Today begins the inexorable presentation of the scientific literature on the abortion/breast cancer (ABC) link. I’ve written a brief and simple glossary of the terms used (such as case-control, nulliparous, parous, relative risk, confidence interval, etc.) and their significance here. Please consult it as often as is necessary and ask questions liberally.
This gets easier to follow after a few rounds, so hang in there. Women’s lives depend on us getting the truth out to them. In short order we’ll generate plenty of pros armed with the simple truth of science!
Title: Induced and spontaneous abortion in relation to risk of breast cancer (United States)
Authors: Julie R. Palmer, Lynn Rosenberg, R. Sowmya Rao, Ann Zauber, Brian L. Strom, M. Ellen Wershauer, Paul D. Stolley and Samuel Shapiro
Journal: Cancer Causes and Control, 1997, 8, pp 841-849.
• Drs. Palmer, Rosenberg, Shapiro and Ms. Rao are with the Slone Epidemiology Unit, School of Public Health, Boston University. Authors are also affiliated with the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer, New York, New York.
• It should be noted that the research was supported by U.S. National Cancer Institute grants RO1 CA55716 and RO1 CA45762
This study is a Case-Control study.
Cases- “1,835 women ages 25-64 years with pathologically confirmed, invasive breast cancer diagnosed within the previous year and no previous or concurrent malignancy other than nonmelanoma skin cancer.”
Controls- “4,289 women aged 25-64 admitted for nonmalignant or malignant conditions judged to be unrelated to reproductive factors.”
Nulliparous and parous women were analyzed separately because of the increased incidence of breast cancer in nulliparous women.
Results:
With a 95% confidence interval (meaning the researchers are 95% certain that the results are not due to chance) as the benchmark for statistical significance, nulliparous women who had 1 induced abortion only had a 40% relative risk of breast cancer , as did parous women with 1 abortion only. Remember that this risk is relative to women in the control group who had no induced abortions.
So in plain English, women who had 1 induced abortion, regardless of ever having had a child, had a 40% increased risk of developing breast cancer over women the same age, with the same parity status who never had abortions, and the authors are 95% certain that there is no other explanation.
An interesting result is that in parous women (those who’ve had children) the relative risk of breast cancer is zero before a first full term pregnancy (FFTP) and 30% after a first full term birth. This is an inversion of the data found elsewhere. It could very well be explained by the effects of human lactogen in the subsequent FFTP, which matures those immature Type 1 and Type 2 cells that proliferated in the aborted pregnancy, but never matured. The maturing of those cells into Type 4 cells in a future pregnancy, before they had a chance to become cancerous, is a logical conclusion based upon the breast physiology and the relatively long incubation time for cancer.
That there is a 30% increased risk of cancer in parous women whose abortion came after a FFTP may well be explained by additional stimulation of the lobules by estrogen in the aborted pregnancy, without the benefit of lactogen at the end. This would leave an increased number of cancer-prone Type 1 and Type 2 cells behind.
Now, incredibly, the authors suggest that this study suffers from a form of recall bias. This after stating that they were 95% certain that the results could not be due to chance. The authors believe that women with breast cancer are less likely to underreport an abortion than women without breast cancer. They offer no proof of this phenomenon other than the same assertions made by other breast cancer researchers with similar data. In other words, the phenomenon is a baseless assertion reverberating in the pro-abortion echo chamber.
Are we really to believe that breast cancer brings women closer to telling the truth of their previous abortions? Why the acuity of memory in a breast cancer patient vs. the control patients? The abortion question was just one in a long, detailed history taken during the study.
There is no rational basis for believing that women with breast cancer are more apt to recall and report an abortion than any other women. Still, with no proof that the alleged phenomenon exists, no instrument to measure the alleged phenomenon, no numbers on the alleged phenomenon, the authors conclude:
“The small elevations in risk observed in the present study and in previous studies are compatible with what would be expected if there were differential underreporting by cases and controls.”
If I had pulled that crap during my dissertation defense, my committee would have laughed me out of the room. But, as we shall see over and over on a daily basis for months to come, this is what happens when ideology (and not physiology) becomes the prism through which data are filtered.
This October, please consider $upporting the following who desperately need our $upport to get the truth out*:
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
*I have no institutional affiliation or membership with either group. Karen Malec and BCPI have been great resources for me, utterly generous with their time and resources.
The bigger issue, of course, is that even if study after study begins to show a definitive link, and even the most stalwart pro-abortion folks were to concede that a link exists…..I, for one, believe I would still have an abortion in some circumstances, even if meant a much greater chance of cancer later.
Abortion is different from taking up smoking, or developing unhealthy eating habits, or even different from taking birth control pills. The circumstances that lead women to choose it are very often sudden and dramatic, and sometimes, future risks are clearly outweighed by immediate circumstances. (Remember, I was once told by a doctor that a spontaneous abortion had put me at a much higher breast cancer risk, and that another such interrupted pregnancy would raise my risks even further — and yet I opted to take the chance, and try to get pregnant again.)
And really, does anyone WANT to have an abortion? Does anyone really WANT a crisis pregnancy? I am about as pro-choice as one can get, in a strictly legal sense, and yet I have spent my adult life doing all I can, short of total abstinence, to avoid the trouble, expense, risks and the general awfulness of invasive minor surgery.
A lack of moral standards, leads to demoralized people who are unable to assess true information.”The facts tell nothing to him, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures. …he will refuse to believe it…. That’s the tragedy of the situation of demoralization”
“The bigger issue, of course, is that even if study after study begins to show a definitive link, and even the most stalwart pro-abortion folks were to concede that a link exists…..I, for one, believe I would still have an abortion in some circumstances, even if meant a much greater chance of cancer later.”
You have been showered with information L, by Dr. Nadal. Since the “showered facts” are almost winning in your mind(study begins to show definitive link), you appeal to the “personal science” of “some circumstances” as your reason for abortion.
“Scientific literature on the abortion/breast cancer (ABC) link” is the subject of the article, not “bigger issues”. I know you want to be the “pro abortion” pov at this post board, but it’s is a site where a scientist is allowing access to true information for people.
It’s ok that your moral standards are different, but denying scientific facts(truth) based on morals, is exactly what Dr. Nadal is exposing in this article, and other articles. But, it does come to a point where your moral standards are denying you access and the ability to assess true information L, and that diminshes your intellect for a ideology.
On the lighter side, it’s amusing that your mind used the “greater chance of cancer” justification for abortion. You applied/appealed the Bob Curtin principle of life: “You know(cancer from abortion), the worst ain’t so bad when it finally happens. Not half as bad as you figure it’ll be before it’s happened.”
“The circumstances that lead women to choose it are very often sudden and dramatic, and sometimes, future risks are clearly outweighed by immediate circumstances.”
which is WHY a woman should never make the decision to abort.
under these circumstances there is no way she is in a position to make a decision that is life-altering to herself and which is 100% fatal to her baby.
“…have spent my adult life doing all I can, short of total abstinence, to avoid the trouble, expense, risks…”
exactly WHY we have had 50 million abortions in America.
people are willing to do EVERYTHING short of sacrificing their “choice” to be promiscuous – even if that choice will result in the death of another human being. And they will make that “choice” again and again if necessary.
as I have said many times over – the vast majority of abortions are for convenience only.
They are the deliberate killing of another human person for the only reason that that person is inconvenient.
Mary Catherine, I am sorry that you think this way. While abortion is never right, only God knows hearts and can judge the people having them.
Thank you Gerard for doing this series..
Theresa, I am confused. Why are you “sorry” for the way Mary Catherine thinks? She makes perfect sense to me.
Theresa I’m not sure what you are sorry about.
I would never presume to judge the hearts of a person who has been involved in abortions but there are some facts that have been established by stats and research:
Many women DO choose abortions for reasons of convenience. This is a fact. They do not have abortions because of health issues. They do not choose abortion because their lives are in danger.
They choose abortion because it interferes with their lives, their relationships etc.
It is also a fact that some women are coerced into abortions by lovers, boyfriends, husbands, mothers, abusers and doctors.
It is also a fact that most men and women ARE very promiscuous today and it is this lifestyle that is the result of many of their troubles.
Once a person is involved in a lifestyle of sexual behaviour outside of marriage and one in which birth control is a part of there will be consequences (most of which are never considered or drastically downplayed).
Sex was made for the possibility of children and it is precisely this possibility that is not planned for in contracepted sex or in illicit sexual behaviour.
Of course, we are all human beings and we make mistakes.
But some of these mistakes are deliberately chosen when there were better options (like “no”) and better lifestyle choices ( like don’t live together before/outside of marriage).
Unfortunately, it is only after having abortions that many women realize they have been sold a lie – that lie is about sex, about “choice”, about birth control and about abortion.
Women especially have been sold a lie by feminists. The lie is that we can be like men. We can have sex like men. We can have relationships like men. We can ignore our biology because we aren’t different from men.
We cannot. We bond when we have sex. We are better integrated emotionally than men and we view people as persons.
We can get pregnant and create a new life that grows and nurtures within us and in our hearts. Our biology matters.
The other lie is that our unborn children are not persons with rights.
Instead of refuting our biology, and the biology of our children we need to embrace it and tell men that we want to be loved and cherished in a way that is respectful and matters. And we need to defend our children – not sacrifice them on the altar of convenience for our lifestyles, our education, and our relationships.
God bless you Theresa ( your name feast day is coming up next week! )
As a woman who had an abortion and deeply regretted that decision, I can say honestly that I am not offended in any way by Mary Catherine’s beliefs – and only wish that I had been surrounded by people who believe like her before I made that tragic choice.
Instead, I was surrounded by people who were radically pro-abortion, at a time when there was little true understanding about the development of the child in the womb (1982)….everyone I knew believed it was just a blob of tissue, a blood clot. I was 9 weeks.
Those who trade in the parts of aborted babies can harvest the eggs from the ovaries of an aborted baby girl at 8 weeks. One very sick aspect of abortion is that a baby girl who lost her life to abortion could conceivably become a mother long after her death. See Use of Fetus Eggs for Fertility Sparks Furor at http://articles.latimes.com/1994-01-03/news/mn-8122_1_fertility-clinic
I feel like I have to confront Theresa’s comment: While abortion is never right, only God knows hearts and can judge the people having them.
It’s true that God must be the one to judge rightly, but we also can make moral judgments about evil.
Can you imagine saying “While rape is never right, only God knows hearts and can judge the people raping women.”
Put any other “wrong” in that sentence and imagine saying it and meaning it. We only do this with abortion.
We are abdicating our God-given ability to reason our way to truth, and judge rightly before we do such evil.
Thank you Michelle.
I am trying to understand Theresa’s position.
I honestly did not mean to offend her or any woman who has had an abortion. I myself am trying to understand the situation of mothers who have suffered through abortion.
[...] Here is a strange post: The ABC Literature: #1 « Coming Home [...]
Dr. Nadal is citing a case control (interview) study. Such studies *are* prone to recall bias, his objections nonwithstanding. Cohort studies, like the Melbye study in Denmark are not subject to recall bias, and have failed to find a link between abortion and breast cancer.
Chris,
As will be seen, the prospective studies that were done were severely methodologically flawed. I’ll get to them in due course. For now, it is beyond absurd to suggest that women without breast cancer feel a certain shame or reluctance to discuss having had abortion, while women with cancer somehow are immune to such aversion. In actuality, the thought that they could have somehow brought this disease upon themselves is traumatic enough to actually drive recall bias in the other direction. The only justification for recall bias that Palmer et al. cite is that in certain Catholic regions of the Netherlands, women purportedly underreported their abortions, while in non-Catholic regions the reporting was truer.
Then, incredibly, they go on to say that no such bias exists in their study among Catholics.
So, the evidence for recall bias in Europe is Catholic scrupulosity, which is the empiric claim to recall bias in the US, except that Catholics in the US showed no such bias. Add to that the fact that Europeans regard themselves as far more liberated from Catholic moral norms than Americans–a claim buttressed by the lower church attendance in Europe, and the disparity in the transcontinental results becomes even harder to justify. It’s called crap, plain and simple.
There are in psychological research instruments called social desireablility scales that measure the tendency of subjects to answer questions in a socially desirable manner. None have ever been employed in these studies.
The truth is that women do not forget having had an abortion.
The truth is that there is nothing in cancer that makes women zero in on abortion in a detailed gynecologic history and answer more truthfully than women in control groups. It’s an agenda-driven fabrication. The increased RR’s are reported with 95% CI’s, making it harder to sell the bias argument. Stick around. In the weeks to come you’ll see even wilder arguments to deny the ABC link.
We’ve only just scratched the surface.
Tragically, women have been indoctrinated and brainwashed for four decades into believing that their bodies suffer either nothing at all or minimally by swallowing birth control pills, by being promiscuous, by having multiple abortions, and by abusing their God-given feminine nature in order to “empower” themselves and be worthy human beings.
This insidious indoctrination is so entrenched in our culture that without a miracle, it will be impossible to retract.
Add the fact that the world is upside down where lies are believed to be the truth and where the only real religion practiced is the religion of self.
With that said, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for exposing the truth to some who may be able to digest it and live accordingly. I pray that the truth will find its way to those who desperately need it.
Thank you Elaine. That too is my prayer. Let’s spread the truth together!
Whoops, Mary Catherine, I think I missed something up there — did you mean to imply that I am “promiscuous?”
And I think Theresa was only saying that only God knows the hearts and minds of women who choose abortion, and that the sinners shouldn’t all be condemned along with their sin.
Similarly, yes, “While rape is never right, only God knows hearts and can judge the people raping women.” Are they all beyond hope, bound for hell? We cannot say for sure — we can judge the crimes, but we can’t damn the criminals.
“On the lighter side, it’s amusing that your mind used the ‘greater chance of cancer’ justification for abortion.” –>
Eh? Why would that be a justification for abortion? It would certainly be a contraindication, but one perhaps outweighed by other risks.
As usual, though, Astran, I am glad to have “amused” you.
“I, for one, believe I would still have an abortion in some circumstances, even if meant a much greater chance of cancer later.”
“Eh? Why would that be a justification for abortion? It would certainly be a contraindication, but one perhaps outweighed by other risks.”
L, your mind play’s games with itself. Your simply addding and subtracting your factors/numbers for(+) and against(-) the act of abortion. You throw in “circumstances”, “chance,” and “greater” to balance your abortion equation that always ends in the same answer. Even cancer, which one must assume is a “negative number” in your mind math, isn’t able to “outweight” not procuring a abortion
Or, you can play the scale of justice/belief/reason in your mind, adding a pound of abortion on one side of the scale, and to the other scale, add a pound of chance+ a pound of cancer+ a pound of “but”. You can place “risk” and “circumstances” on the scale too. If the scales balance even, place your mind’s finger on the scale that contains a pound of abortion to continue being a demoralized/removed Catholic.
My mind is amused at the power of L holding two contradictory beliefs in your mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.
Astran, I confess, I have no idea what you are talking about there in that last paragraph. I’m neither telling “deliberate lies,” nor forgetting “any fact that has become inconvenient,” nor denying the “existence of objective reality.”
And when you say, “Even cancer, which one must assume is a ‘negative number’ in your mind math, isn’t able to ‘outweight’ not procuring a abortion,” you make it sound as if I am eager to have one under ALL circumstances, which is actually quite contrary to the way I live my life — my “objective reality,” if you will.
I can only conclude that you have as much trouble understanding me as I have understanding you, and wish you a pleasant day.
[...] Coming Home presents the scientific literature on the abortion/breast cancer (ABC) link. [...]
“And when you say, “Even cancer, which one must assume is a ‘negative number’ in your mind math, isn’t able to ‘outweight’ not procuring a abortion,” you make it sound as if I am eager to have one under ALL circumstances, which is actually quite contrary to the way I live my life — my “objective reality,” if you will.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. You must realize that there’s “the real life of L,” and the “ideological commited to abortion, online” L. Just as you were, for a amount of time, a “real Catholic” and then a demoralized Catholic. As your life went by, all the trauma generated by women’s liberation, which includes abortion propaganda, nothing happen to you, IRL. Dr. Nadal is presenting you with authentic information, which you are incapable of assessing in a truthful manner. The fact is, that your objective reality is a subjective, demoralized Catholic reality, and always ends in abortion being a +, in your personal mind. It amuses me to see in your writing and life, that you have always been two people since your personal revolution began. You complicate the math in your mind, with risk, chances, circumstances, but( a favorite of L’s equation math) the answer is always known after all the numbers are run in your mind. You fluctuate from inductive to deductive reasoning to make your math add up. You move from the specific to the general with that little “But” in most of your statements. Then you switch back, in the same “proof” in the opposite direction, general to specific. Inductive proofs are not allowed in a deductive system. That’s a law of logic or reason, for arriving at truth. If such faults of reasoning are used by a person, one arrives at Orwell’s definition of “doublethink”.
“My mind is amused at the power of L holding two contradictory beliefs in your mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.”
The dictionary definition of doublethink, was applied to your double life that you have lived, beginning with you pretending to be someone you never intended of being. I mean no anger, or insult to you L, BUT, that’s why you fail to understand me, or Mary Catherine morally blushes at some of your ideological extremes you present at this pro-life site. I tend to think that you like to make extreme statements, such as gettin’ a abortion even if it ends in cancer, to just make conversation. Hey, that’s ok, it’s just you L.
Oh, dear, I am afraid you have lost me there.
I am quite sure that I am not “pretending to be someone you never intended of being.”
(And I honestly don’t think I was ever a “real” Catholic. When I was a child, I believed that people were reborn as other people or animals. I adamantly believed this despite what I was learning in my First Holy Communion class.)
Anyway, maybe I should put it another way.
Hormone replacement therapy causes breast cancer in some women. And yet, there are women who suffer from severe depression, and hormones alleviate their symptoms, so they opt to take the hormones, and face the higher cancer risk.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18estrogen-t.html
I am open to the idea that the hormonal changes caused by an abortion — and by a spotaneous abortion, like the one I brought upon myself — might raise a woman’s breast cancer risk. This doesn’t change my overall opinion of whether abortion should be criminalized.
And I don’t think saying, “I believe I would have an abortion in some circumstances” is any more extreme than saying, “I would never have an abortion in any circumstances.” Yet you think the former is “doublespeak,” and the latter is *The Truth.*
Hey, that’s ok, it’s just you, astran.
“(And I honestly don’t think I was ever a “real” Catholic. When I was a child, I believed that people were reborn as other people or animals. I adamantly believed this despite what I was learning in my First Holy Communion class.)”
I honestly don’t think I was ever a “real” communist(The Union Of Youth). When I was a child, I believed that people were capitalist, and that God was the Creator. I adamantly believed this despite what I was learning in my Komsomal classes.
Yes, I was pretending to be someone that I never intended to be, just as you were pretending to be a Catholic. I was a hypocrite, just as you were. If one was to admit that communism was illogical and drop the hypocrisy I lived, the penalty was greater then being a hypocrite Catholic as you were. The Catholic religion was a moral mute eventually to you, and a pre-traumatic stress conditioner, that really never left your mind and heart. You replaced your Catholic trauma with feminist/abortion trauma.
So, also is communism a pre-trauma religion.
The past was changed to fit the future in communism, just as past abortion facts/myths are changed to fit the future facts of abortion reality.
When I’m amongst socialist, I honestly say that I was born a communist, but, when I’m amongst those that disagree with communism, I honestly don’t think/write/say I was a “real” communist. I recognize the “doublespeak” that I am, while you can’t see the doublespeak in your life, and self. Demoralization leaves one unable to assess true information.
You never know L, you might be conversing to a person that hasn’t been to a church for 50years. That my objection to abortion isn’t rooted in religion totally, but honor and valor. In science, stripped of all the doublespeak used to continue a action that is nothingmore then a vice unbound. That I find truth in reading JP2, or B16, while you have imposed a self ban on their books from your baptism into the personal truth of the demoralized Catholic.
As for your personal belief in “people were reborn as other people or animals”, have you ever thought of the fact that a “previous person” might be born a virus, pre-destined to kill the person that killed them in a previous life? Afterall, by what right does a person have to murder another, and not have that person that was murdered, to simply search out that selfish person and murder them back.
That a soul was aborted, and then reincarnated as a person, then murdered the soul/body that murdered them. That they meet in the “other world”, waiting to self direct themself into some boring life(with consciousness) in the universe, and the “aborter” must admit their past sin of aborting innocent life and soul, or be murdered once again. That denying that it was murder, simply infuriates the murdered person/soul once again into murdering the soul that denies the truth of the murder. It amuses, all the murder in the world, the whole universe, is explained if one believes in “people being reborn”. There ain’t no heaven, there ain’t no hell, there is just the gods, that will annihilate the murderer of self creation. Gee, that leads back to some bible passage:You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.
I am also a scientist, with several degrees, but I am trained to deal with these types of studies better than a biologist, I believe. I say this because I have criticisms of this analysis, even though I also have read a great deal on ABC, and I basically believe it to be a true phenomenon.
First: I cannot put my hand on references quickly, but I know that I have read studies making it obvious that women report their abortion history differently, depending upon survey circumstances. This is baiscally true for much of tehse sensitive topics, such as drug use or sexual dysfunction. It is inherent in research design. The only solution is to see the pattern emerging across a range of studies. The “control” group is equivalent in a lot of ways, but there is always an inherent limit in case-control studes: the cases are selected exactly because they are differnt from controls. There is no way to get around this in a case-control study. Specifically in this study, it is a reasonable concern to wonder if women with cancer, who are asked abt abortion history as part of a study because abortion is suspected to be linked to cancer, and that link is being examined, are reasonably more likely to be ‘honest.’
That is a weakness, and the truth needs to be “triangulated” by other studies with differing designs.
Second: the 40% deal: this risk is interpreted backwards. Most people interpret relative risk backwards. The correct intepretation is: if a woman has breast cancer, it is 40% more likely that she came from the yes-abortion-in-past group than the never-aborion-in-past group.
To declare increased risk would require that a cohort be developed, and followed across time.
Three: ninety-five pecent sure, versus “recall bias:” how can the authors be 95% sure, while admitting a weakness that sounds like it swamps the 95% likelihood?
This is simply a quirk of the preference for scientists to calculate likelihoods. The 95% confidence interval is an aspect internal to the study. recall bias is external. You can do a likelihood test on fake data between two fake groups where you made up all data yourself. If you make the data up the right way, you can get this “95%” outcome. That does not transform the fake data into real data.
Another way to look at this is: if the data are valid, including any and all measurements, then the obtained results you got from your sample are more than likely to reflect the result you would get if you sampled all women in existence who fit the case definition.
I don’t think these criticisms make the study irrelevant. This question cannot be answered by one study. when you look at many studies, and consider their design weknesses and strengths, this ABC link keeps showing up like a bad penny. In studies where it does not show up as well, or does not show up, there are, again, design aspects, not lack-of-ABC-connection, that account for the lack of relation.
One common weakness is looking at a population of women where the women who are at greatest risk for breast cancer, the older women, did not have ready access to abortion in their early adulthood. This serves to drown out the effect by having great numbers of women with no abortion but having the regular, expected breast cacner incidence. Brind (winter 2005), Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, addresses this.
“Tragically, women have been indoctrinated and brainwashed for four decades into believing that their bodies suffer either nothing at all or minimally by swallowing birth control pills, by being promiscuous, by having multiple abortions, and by abusing their God-given feminine nature in order to “empower” themselves and be worthy human beings.
This insidious indoctrination is so entrenched in our culture that without a miracle, it will be impossible to retract.”
completely awesome comment Elaine!
So this was how we were to attain equality – by abusing our bodies, destroying one of the most significant attributes of the feminine genius AND obtaining the right to murder our very own children whenever we desired.
How sick is that?
Hmmm. “Abusing my God-Given feminine nature” was probably a good move for me, personally, in the early years of my marriage to my partner. (Babies and student loans are not a great combination.) Or did you mean “feminine nature” more broadly? In any case, I did all I could to develop my “feminist nature” instead, and it has served me very well.
Astran, I have never “imposed a self ban” on any books, Catholic or otherwise.
Is it even possible for a small child to be a hypocrite? Then I guess I was one. I didn’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, either, and I duly put my teeth under my pillow and collected the money. But I did believe in Santa Claus (Satan Claus? there’s an anagram for you).
Ever since I was a teenager, I have tried very hard to live an honest life. It is not always easy, because real life is complex — there are many contradictions, not just religious ones. If I am a feminist, why did I marry and have kids and take time off from my career, and why do all the cooking? If I am dedicated to my career, why don’t I work late every night the way some people do? If I don’t like Japan, why am I raising my kids as Japanese? If I miss America so much, why don’t I move back there? If I don’t get along well with my mother, why do I still call her every week? I must be a hypocrite, that’s the only explanation.
Now, it is Sunday morning here, and I am off to mass.
(Babies and student loans are not a great combination.)
I know many young people who have both and are doing just fine.
I imagine it’s how you view babies and money and just how much trust you also place in God.
“Astran, I have never “imposed a self ban” on any books, Catholic or otherwise.”
Durn, my inductive reasoning might have failed me, but tell me, what books have you read by JP2, or B16?
“Is it even possible for a small child to be a hypocrite? Then I guess I was one.”
As a child you lacked the reasoning power to know you were a hypocrite. As a adolescent, you Self baptized yourself in a effort to wash away the imposed by morals/principles of your parents? and church. You became aware that the “principles of Catholicism” was not conforming to your life, or “practices”. You sensed the emotion of hypocrisy. Now, how does one eliminate the growing emotion of being a doublespeaking person one minute, and living out your life free of that double person. Soo, unknown to you, or maybe known, you applied a Machiavellian premise. Since you can’t raise your practice to your principles, lower your principles to your practice, in this way alone can you avoid the hypocrisy in your life. You know, like the Catholic principle in matters of abortion. Or, plain old fornicating. It’s amusing to me that a person that is accused of the sin of hypocrisy will defend themself against the evil sin, disobeying logic principles to not be a hypocrite. Fornicating, which was a vice/sin/principle, is magically converted into a prideful virtue. Or isn’t fornicating not a virtue, L? Once fornicating is the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong(definition of virtue), not fornicating, then one can’t know evil. Of course evil is nothingmore then a lack of good, and the ability to not know good in its fullness. Essentially, “virtue can know vice but vice cannot know evil. The penalty for vice is the vice itself, the not seeing the good in its fullness, the good that ought to be there”(Socrates). Just for kicks, while driving down the road of life on route 66, what do you think is the good in its fullness concerning the sexual organs? Or, the organ named the eye?
“Ever since I was a teenager, I have tried very hard to live an honest life. It is not always easy, because real life is complex — there are many contradictions, not just religious ones”
Opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas must give way to one or the other idea. Dr. Nadal is trying to remove the complexity of ABC. His articles on ABC are to stop the contradictions. It’s amazes me that trying to stop what nature is designed to do, can drive humans to murder their own creation.
“Opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas must give way to one or the other idea.” —>
I have to disagree with this. I will probably always dislike some things about my mother, yet I doubt I will ever sever all contact with her. I will probably always have my love/hate relationship with Japan, and miss my home country, and yet I might very well grow old and die here. When I was younger, I thought there was absolutely no place for someone like me in the Catholic Church — that it was a simple black-and-white no-brainer of a decision for someone like me to simply leave. I realized it’s not all that simple.
And as for “fornication” — at which you clearly sneer — my partner isn’t a Christian. I’m not in a Christian marriage. Therefore, technically, I am fornicating with the husband to whom I have been civilly wed for almost 20 years. I think you might understand, then, why my own definition of sexual immorality differs from that of the Church, and why in my own personal situation I do in fact consider “fornication” — my faithful married relations with my non-Chrisian partner — to be a virtue. Again, not all that simple, except to people who say, “Yes, it IS simple, and what the two of you are doing is wrong, wrong, WRONG.”
I’ve only read essays by B16, but I’ve read much of JP2′s TOB. I have never had a “imposed a self-ban” on any book, ever. I only wish I had more time to read.
(…maybe I should spend less time commenting on blogs….?)
“It’s amazes me that trying to stop what nature is designed to do, can drive humans to murder their own creation.”
yes contraception has led to abortion.
the two greatest evils of our time.
“When I was younger, I thought there was absolutely no place for someone like me in the Catholic Church — that it was a simple black-and-white no-brainer of a decision for someone like me to simply leave. I realized it’s not all that simple.”
Machaivelli can do that to you.
“And as for “fornication” — at which you clearly sneer”
Whoa there Nelly, my definition isn’t the Catholic definition of fornicate.
FORNICATION. An act of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who are not validly married, although they are free to marry. It is by its nature gravely sinful. (Etym. Latin fornicatio, fornication; from fornix, a vault, arch, brothel.)
My definition of fornicate:
FORNICATION. : consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other.
merriam-webster-
“I think you might understand, then, why my own definition of sexual immorality differs from that of the Church”
Yet, you applied the Catholic definition of fornication, not your “own definition”. This “technically” you write of, is to make yourself into a Catholic sinner, where you reject the sin in the next paragraph. Double trouble from double think. Come on, you ain’t fornicating and you know it. Your married. You reject Catholic principles, and one is the Catholic principle of fornicating is a vice or sin.
I mean, feminism promoted “consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other”. That led to a “whole lotta shaking” goin’ on. And once upon a time, you were made aware of the principle and definition of fornication by the Catholic religion. Fornication was a vice according to the Catholic Church. Using deductive reasoning, I might bet you weren’t a virgin before you got married(with all due respect L), since feminism was altering your Catholic morals. Practice and principles are “contradicting” each other. Hypocrisy, double think, and complexities are entering the mind. What was a vice, is magically being converted into a virtue. And soo Machiavelli’s
premise is entered into. Lower your principles to match your practices.
There is no sneer, from me L, and if you sense a sneer, then the sneer is from Machiavelli entering person’s life. Or the misunderstood sneer of Socrates, explaining how one comes to not know evil. The not knowing the good in its fullness, the good that ought to be there.
Have a good day L.
“Oh but I’m just a soul who’s intentions are good. Oh lord , please don’t let me be misunderstood”
[...] are remarkable considering that Drs. Palmer and Rosenberg are staunch abortion advocates. (Click here to read the article, “The ABC Literature #1”)The following is [...]
[...] are remarkable considering that Drs. Palmer and Rosenberg are staunch abortion advocates. (Click here to read the article, “The ABC Literature #1”)The following is [...]