Lost in the media frenzy concerning Susan G. Komen’s grants to Planned Parenthood was the fact that Planned Parenthood is an enormous national provider of two causes of breast cancer: induced abortion and oral contraceptives.

Assumed in the many reports in the media was that Komen, as the country’s largest breast cancer advocacy group, is a wonderful icon serving the needs of breast cancer survivors and providing needed information  and money for breast cancer research.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Up until 2005, according to Komen’s STEP Grants information published on the internet, less than 1% of the nearly billion dollars they had raised since 1984 was given to entities that did breast cancer research to find a cure. Shocking I’m sure to its many donors. 

It makes women feel great to gather in pink sweats and running shoes to raise money for a cure. The camaraderie is exhilarating. The mutual support is gratifying.  Doing something that matters to conquer that dreaded cancer that has taken so many women, mothers, sisters, and friends is empowering to women. But is all the “feel good” that the many races engender in the participants just an incredibly successful Pink Money marketing device? 

As a breast cancer surgeon, I see Komen as a purveyor of misinformation to the women who look to them as a reliable source.  Komen states on its web site that although oral contraceptives slightly raise the risk for breast cancer, a women’s risk will go back to normal after she goes off the pill for ten years, as if no harm has been done. 

The truth is that since 2005, the World Health Organization’s International Agency on Research of Cancer listed oral contraceptives as a Group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical and liver cancer. Group 1 is also where cigarettes are listed as a cause for lung cancer. The truth is that if you are unlucky and the Pill caused a breast cancer cell to start growing in your breast, it would take about 10 years for the cancer to get big enough for your doctor to detect.  Hence, if it hasn’t shown up by 10 years, you were lucky and your risk is no longer increased. You’re normal risk again. Komen has not done anything to protect women and reduce their risk by avoiding known carcinogens. When 15 million women stopped their hormone replacement therapy in 2002 after they learned it increased their breast cancer risk, by 2007 the number of postmenopausal breast cancers decreased 11%. 

In 2010, 88% of young women take the Pill, a known carcinogen. Yet there is no awareness campaign for these women. The Pill contains the same drugs as hormone replacement therapy but in doses that are nearly 10 times higher! Imagine all the breast cancers that could be prevented in young women if half of them stopped the Pill.

Komen also denies the abortion breast cancer link.  It does this by not only citing the findings of the National Cancer Institute – which denies the link – but also by stating that the studies that show a positive correlation (there are 50) and those that are statistically significant (there are 31) are tainted by “recall bias.”  Recall bias assumes that a significant number of women will not report their abortion history accurately:  that they will not admit their abortions to researchers thereby by skewing the study’s results. This is despite the facts that 1) there are studies that have internally controlled for recall bias and have found no bias;  2) other studies state that, because induced abortion is so common in some countries, investigators report that recall bias is not an issue;  3) that a study specifically looking for recall bias by comparing computer records and interview data did not find a significant result (except that women recalled abortions that had not been recorded in the computer).

If an organization respected women, it would give them the truth so that they could make an informed choice.  For more information on risk go to the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute at www.bcpinstitute.org.

By way of introduction, I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned, as a breast surgeon, physician, mother and wife in this New Feminism blog. Before “New” was attached to it, I was always a “New Feminist” at heart. I was pre-med in college from 1967-1971 at a Long Island university noted for its science programs and for being the first college with a campus wide drug bust that made the national news. The Vietnam War sent some of my friends to ‘Nam and changed them forever. The sexual revolution was in full swing and regretfully I participated with enthusiasm. Medical school in D.C. was difficult in a hostile environment. Male students would tell me I would be the cause of their roommate’s death because they had been drafted after I had taken their “spot” in medical school. There were too many women in the class (21 out of 210) and we were just going to get married and never practice anyway. Many of the professors were of the same opinion. I wasn’t smart; I was just lucky on multiple choice tests, even if I did defy the odds consistently. As bad as my fellow medical students were, they couldn’t compare to my fellow surgical residents during training. It was not by chance that there were only 1200 female surgeons in the country at the start of my surgical residency. They really toughened me up.

Luckily, I met my husband who was working as an OR technician at the university hospital by my junior year. We’ve had a good marriage for the past 37 years. Long years of training in Family Medicine, General Surgery and then a Vascular Fellowship let the years fly by so it wasn’t until I had been married 17 years that I had my only child at age 41. If I had known then what I know now, that fertility decreases greatly at that age, I wouldn’t have waited so long to try for my first and only. I might have been too pessimistic to even try. My husband was the one who stayed home for her so she could get the kind of upbringing that would be the most conducive to being happy, healthy and secure. She is all that and more.

In the course of my professional career, I noticed that there were a whole lot more young women with breast cancer than there should be and that the incidence had gone from 1 in 12 when I graduated medical school to 1 in 8 in just 30 years. When I looked into risk factors for this, it became clear that oral contraceptives, induced abortion, and delayed first pregnancies accounted for a good number of these early breast cancers. Having patients in their 20s with breast cancer and seeing them die in their 30s made me want to try to do something that would prevent those cancers. To that end, in 1999 I co-founded the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute which educates the public and medical professionals on the risks and prevention of breast cancer.

The old feminism sought equality with men through complete reproductive control using oral contraceptives and the necessary back up of abortion. Without them, women felt they could never climb the corporate ladder. It was as if women needed to live their lives with the same sexual license as men in order to achieve equality. We thought we could have children whenever we wanted no matter our age. We could even have them without a husband. We just needed to buy a deposit from a sperm bank.

If we only knew then what we know now: that oral contraceptives are a Group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical and liver cancer; that abortion causes breast cancer, premature births and serious psychological problems; that women need husbands as children need fathers; that sexual intercourse sets off hormonal changes within in us that bonds us to our mate. The theories of the old feminism, no matter how strongly or earnestly embraced, could not change the hard wiring in our brains or in our hearts. It is hard to look back and admit we were so wrong about so many things.

It is my hope, that by sharing those lessons that were so painfully learned, women will heal and help a new generation to enjoy the fruits of the New Feminism. I hope that women learn how they are different from men and why it’s a good thing.