Vice President Mike Pence returns to battleground North Carolina for another trip later this week focused on shoring up the Trump base. He is set to visit Gateway Women’s Care, a pregnancy and sexual health center that opposes abortion rights, in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday, where he will participate in a roundtable discussion.
Gateway promotes misleading information regarding abortion on its website, specifically the assertion that abortion can lead to breast cancer.
The website says “medical experts continue to debate the association between abortion and breast cancer,” and later adds, “A number of reliable studies have concluded that there is an association between abortion and later development of breast cancer.”
However, studies linking abortion to breast cancer were found to have flawed methodology
“Scientific research studies have not found a cause-and-effect relationship between abortion and breast cancer,” the American Cancer Society’s website says.
“The topic of abortion and breast cancer highlights many of the most challenging aspects of studies of people and how those studies do or do not translate into public health guidelines. The issue of abortion generates passionate viewpoints in many people,” the American Cancer Society concludes, adding, “Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women aside from skin cancer; and breast cancer is the second leading cancer killer in women. Still, the public is not well-served by false alarms. 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.”
Gateway Women’s Care also promotes the practice of so-called “abortion pill” reversal.
“If you have started the process for a medical abortion (Abortion Pill) you may be able to reverse it in some cases,” the website says. A 2019 trial designed to study the “abortion reversal” treatment was stopped early due to safety concerns.
Pence’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Sarah Riddle, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Votes in North Carolina, blasted the announced visit.
“It says all you need to know about the priorities of the Trump-Pence administration when the vice president comes to our state not to talk about tackling the Covid-19 pandemic or systemic racism, but to visit a fake women’s health center and spread more lies about abortion and reproductive health care,” she said.
Later Thursday, Pence will speak at a church “highlighting the Trump administration’s steadfast support for the Right to Life,” per a release from his office. And he will participate in a campaign event afterward, accepting the endorsement of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association.