Malec on New Mammogram Guidelines

Colorado Right to Life: To Join the Race for the Cure Protest

Denver, Colorado -- A meeting last Friday between Komen Breast Cancer Foundation's Denver officials, CRTL board members, and scientific and medical experts led the pro-life organization to decide to join an annual protest to warn women at the Komen Foundation's Race for the Cure of the link between abortion and breast cancer.

Former Komen medical research analyst Eve Sanchez Silver explained to the Komen officials that she resigned from Komen two years ago because the organization denies the scientific studies showing the link between abortion and breast cancer, and it provides funding to abortion provider Planned Parenthood.  Professor Joel Brind, PhD endocrinologist from Baruch College in New York City attended the meeting after saying on Denver radio that, "the 2003 conference of the National Cancer Institute which denied abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer refused to allow attending scientists to present the opposing position of the scientific research establishing the link, showing that abortion was declassified as a cancer risk for political and not scientific reasons."

Further, "The NCI's own statistics show that breast cancer has increased, and only in women who were of child-bearing age when abortion was legalized in 1973, so much so that nationally, cancer would have steadily declined, except it has held steady at the expense of women getting breast cancer," said Dr. Brind.

Komen Denver board member and chairman of the grants committee, J.P. Pedinielli, and public relations representative, Dana Brandorff, attempted to dissuade CRTL from protesting at the Race arguing that "Planned Parenthood is not a current grantee" of Komen's Denver chapter, and when challenged, added that Planned Parenthood, "might have been a previous grantee."  CRTL vice president Leslie Hanks then documented the continued local funding of the abortion provider throughout this decade.  Eve Silver showed from Komen documentation that the national organization has given as much as $475,000 in a single year to abortion-provider Planned Parenthood.

"Even if abortion proved beneficial to a woman's health," said Hanks, "government should still prohibit the killing of an innocent human being, because abortion is always wrong."

Prof. Brind corrects a factual error on the Komen.org website, that "the breast is mature after puberty," stating that "Third trimester pregnancy hormones begin the final maturation process and the differentiation of mammary gland cells.  Abortion prevents this, leaving the woman with more undifferentiated cells vulnerable to carcinogens, increasing her risk of breast cancer."

As transcribed from a recording of the meeting, CRTL asked, "Why aren't women being told about the most preventable risk factor?" to which Komen's Brandorff answered, "We tend to focus on the cure... we're focusing our energies on that, rather than the preventative."

For more info, contact:
Colorado RTL 303 753-9394
Vice President Leslie Hanks