Heinz, 71, said the cancer was discovered in late September during an annual mammogram. She later underwent lumpectomies in both breasts. The outspoken heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune used her experience to urge women to continue getting mammograms despite a recent recommendation by a federal panel that younger women forgo the tests.
Although the controversy over mammograms is new, prominent women coming forward to share their breast cancer stories and advocate for other women is not.
In 1972, former child actress and Republican Party activist Shirley Temple Black became one of the first well-known women to go public about her breast cancer.
But it wasn't until 1974, when new first lady Betty Ford spoke out about her mastectomy, that a public figure became an advocate to raise awareness about breast cancer.
After a biopsy at
"She turned breast cancer into a public health issue," said historian John Robert Greene, author of "Betty Ford: Candor and Courage in the White House."
Ford's willingness to talk about a subject that had been mostly taboo was cited just three weeks later when Happy Rockefeller -- whose husband was awaiting confirmation as Gerald Ford's vice president -- underwent a mastectomy.
"Mrs. Ford has made everybody a little more conscious," said Nelson Rockefeller, noting that his wife had found a lump soon after hearing about the first lady's illness.
Ford's media blitz was credited with making self-examinations and mammograms routine.
"She saved some lives to the extent that more people got screened and they were treated effectively," said Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco.
First lady Nancy Reagan's illness prompted a different reaction. After she was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in 1987, she put her husband's needs ahead of hers by choosing a radical mastectomy instead of a less invasive lumpectomy. President Ronald Reagan explained her decision: "She realized she wouldn't be able to perform her duties as first lady if she had to undergo the radiation that would be required after a lumpectomy."
A medical study found that Reagan's decision briefly influenced other women's treatment choices.
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was diagnosed the next year with what she called "The Big C," but she played down its significance. O'Connor checked into Georgetown University Hospital for a mastectomy carrying legal papers and intending to work through her recuperation, according to
Only later, in 1994, did O'Connor go public with her feelings about surviving cancer, saying, "not a day had passed without her thinking about the experience," Biskupic wrote.
In recent years, breast cancer announcements by political wives have become almost routine. Some, like the former first lady of New Jersey
Most recently, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz kept quiet about undergoing seven surgeries, including a double mastectomy, while serving as a Democratic House leader, campaigning for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and taking care of her three young children. Now 43, the rising political star finally went public about her ordeal in March, urging in an emotional news conference that younger women take a more aggressive approach to screening.
The Florida lawmaker said she is proud of Heinz for speaking out against the federal guidelines, as she has done. She noted that it was important for her, as a public figure, to share her story, which has prompted many women to make their first mammogram appointment after years of putting it off.
"It made them feel like they weren't alone, that there was someone else that they could see and hear about who was going through the same thing they were," she said. "It was incredibly rewarding for me."
Wasserman Schultz said she is "100% healthy" now but Elizabeth Edwards is now battling Stage IV breast cancer.
She was diagnosed with the disease a day after her husband, John, lost the 2004 election for vice president. Then she had to endure painful treatments amid tabloid reports about her husband's out-of-wedlock child with a woman he promised to marry in a rooftop wedding when his wife died. Now, in the final months of her life, Elizabeth Edwards reportedly is planning a divorce.
Through it all, though, she has carried on a tradition of advocacy that was begun by Betty Ford and continued by Heinz, who used an interview with The Associated Press to argue that the cost of mammography is far lower than the physical and personal tolls women ages 40 to 60 face if their cancer goes undetected early and they later have to be treated with aggressive chemotherapy.
"Chemotherapy is serious. It also costs a lot of money. It's very painful. And it's very destructive of people's -- most people's -- lives for a while, anyway. So why put people through that instead of just having a test ...?" she said. "So that's why I was so upset about that decision of this panel."
