risk is not equivalent to “proving” that there is no elevated risk.  A statistical analysis can’t prove that the risk is exactly the same, it can only “fail to show” that the risk is elevated.  Until you understand this point, do not attempt to explain Steps 3 and 4, just go directly to the Conclusion (below).

Step 3 (optional).  Explain the concepts of statistical significance, false positives and false negatives.  This is tricky to explain, but data can “show that the cancer risk due to abortion is elevated at a statistically significant level,” or they can ”fail to show that the cancer risk is elevated at a statistically significant level,” but the data can never show that the cancer risk is not at all elevated.

Before a researcher performs the statistical test, he must first set the “level of significance” for that test, usually 1%, 5% or 10%. This is the level of “false positives” he is willing to accept. In other words, if he sets the level of significance at 5% (alpha=0.05), then that means if he finds a difference between the “control” group and the “test” group (e.g., between the non-abortion group and the abortion group) that is statistically significant, he can be 95% sure that the difference actually exists and is not due to random sampling error. There is only a 5% chance that he will measure a positive difference that isn’t really there (i.e., a false positive).

But the lower he sets the likelihood of false positives, the greater the opportunity for false negatives (i.e., stating “no difference” when one exists). If his data shows an increase in risk within the abortion group, but he can be only 89% confident that the measured increase is real and not due to random sampling error, he still has to report that the elevated risk from abortion is “not statistically significant at the 95% level.”  He might be 89% sure, but he’s not 95% sure, so he has to report “no difference.” Consequently, a failure to find a statistically significant risk elevation is not proof that the risk isn’t elevated.  It might only mean that he does not have enough data to confirm that the measured risk elevation is “statistically significant.”

Step 4 (optional).  Explain that the difference between the groups is difficult to show at a statistically significant level because the difference is not all that big.  The ambient cancer risk among women is about 10%.  Abortion appears to increase the risk of breast cancer to about 13% or 14%, which is a 30% or 40% increase in cancer risk.  A difference of only 3 or 4% is difficult to measure statistically—you need a large dataset to do it—but it’s an important difference to the estimated 300,000 or 400,000 women who got cancer because of their abortions.

An abortion-related increase in cancer risk from 10% to only 13% is enough to kill more than 300,000 deaths since Roe (source), which is about 8,000 women per year.  But because measuring an increase of this magnitude in an individual study is difficult, the opportunity for false negatives is high, which could explain why some of the studies in the BCPI compilation fail to find the increase.

Conclusions. 

1. We can never be fairly criticized for saying that abortion is a possible risk factor for breast cancer.  According to a recent compilation, 31 of 68 studies  have shown a statistical relationship, even if the causal mechanisms have not been established.
2. The accusation that the ABC link has been “proven” false is made by people who don’t understand how science and statistics work.  The lower a researcher establishes the likelihood of a false positive (normally 1%, 5%, or 10%), the greater the opportunity for a false negative (i.e., stating “no difference” when one exists).
3. There are many in the medical community who believe there is more evidence for the link than against it.

More Information:

• Coalition on Abortion / Breast Cancer
• Breast Cancer Prevention Institute

CBR Volunteer Bryan McKinney speaks to a group of students.

Day 1 of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) at Ohio State University (OSU) is in the books!  Great day with awesome opportunities to share the pro-life message.  Several students told us that they could not rebut our arguments and would seriously consider changing their minds.

One international student said he wanted to go back to his homeland and change minds there  (name of country withheld intentionally).

Many pro-life students and faculty members approached us and thanked us for coming!

Awesome day!  More to come!

John Jakubczyk

A recent article in Crisis Magazine suggested it was time to change pro-life tactics.  Not sure how useful the article is; of the 3.3 points (out of 4) that he got correct, most of it has been well-known to pro-life activists for a long time.  The best part about the article was the appended comment by John J. Jakubczyk of Arizona.  [Question: How do you say "Jakubczyk"?  Answer: With your mouth.]

Anyway, I’m extracting part of his comment here:

It is true that most people do not enjoy hearing about abortion, be they pro-life or “pro-choice.”  There is a simple reason for this and it applies to the average church goer all the way to presidential candidates: Once you seriously realize that we are allowing the killing of children every day in this country AND that despite this knowledge we are going about our lives as if nothing is wrong, we are all culpable unless we do something to stop it. And once we realize that, there is no going back. You can NEVER walk away.  So we close our eyes and cover our ears and pretend … pretend that those pro-lifers are extremists, pretend that it is just another “ministry,” pretend that their tactics won’t work and therefore I do not need to get involved. We get mad when someone “guilts” us into doing something and we resent them, so we call them zealots or other names.  We tell ourselves that we are not like them. And we justify our inaction.

Fortunately many of our children, now grown, abortion survivors, reject this complacency. They want to end the killing. They see the urgency and demand action now. Fortunately there are new leaders who are not willing to go slow, but want to end the killing NOW. They have great drive. It is my prayer that their intensity,  their sense of urgency, combined with the wisdom of their elders will forge a new and stronger pro-life movement where their will be no compromise on the principles of protecting all life, that there will be a better use of media to reach the public and SELL the pro-life message, and that there will be a new collaboration among pro-life organizations to defeat the abortion industry on their own turf … by offering women REAL  health care for them and their babies, and by exposing the abortion industry’s dark and deviant side to the American public.

Manufactured debate over contraception really about money for the abortion industry.

I recently participated in a “Dialogue and Difference”  event at George Mason University.  This is a regular program designed to stimulate discussion on the issues of the day, sponsored by the GMU School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.  Coming on the heals of the Sandra Fluke controversy, this event would focus on “Reproductive Rights.”

I must have done OK, because one of the attendees told GMU Students for Life President Anna Maher, “At first I thought, ‘How dare they get a man to talk about reproductive rights?’  But then I found myself agreeing with everything he said.”

After an opening statement by me and the other member of the panel, we were asked all the standard abortion questions.  It was a thoughtful crowed, not given to fits of rage.  This event has a rule against visual aids, so I was unable to show abortion video in my opening remarks.  No worries on that point, because we would be doing GAP at GMU a week later!  My opening remarks follow:

Opening Statement

Introduction.  Thank you for your interest in this topic, and for the opportunity to speak with you now and answer your questions later this hour. We often talk about being on “sides” in the ongoing debate about abortion, and we do have different perspectives. But I’d like to hope that we are all on the same side; all of us here tonight want to live justly with respect to our fellow man. We disagree about who constitutes our fellow man and who does not.

Let me start out by encouraging you never to believe anything I tell you. You can’t know if either of us has his facts straight or not, unless you check it out for yourself. You can’t know if I’ve left out important facts. My conclusions might be flawed. Even if I have plausible arguments, perhaps the other “side” has decisive ones. You must do your own research and ask hard questions of both sides.

Pro-Choice?  First, let’s talk about the word “choice.”  The debate about abortion is often framed as a debate over “choice.” Some on the other side even call us “anti-choice.” That’s very clever, because, speaking for myself, I am generally more pro-choice than most abortion advocates.

For example, I believe you should have the choice whether to use contraception or not.  My employer does not take a position on the morality of contraceptives, but I don’t know any pro-lifer who endorses legal restrictions on access to contraception, as long as it does not kill another human being. And, if you want to buy contraceptives for your neighbor, you should certainly have that right. But unlike most on the extreme left, I believe Big Government shouldn’t force you to buy contraceptives (or abortions) for your neighbors if you don’t want to.

Many on the far left believe that if you are in medical school or nursing school, you should be forced to participate in abortions as a condition of getting your medical degree. Your should have no conscience protections. How is that “pro-choice”?

Unlike many on the left, I think you should be able to choose what kind of medical insurance you buy and sell. Unlike the current Administration, I believe Big Government should not decide whether you can buy the blue pill or the red pill. (Or, for that matter, what kind of light bulb you can buy.) How is any of that “pro-choice”?

Limiting choice.  But all choices have limits. The way I learned it down on the farm, your right to swing your fist ends where somebody else’s nose begins. When your choices involve the death, harm, or risk of harm to another human being, then that is one circumstance in which Government, acting on behalf of civilized society, should step in to protect the weaker from the stronger. That’s why we have laws against murder, rape, fraud, speeding, dumping toxic waste, etc.

And if anybody can prove that the preborn child is not a living human being, but something less than human, then I’m more pro-choice than anybody here.

Who is the preborn child?  There is no justification for restricting access to abortions … and a lot of what I will say tonight will make no sense at all … if the preborn child is anything less than a living human being. If anybody can prove that the preborn child is not a living human being, then I’ll happily withdraw.

But in fact, the humanity of the preborn child is not a matter of claim. Scientists, respected medical textbooks, and even abortion advocates like Peter Singer acknowledge that an individual human life begins at conception.

Current controversy not about contraception, but about abortion and who will pay for it.  Another tactic that you should be aware of is that of talking about access to contraception, as if that were in jeopardy, when the real goal is to secure government funding for abortion. This is really about abortion, who will pay for it, and what kind of profits can be made.

Nobody, that I know of, has advanced a policy proposal that would make contraception illegal, except for those methods that are not really contraceptives at all, but are, in fact, abortifacients.

Yes, there are some whose personal religious views preclude the use of contraception. There are others who simply think it’s not a good idea to use them. Others believe it is good to use them, but are concerned about creating a society with too few children. Many cultures in Europe are literally dying.  But contraception is a matter of personal morality that is best left to the discretion of the individual citizen.  [Note: CBR takes no position on contraception because it is a theological matter, as opposed to abortion, which is a matter of social justice because it kills an innocent human being. CBR opposes the use of contraceptives that can act as abortifacients.] 

Your money means windfall profits for the abortion industry.  Make no mistake. When you hear the word “contraception” in the current debate, it really means “abortion”. Contraception is already cheap and easily available in the free market, as little as $10 per month. That’s not worth a fight. The fight is over abortion. If access to government funding for “contraception” can be enshrined in law, then the abortion industry needs only to find a sympathetic judge to declare that abortion is simply another form of “contraception”, equally eligible for Government funding.

Many on the Left are simply ideologically committed to the notion that Big Government should take money from the rest of us to pay for abortions. Their motivations are political and personal. But for others, the motivation is greed. As soon as Big Government is paying for abortions, you can count on the price to increase dramatically. On my blog, I’ve shown how the passage of ObamaCare could increase Planned Parenthood’s abortion revenues from around $137 million to about $1.7 billion (with a b), and ultimately could easily reach more than 3.5 billion. The profit motive is strong, to say the least.

We have the power, so  you pay.  For decades, the Left has said, “You don’t like abortions? Don’t have one.” Clever, but now we know it was disingenuous as well, because now that they wield the power of Big Government, they say, “You don’t like abortions? No matter, you will pay for them, whether you like it or not.”

Seeing is understand.  To understand what I mean when I say the word abortion, you need to see it. I can’t show it to you now, but I would encourage you to go to www.AbortionNo.org and watch the video on the home page. That’s AbortionNo.org. AbortionNo.org. You won’t like what you see.

Marie Bastone is one of our favorite GAP volunteers. Here she is at the University of Massachusetts.

Marie Bastone, one of our favorite GAP volunteers, e-mailed me about her experience at UConn and UMass.

I had a stimulating & challenging 4 days with GAP.  UConn s were out vigorously protesting the display with some students coming quietly to say that appreciated that we were there.  The next 2 days at UMass at Lowell almost made the gang at UConn look like lambs.

On the morning of Day 2 at UMass, one Asian student very, very respectfully and humbly came to say that he was a pro-life,  pre-med major who volunteered at a nursing and pediatric clinic.  He said he had thought hard about the pictures and their message and took it home with him the previous night.   This morning,  asking his peers to listen to what he had to say, he got down on his knees and begged us to please take down the pictures, because they had hurt one female student who had been sexually assaulted.  The kids cheered.

In response, Frank Diorio got down on his knees and beautifully and eloquently begged this young man to consider how the pictures save lives.  This student listened with his head down, eyes closed and nodded quietly …

I can almost hear Frank telling this young man how a second assault (abortion) can never undo the first one.  Many women who are raped and then abort will tell you that they now regret their abortions, and that healing from the abortion was more difficult than healing from the rape.  This is because they had no control over the rape, but the abortion was an act of barbarity that they themselves consented to.  Marie went on …

I myself had some serious exchanges with students.  The funny thing is that the ones who were most hostile and resistant were the ones who kept coming back, both days and both morning and afternoon.  There was some intense emotional shouting and rage.  It was interesting, and, as always, a privilege.

Actually, Marie, the privilege is ours.  We can’t wait to do it with you.  For those who can’t come do this in person, why not help another way?  Would you be willing to support this work at $100/month, $50/month, or $25/month?  Whatever you can do will make a huge difference in the lives of mothers and children.

CBR volunteer April Pearson explains how perpetrators of injustice always frame their arguments in the language of "choice."

CBR’s Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) made it’s first appearance at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) last week.  Story here.

Students for Life member Teresa Fricke explained why they wanted us to bring GAP to Mizzou:

The reason we are doing this [on] campus is because on a given day, there could be 140 pregnant women who are on the border [about] whether to abort their baby or not, according to the numbers we have seen.

CBR volunteer April Pearson describes a conversation with a couple who could face that question at any time:

The couple both agreed that they would consider abortion if they found out tomorrow that they were expecting.  After discussing abortion with them for a long time, the young man told me, “I don’t know if I agree with everything here, but you’ve definitely changed my mind.  I think I’d want us to adopt now instead of abort.“  His girlfriend said, “I’ve always seen this kind of thing (pro-life viewpoint/activism) as pushy, but this has been really different.  You’ve made me think a lot, and I’ve appreciated talking with you.“ 

MU student Brianna Blackmon supported the message of GAP:

I believe the comparison between the abortion and KKK and Nazi Germany is valid because murder is murder.

 Medical student Robby Jones disagreed, according to The Maneater, the student newspaper:

MU medical student Robby Jones said he hates the pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion rights dichotomy in the first place, but said he is pro-abortion rights because people in desperate situations will seek abortions whether they are medically accessible or not.

Using that logic, if somebody is desperate to get his cotton picked, then slavery should be legal.  Not only should it be legal for the guy with the unpicked-cotton crisis, but for anybody.

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The University of Virginia (UVa) is under fire for killing some of them.

According to the Human Rights and Scientific Honesty Initiative (HRSHI), 309 of them were killed by UVa’s own “Health” System in 1991.  They were aborted, as were 264 the following year (source).

Denied their human rights, there were no first words, first kisses, or first loves for them.  There will be no walk down the lawn for them at graduation either.

Despite their best effort to hide the fact, UVa routinely performs abortions and lies about it.  When not spreading falsehoods, UVa is simply silent about the truth and hopes people won’t ask.

But thanks to our friends Sean Cannan, Kelsey Hazzard, and others at HRSHI, UVa is being exposed and called to account (letter of February 2011).  Most recent letter here.  Excellent radio interview here.

From HRSHI’s most recent letter to UVa, here’s my favorite quotation:

You have yourself attempted to justify these killings by citing the “legal framework” of United States Supreme Court precedent of Roe vs. Wade (1973), and the “compelling personal factors” of the mother only. You completely left out the compelling personal factors of fathers and their children alike. We feel compelled ourselves to remind you that slavery was once an institution that was acceptable within the legal framework as decided by the United States Supreme Court and state laws also, that this institution was also quite popular at UVA, and that slave traders and owners had compelling personal and financial reasons for trading or owning slaves. Throughout history, many such atrocities have been justified by those pretending that the humanity of their victims can simply be removed by decree. We are here to remind you that this is neither a scientifically accurate position, nor a sustainable medical opinion for a President of the public University of Virginia in 2012.

Help us show UVa what they are really doing.  Help us go to UVa and every other college campus to expose their abortion business.