Texas abortion booklet accused of misleading women over breast cancer risk

The booklet also links abortion to risk of suicide, infertility, and depression

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Five thousand Texans have spoken out against a new edition of a booklet distributed to women seeking an abortion that warns them they face an increased risk of breast cancer, suicide, and infertility.

Previous editions of “A Woman’s Right to Know” have been criticised for providing misleading information and discouraging women from having a termination.

The latest version was published by the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and made available for public comment until 29 July. The booklet includes information about foetal development at different stages in gestation – referring to the embryo as “your baby”– and warns patients of the supposed health and psychological risks.

Reproductive rights organisations in the state accused anti-abortion officials of using disingenuous language to discourage a woman’s right to choose.

“This is just the latest shameful example of state leaders playing politics with women’s health,” Texas state representative Donna Howard said at a press conference held by Naral Pro-Choice TX. “As a former registered nurse, I find it outrageous that the state requires health professionals to provide misleading and coercive information to patients.”

The state’s connection of abortion to breast cancer dangers has long been debunked by the American Cancer Society.

“At this time, the scientific evidence does not support the notion that abortion of any kind raises the risk of breast cancer or any other type of cancer,” the ACS says on its website.

“As a breast cancer survivor, I am disappointed that DSHS has published revisions to [the booklet] that remain scientifically and medically inaccurate,” Republican state rep Sarah Davis said. “If the state is going to invade the physician-patient relationship such that we are going to codify what physicians say to their patients, then we have a duty to ensure it is based on the most accurate science available.

“The booklet does not meet that criteria.”

Texas began printing the booklet in 2003 as part of the state’s informed-consent abortion law. Almost 35 per cent of the information in a previous version of the booklet was found to be scientifically incorrect and misleading in a 2013 study by Rutgers University researchers.

Forty-nine per cent of information about foetal development in the first trimester was determined to be incorrect or misleading, as well, the study added.

Democratic legislators co-authored a bill in 2015 that called for the “medical accuracy of informational materials given to a woman seeking an abortion”.

Dr G Sealy Massingill of the Texas chapter of American Congress of Obstetricians and GynAecologists emphasised the importance of maintaining the patient-physician relationship – and the significance of counseling prior to an abortion, not as a means of dissuasion, but as a way to offer options.

“The purpose of the counseling is to provide education so that a patient can understand her condition and the risks, benefits, and alternatives of car,” he said. “The decision of a patient to end a pregnancy should be an intensely personal one.”

A spokesperson for the DSHS told The Independent that they will take all of the comments into consideration.

“We want to give women the facts so they can make the right decisions for themselves,” they said.