Voices for Life' uses faulty research to mislead students

Last Wednesday, pink and blue flags littered the upper quad as part of the Johns Hopkins Voice for Life (VFL) protest against MSE symposium speaker Patricia Ireland. The group's demonstration holds to the anti-choice movement's tradition of deception and duplicity. A poster from the demonstration read, "Women deserve better," the newest catchphrase of the anti-choice movement.

The mission statement on the VFL Web site, http://www.jhu.edu/~vfl, echoes it: "Women deserve better than abortion and we strive to help eliminate the root causes of abortion."

At a first glance, this statement seems glib and harmless, but it comes across as blatantly dishonest to anyone who has spoken with members of VFL, as the self-described "non-religious, non-sectarian" group refuses to take a stance on the issue of contraception (the most obvious preventative measure against unwanted pregnancies), and whose idea of a "pregnancy resource" is the biased and unproductive pregnancy forum held earlier in the semester.

Worse, VFL resorts to propaganda and scare tactics, as seen in the flyers they handed out at the demonstration.

The flyer had three sections, the first of which consisted of three non-cited statistics about the frequency of abortions. The second section consisted of three statistics about fetal development. The first of these statistics states that at 24 days, the fetus's heart starts beating.

In actuality, the study from which this statistic is cited is from 1971 and has been proven inaccurate by subsequent medical research. The University of California Medical Center's Web site on fetal development (http://www.visembryo.com) shows it to be, at the least, misrepresentation; at 24 days, the fetus's "primitive S-shaped tubal heart" does not qualify as "true circulation because blood vessel development is still incomplete."

However, it is the third section of the flyer that is most disturbing, because it links abortion and breast cancer. Not surprisingly, these statistics and their implications are inaccurate. It is not, in fact, the case that abortions lead to a higher risk of breast cancer, as proven by numerous medical studies.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued a statement in July 2003 (viewable at http://www.acog.org) that there is "no evidence supporting a causal link between induced abortion and subsequent development of breast cancer" and that "the most recent studies from China, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. found no effect of induced abortion on breast cancer risk."

Furthermore, as cited on the Planned Parenthood Web site, "neither the National Cancer Institute (NCI) nor the American Cancer Society (ACS) recognizes the reliability of such an association." The site lists study after study that contradicts VFL's claims. One of the many respected studies was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and showed "no overall connection" between abortion and breast cancer risk (Melbye, et. al, 1997). Another study done in Sweden concluded that not only is there no increased risk of breast cancer linked to abortion, but that there may, in fact, be a slightly reduced risk (Lindefors Harris et al., 1989).

So who is most reliable on the issue -- the ACOG, The ACS, the NCI and other members of the medical community? Or a VFL flyer which makes the unfounded claim that "27 of 33 studies worldwide show more breast cancer among women who chose abortion" and backs it up by saying "citations available at VFL table," a gap in evidence that most students would not notice until they were well on their way to class? And, no, the citations are not available on the VFL Web site, either.

At a school full of pre-meds, one would hope that students would practice better awareness of medical reality, but VFL has once again shown that anti-choice zealots care little about science, facts, or accurate portrayal of the issue.

VFL and other members of the movement to which they belong have shown that, despite their claims to the contrary, they do not care about women. Anyone can say that "women deserve better," but an anti-choice group that fabricates faulty medical "evidence" from non-cited, inaccurate, and/or out-of-date studies cannot back up that claim.

Pro-choice advocates know that women don't deserve "better"; they deserve the best: the freedom of choice.

Maha Jafri is a junior English major from Loudonville, N.Y.