Pro-Life Academy every Tuesday and Thursday.
Today we begin a new track. Breast Cancer will be dealt with on Thursdays, while our ongoing embryology lessons will continue on Tuesdays.
There exists in the peer-reviewed scientific literature a significant body of literature dating to the 1950′s, which shows a clear and consistent link between abortion and breast cancer. I’ve written about some of this on this blog. Click here.
Today, we begin with a consideration of normal breast development in puberty and first pregnancy.
Breast maturation begins at the onset of puberty when girls begin to menstruate. An event called menarche. During menstrual cycles the hormones estrogen and progesterone which are produced stimulate the development of breast lobules.
In each breast, there are 15-25 lobes, each of which is like a main branch on a tree. Each lobe branches off into several lobules, as shown on left. Each lobule prior to pregnancy is comprised of Type-1 and Type-2 cells, which are cancer-susceptible cells.
Once a woman becomes pregnant, her body begins to produce vastly elevated concentrations of estrogen, as well as a steady supply of progesterone. These hormones stimulate prolific development of lobules and ductules in the first trimester leading into the second trimester. By the middle of the second trimester the woman’s breasts have doubled in size.
From the second half of the second trimester and going forward, human prolactin matures the lobule cells into Type-3 and Type-4 cells, which are cancer resistant cells, as shown in the illustration below.
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By the end of her FFTP, 85% of a woman’s lobules are cancer resistant. After weaning, many return to Type-3 cells with evidence that genetic changes have occurred leaving these cells cancer resistant. With every subsequent pregnancy, more of the remaining Type-1 and Type-2 lobules mature.
The difficulty presented by abortion is that a woman’s breasts undergo growth and proliferation early in the pregnancy, but are deprived of the maturational effects of the third trimester. This leaves the woman with many more cells which can become cancerous.
Women having miscarriages tend not to produce elevated estrogen levels, and do not therefore undergo the same pregnancy-related breast development.
Oral contraceptives mimic a pregnancy followed by abortion every month, setting up even higher risk for breast cancer.
Next time, more on how cells become cancerous and an introduction to the literature.
Illustrations from the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
Oral contraceptives mimic a pregnancy followed by abortion every month, setting up even higher risk for breast cancer.
Wow, I never really thought about this.
A girlfriend told me that OC’s (ironically) trick the woman’s body into thinking that it is pregnant every month.
Is the abortion part, the break through bleed that happens when a women takes the placebo’s? Not having taken OC’s I have no idea if this is an intelligent question.
Also, what is happening in the case of the new pills where women do not have periods? I guess these are technically not really periods at all but what effect does this have on the body? Do we know?
Good presentation, well documented, and nicely explained.
This also explains why nuns have almost double the rate of breast cancer of married women who bear children. That’s not meant as sarcasm, its just one more application of the same data, and the same physiology.
Perhaps contraceptives need to be developed in a manner which DOES stimulate anti-cancer lobules in the breasts.
Or. perhaps, we should develop a social framework in which women could have at least one pregnancy early in life. Again, I’m not being sarcastic, if feasible, I think for many reasons it would be beneficial. Women are entering puberty at a younger age than 50-100 years ago, but socially, economically and culturally our society increases the pressure to wait until much later before marriage or child-birth. That creates a long period of temptation to experiment sexually, but to avoid either the commitment of marriage or childbirth.
Ideally, sometime between 16 and 19 young women and men could marry, take on part time jobs while continuing education on a part time schedule, with support of an extended network of older relatives and neighbors, and fellow parents, culminating in skilled careers or advanced degrees between 25 and 30, then moving into full careers as their children are starting to be more independent.
Instead, we have rampant sex outside of marriage, babies born to parents who don’t have time to do them justice, women having repeated abortions for fear of same, later in life marriages, children at the age when they need constant parental attention while their parents are intent on building careers… It’s all out of joint. But, it would take an upheaval of utopian dimensions to set it all straight.
Early sexual maturation is more related to increased obesity than bio-chemical or neurological maturation. In an informal poll of mothers, I learned that most of their daughters started their period once they hit close to 100 pounds (which was true for me as well). In my own class of girls, the “bigger” girls tended to start first. I was scrawny and started late.
So just because a girl’s sexual organs maybe ready that doesn’t mean that she is emotionally or mentally able to handle the complexities of sexual behavior. Boys are even less able.
OC’s may not literally cause an abortion every month, but that they simulate an abortion is the point. The pills mimic the first trimester hormonal/chemical reactions in the body, and then during the skip week (or placebo week) it mimics the hormonal/chemical reactions of an abortion but a child may or may not have been conceived at that point.
I wonder how these changes differ in pills that do not have a skip/placebo week and other hormonal contraceptives that promise three or four periods a year. How far do they go through the mock pregnancy?
It is true that girls and boys are not emotionally or mentally ready to handle the complexities of sexual behavior, merely because their organs and hormones have changed. It is even more true that selecting a life partner so young is a chancy thing. It would take a lengthy period of coming to terms with one’s own rush of new feelings, with step by step acquaintance with the opposite sex, a measured process that is totally lacking now. But, if the physiological evidence, and the spontaneous rush to experiment earlier, mean anything, perhaps we need to re-examine when and how we become emotionally and mentally able. Its not an easy thing to consider, and it would be even more difficult to bring to practical feasibility in a prudent and caring way. But the more the reality of sexual practice goes awry, the more I wonder if it wouldn’t be worth considering.
Part of the problem is that in times past choosing a life partner wasn’t solely dependent on the two young people infatuated with each other. And they also weren’t bombarded with romantic ideals and sexual imagery. The idea of parents forbidding their daughter to marry anyone is deemed barbaric in this day and age, even if it really would be in her own best interest.
Selecting a life partner at a young age is a chancy thing the way it is done these days…often completely unsupervised. I am not talking just about too much opportunity for hanky-panky, but parents don’t ask their child’s prospective marriage partners important questions….just like with sexual education they assume someone else is asking the important questions, like their child or the clergy marrying them.
There must be a balance here somewhere, if we could only find it. I and definitely not in a hurry to offer a half-baked notion to teen agers, or even young men and women in their early twenties. I’ve barely identified one bit of a possible part of a complex problem, and I’m nowhere close to a solution. But this is a productive exchange to start sorting things out.
Perhaps age of consent should vary, based on whether parents and prospective spouses are all in agreement — no consensus, well, you may have to wait a few more years, and on whether there has been a period of serious counselling (church would be best — I know many churches require it before they will perform the wedding — but there should be a secular alterative). Done right, this could develop a process something like what courtship used to be — meeting the family, etc., without cutting off all social interaction; going to a movie with someone you think you might care about isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It would be crass to say, no marriage unless you’re drug free, but if you’re not you are in no position to make this kind of commitment. I wonder if living in the same home, but with other family members, would provide an opportunity to sort out the mundane matters, like, can you really put up with having this person around all day for the rest of your life? More questions, no answers, but what happens now isn’t too reliable either.
We need a way to start early, then make the process of acquaintance slow, then perhaps move to marriage somewhat earlier than we do now, having older relatives involved, but not absolutely dominant… oh, but close family can be horribly deprave too… then what?
[...] If you missed Part I last week, read it here. [...]