The articles in the Oct. 2 Butler Eagle dealing with breast cancer awareness stressed many important guidelines for prevention. Included were monthly self breast exams, yearly physicals, mammograms, a nutritional diet, exercise, weight control, and breast feeding when possible.

Currently, “more than 250,000 women under 40 have breast cancer . . . and about 1,000 of the 11,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer this year will be 20 to 30 years old.” That is a quote from Komen Foundation statistics.

My concern is that some vital information that could affect a woman’s choice in cancer prevention is curiously missing from cancer awareness talks.

“In 2005, the World Health Organization classified oral contraceptives as a Group I carcinogen — the most dangerous classification known.” (World Health Organization International Research on Cancer, July 29, 2005).

Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, author of “Breast Cancer, Its Link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill,” cites a “comprehensive meta-analysis published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, which found that 21 out of 23 retrospective studies done since 1980 showed that women who took oral contraceptives prior to the birth of their first child sustained a 44 percent average increased risk of developing pre-menopausal breast cancer . . . this risk rose to 52 percent for women who took the pill for at least four years prior to the birth of their first child.”

The National Cancer Institute financed a study by researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center of Seattle, Wash., that revealed that women who had been pregnant at least once, and who had an induced abortion, had a 50 percent higher risk of contracting breast cancer than women who never had an abortion. The risk was even higher for those who had an abortion before age 18 and after age 30.

Are women being informed about these risks by their doctors?

Don’t people think it’s time to tell women about the birth control pill/abortion/breast cancer link?