I'm no saint, believe me. I can only treat. That's one of the tragic things about childhood cancer, there is no one cause. People point to mutations like PHOX2B, ALK, and 1p SRD deletion, but those account for a few percentage points. It makes you realize that until we develop true gene therapy (in utero I might add), childhood cancer cannot be cured. So much of it comes from the natural variation within the meiotic process. For adults that's less true, only about 20% is genetic, but that means that there will always be a baseline level, even if hypothetically, people stopped engaging in high risk behavior. Anyway, back on topic.Mouse One said:
I really appreciate you bringing this up, because it allows me to clarify my point. I'm not looking at mortality data, because I understand that there is a higher risk of death associated with having a 10 pound child come out of a hole that doesn't seem like it should allow for that. I'm looking at comparing the physiological and psychological affects of having a child from a pregenancy and having an abortion. When I said it mattered on an individual basis, I meant in every category. Did the woman intend have the child? Did the woman bring a partner with her to the abortion clinic? What are the woman's beliefs on abortion? Does she have feelings of guilt? What is her social support structure? I could go on but you get the idea. I think that a mothers psychological health is just as important as her physical health if she wants to raise children in the future or have healthy relationships. Physiologically speaking abortion is considered "low-risk", relative to other medical procedures. It does bring a slightly higher chance of sterility and future birth complications, but to be honest, we just haven't studied these in a cohort of any capacity, so I can't be sure of how significant these are without other studies to back them up. We do know that some women are at higher risk for these complications, especially African-American women, and women who have sought multiple abortions. There is still a lot of ambiguity as to the long term effects on female health after an abortion.
Which leads me, again, to stress my point. I'm not saying "Never have abortions.", or "Everyone should be able to get an abortion if they want one." I'm saying that people need to become educated about their own bodies, and how to take care of them, as well as the risks of any medical procedures they might be undertaking. People should not consider abortions as an excuse not to use a condom or birth control. Doctors aren't perfect beings who can cast "heal" or in this case "abort". Every procedure has risk. Nothing is less risky than just not getting pregnant in the first place if you don't want a kid. If you don't want a kid, but you can't be bothered to put on a condom and can't or won't use birth control, they maybe you should avoid having sex.
To your point about literature bias, yeah, no kidding. This field is filled with it, since a lot of our data is based on interviews, and many people have an agenda. There are plenty of us who, like me and my collegues, just want to keep people informed and healthy. This is why internal meta-analyses are the best way to form your own opinions on things. You can weight each study however you like, and penalize studies in their contribution to your overall Odds Ratio for having biases. Obviously, its a highly skilled endeavor, and two people looking at the same data could come up with different conclusions (another problem). I continue to stand by my point, it varies incredibly on an individual basis, but if you're not expecting complications and can handle a child, but just don't want to, I'd advise you to have the child because of how much we don't know about the long term effects of abortion.
There is some literature about increased risk of breast cancer after termination of first pregnancy (I read it in NCI, I can look up the reference if you like) (makes sense, since there is blast tissue left in the breast which will never develop) and future birth complications, but in my opinion it isn't conclusive enough to say absolutely yes, since, again, there are no cohorts for it and there is no grant money for anything that isn't a treatment RCT (which is ok for me, but very annoying for the rest of my non-cancer studying colleagues).
Quick fact though, just so I don't seem anti-pregnancy: your chances of breast cancer decrease sharply with increasing parity (number of children). The more time you spend pregnant and/or breastfeeding, the healthier you and your child are overall. Unless you have HIV...sorry I'm rambling.
If you need some good literature to read, I can give you some references, but you might not have access to them without paying, unless you are attached to a university with journal subscriptions.
