In a large, formal Philadelphia courtroom six years ago, endocrinologist Joel Brind swore on a Bible, took the witness stand—and forever left behind his life of scientific obscurity. Brind was the star witness for Christ's Bride Ministries, a religious group that had used billboard space throughout the Northeast to make the claim that abortion increased a woman's chance of developing breast cancer. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which runs the city's subway, bus, and commuter rail systems, rejected the advertisements as scientifically unsound, and the whole matter landed in court.
Brind, who teaches human biology and endocrinology at Baruch College of the City University of New York, made an impressive expert witness. A lanky 52-year-old with a slender, equine face, he has spent most of his career investigating the connections between reproductive hormones and human disease. He has a talent for explaining science in a patient way that a layperson can easily understand. On the witness stand that warm June morning, he unveiled a theory that he was about to publish in a British public health journal called Epidemiology and Community Health.
"Within a few days after pregnancy, the corpus luteum, which is in a woman's ovary, begins to secrete large quantities of a number of hormones," Brind told the crowded courtroom. One of those chemicals, estrogen, makes the breasts grow in preparation for nursing. In the early months of a first pregnancy, "the breasts may be adult size, but the tissue is rather primitive. In other words, it's not specialized for producing milk. It's mostly able just to grow, to proliferate." Later in the pregnancy, he said, the growth switch clicks off, and those cells differentiate into mature, milk-producing cells.
"Now, primitive cells, because they're programmed to grow, are more likely to be sensitive to carcinogenic stimuli," Brind said. If a woman has an abortion, she's left with a large number of these immature cells lining her breast ducts, and she is therefore more vulnerable to cancer down the road—30 percent more vulnerable, Brind says, than a woman who has never had an abortion.
