Today in politicians say the darndest things, are mortifying relics of the 1950s and refuse to believe in science, Liberal Senator for Tasmania, Leader of the Government in the Senate and Minister for Employment, Eric Abetz, has suggested there could be a link between abortion and breast cancer in an interview on Network Ten’s The Project last night.
Abetz, an open anti-abortion advocate, was being quizzed by website founder everyone is talking about Mia Freedman on his intention to appear at the World Congress Of Families conference in Melbourne this month alongside some of the most paranoid puritanical people in the world.
A topic of discussion at the event (designed to “stand up for the position of the traditional family, in a time of eroding family life and declining appreciation for families in general,”) is the supposed correlation between abortion and breast cancer.
Here’s how the exchange played out last night.
Freedman: “What about the fact that one of the speakers at this conference promotes the factually incorrect statement that abortion leads to breast cancer. Do you believe that?”
Abetz: “I think the studies, and I think they date back from the 1950s, assert that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.”
Freedman: “It is conclusively and scientifically incorrect in the same way that linking immunisations and autism are incorrect. So when this scientific non-information is being put out there, how can you be comfortable being part of something that promotes this non-science?”
Abetz: “Well I don’t know what your scientific expertise is to be able to run that commentary, I must confess I don’t have that.”
Freedman: “It’s not me. It’s the Australian Medical Association.”
Abetz: “Well there are other organisations that have differing views as some of these speakers are clinical professors.”
But what do people with “scientific expertise” say? The Australian Medical Association (AMA) dismissed his comments as archaic, wrong and irresponsible.
“If he’s quoting papers from the 1950s, I suspect that’s where he’s living,” AMA President Associate Professor Brian Owler said. “I think it’s really irresponsible for people to be using their own ideology and projecting it on, particularly women.”
To date, no scientific evidence supports the theory that there is any correlation between abortion and breast cancer and those who publicly oppose that hypothesis include the World Health Organisation, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Britain’s the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and state bodies in both New South Wales and Victoria.
On the other hand, are we conclusively sure that science isn’t in fact black magic?
Just another sad day in #AusLol.
Photo by Stefan Postles Getty Images News
Via SMH
