Angelina Jolie Announces Decision To Undergo Double Mastectomy To Decrease Risk Of Breast Cancer

Angelina Jolie announced via a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday that she recently completed a double mastectomy in order to limit her chances of developing breast cancer.

The choice, she says, came in large part as a result of her own mother’s death due to cancer at age 56 after nearly a decade of battling the disease.

Of it, she says, “We often speak of ‘Mommy’s mommy,’ and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a ‘faulty’ gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.”

In all, Jolie says her doctors estimated her risk for breast cancer to be 87 percent and 50 percent for ovarian.

“Once I knew this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much as I could,” Jolie further writes, explaining that this ultimately led her to the decision to undergo a preventative double mastectomy.

According to BreastCancer.org, 1 in 8 women living in the United States, or just under 12 percent, will develop invasive cancer in her lifetime. Furthermore, the site explains, a woman's risk approximately doubles if she has a first degree relative, such as a mother or sister, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer: in all, 15 percent of women who develop breast cancer have a family member who has already been diagnosed.

Finally, those with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations, as in the case of Jolie, have as much as an 80 percent chance of developing breast cancer and are more liable to be diagnosed earlier in life.

Ultimately, the actress and director famous worldwide for her strong, feminine leads and international humanitarian work, says that, if anything, the mastectomy has strengthened her sense of womanhood.

“I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity,” she says.

And as to why she chose to make her procedure public - a choice that seems counter-cultural even when compared to the chronic nay-saying regarding Hollywood body transformations - Jolie says, “I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer” and that it is her hope “that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options.”