In the ongoing discussion about Komen funding for Planned Parenthood, it is essential that people understand the central issue, which is Komen funding an organization whose activities actually contribute to the incidence of breast cancer. One commenter on yesterday’s post, Dave Bunnell, left a very succinct statement with a perfect analogy to capture the essence of this debate. I thought it deserved its own post. Thanks, Dave. You’ve nailed it!

Reblogged this on The Bunnell Blog and commented:
Planned Parenthood’s activities increase breast cancer rate more than anything else Komen Foundation does decreases it. For Komen to give into PP’s campaign of lies and pressure to give them money would be like Mothers Against Drunk Driving letting Budweiser shake them down for funds.

Of the many incongruities arising from last week’s savaging of the Susan G. Komen Foundation by Planned Parenthood and its minions, the greatest single seeming incongruity is the disproportionate attack on Komen in light of the paltry sum of money involved.

Planned Parenthood is a $1 Billion per year organization who stood to lose $600,000 in Komen grant money. Organizations routinely loose that much money, and more when grants are not renewed, and they are organizations for whom $600,000 is the difference between life and death for the organization.

For Planned Parenthood, the loss of Komen funding represented 6/10 of 1/1000 of their budget. So what’s going on here?

It wasn’t the money at issue, it’s what Komen’s support means for the organization. Planned Parenthood makes their money performing abortions, mostly on young people. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director, Abby Johnson, tells of how the corporate model at PP was built around abortions.

The charade of concern for women’s breast health is the only socially acceptable vestige left for the organization’s bruised and tatttered reputation. Planned Parenthood performed manual breast exams and referred women to mammogram centers. In some instances, it appears that they paid for the mammograms.

However, Planned Parenthood lied about performing mammograms, and Lila Rose caught them in that lie.

Subsequently, Komen decided that their money would be better spent on paying directly for mammograms, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

Planned Parenthood has an odd way of demonstrating its concern for women’s breast health. They target teenagers with low-dose birth control pills which will fail in their contraceptive effect if not taken precisely on schedule, setting up a lucrative abortion. What the oral contraceptives will not fail in doing is increasing the risk of the deadliest and most aggressive form of breast cancer, triple negative breast cancer.

How much risk?

According to Dr. Louise Brinton of the National Cancer Institute in a 2009 paper, women whose age of first use is below 18 years old have a 540% increased risk. Is that statistic in any of Planned Parenthood’s literature?

The link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer has been known for decades, yet Planned Parenthood dispenses these dangerous drugs to children with reckless abandon.

PP are the lepers of the medical community. They have been caught:

Lying about performing mammograms.

Repeatedly showing willingness to violate mandatory reporting laws for statutory rape.

Violating informed consent by giving women medically inaccurate and fabricated information to coerce them into having an abortion.

Enthusiastically accepting money earmarked for aborting Black babies.

This is an organization that makes no distinction between a ten year-old and a twenty-four year-old regarding sex, contraception, and education. In their own words from page 10 of their booklet, Stand and Deliver:

The World Health Organization defines young people as those from 10 to 24 years of age, including adolescents (10–19 years) and youth (15–24 years). IPPF uses the terms young people, youth and adolescents interchangeably to refer to people who are between 10 and 24 years.

This is an organization that tells children in their booklet, Healthy, Happy, and Hot, that disclosure of their HIV status to a sex partner is not mandatory and just another ‘choice’:

You have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose your HIV status.

There are many reasons that people do not share their HIV status. They may not want people to know they are living with HIV because of stigma and discrimination within their community. They may worry that people will find out something else they have kept secret, like they are using injecting drugs, having sex outside of a marriage or having sex with people of the same gender. People in long-term relationships who find out they are living with HIV sometimes fear that their partner will react violently or end the relationship.

Were all of that not enough, Planned Parenthood has outdone themselves in their latest document, Exclaim!, calling for the abolition of parental consent laws and calling for the sexual rights of ALL persons under the age of 18.

This is the face of a social parasite, of the destroyer of children, of the enormous parasitic organism who preys upon our sons and daughters. All they have left is women’s breast health as the last vestige of credibility, and without Komen, they are sunk.

It wasn’t the 6/10 of 1/1000 of their annual budget that was the threat, it was the loss of the borrowed credibility from Komen that threatened them.

As symbiotic relationships go, this one between PP and Komen is a textbook definition of parasitism. Not only does Komen not need the relationship with PP, but the association is an occasion for PP to engage in a blood meal, feeding off of Komen’s enormous reserves of credibility and good will in the community.

Brinker needs to point out the ugly reality of PP and cut the ties. It would also help if she gave the link between abortion and breast cancer, and the link between the pill and breast cancer their proper recognition.

As the head of the world’s premeir breast cancer foundation, she has an obligation to report the whole truth. If she doesn’t, she isn’t acting in women’s best interests. Unlike PP and the abortion industry, Brinker should tell women the whole truth, and then trust them to make their choices.

Choices that are fully informed.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t trust women, or children. That’s why they savaged Brinker for attempting to withdraw the protective cover of Komen’s good name.

1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

~Luke 19:1-10

Earlier this week, the pro-life community had high hopes as Planned Parenthood announced that Susan G. Komen for the Cure had withdrawn their funding…

…sort of.

Komen would not give money beyond funds committed for this fiscal year to an organization that was under government investigation and who didn’t do mammograms. Komen would no longer issue “pass-through” grants, which payed PP to be the middle-man. Jubilation erupted amongst pro-lifers and the word went out to start funding Komen.

Then came yesterday’s clarification by Komen. They will not fund organizations under criminal investigation (but exempted “political” investigations). Further, they reaffirmed their commitment to funding the existing grants, and preserved PP’s eligibility to apply for future grants.

That doesn’t mean PP will actually get the grants. Theoretically, any women’s health agency is eligible to apply.

Then the word went out in many pro-life quarters to stop funding Komen until we see how this clarification plays itself out. As institutional and political policy goes, that’s pretty sound advice. There is, however, a very human dimension that such policy overlooks, and we need to examine that dimension in light of the Gospel story shared above.

Jesus didn’t wait for sinners to convert before He called to them, ate and drank with them. That peeved the religious leadership of His day. He didn’t demand conversion as a precondition for His love. Conversion was the consequence of being encountered by the love of Jesus.

Zacchaeus was the Cecile Richards of his day. He defrauded his people as he collected taxes for the Roman occupiers. Like Richards, he was a social leper, a pariah. Brinker’s support of PP and her association with Richards has made her little better in the eyes of pro-lifers, a status not altogether undeserved.

I have written about this unholy alliance, as have many, many others. In December, Komen began to change course. Planned Parenthood has had six weeks to organize and gin up their attack machine, making it appear as though there was a groundswell of support for PP and disgust for Komen. Something is being missed here, regarding Brinker.

She has been in bed with PP for years. We ardently desire to see that relationship end, however it should be noted that Satan doesn’t let go easily when we try to climb out of bed with him. Such was the case this week when Komen was savagely attacked, and for what?

Not funding Planned Parenthood for not doing mammograms.

Facing an existential threat, Komen backpedaled.

The response from the pro-life community ought to be the full embrace of Brinker, to let her know that it will be alright in the end. We should gin up our own attack machine against any corporation that breaks faith with Komen because they dare to fund actual mammograms over PP’s cheap squeeze. We should savage any group that dares to castigate Komen for wanting the best for our women, instead of second-best.

No, Brinker is unlikely to come up to the communion rail and profess Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior.

No, there won’t be a made-for-TV moment of conversion.

If that’s what people were expecting, forget it.

Brinker has a tiger by the tail and got a good lesson in how badly mauled she can get for letting go. Now she’s reeling from the mauling, and this is no time for us to sit on our hands. This is when she needs our support the most. Her conversion will be gradual, and painful. The magnitude of her past sin in bedding down with PP determines the magnitude of the consequences for breaking those ties, and the magnitude of support she will need in going forward.

We need to meet with Brinker, in private and in strictest confidence to ascertain her needs and how we can help Komen be all that it can be ethically and morally in its vital mission in saving women’s lives. We need to offer her more than a kind word for attempting doing the right thing.

We need to offer her our Christian love, a love that calls to her in her own self-imposed social exile as Jesus called to Zacchaeus in his, a love that is unconditional. Then we need to embrace each change, no matter how small.

Nancy Brinker is a woman who has tried to chart a new course and was savaged with a hellish fury this week. The question for us this week is who we wish to emulate:

Jesus, or the crowd who muttered, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Until Brinker shoves us away definitively, I’m with Jesus. I’ll gladly dine with Nancy Brinker and support her in any way that I can. She is a woman of great influence for good or ill, and that is why Hell unleashed its minions on her this week.

Pray for her.

It’s been a blistering and draining week with the Komen story. As tomorrow’s Gospel tells us, Jesus often withdrew to prayer and solitude, and so am I today. Time for a retreat weekend. Here is an outstanding homily given by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the eve of his election to the Chair of Peter. It addresses what we all need to know and understand in our hearts, what we need to do in order to fortify ourselves.

At this hour of great responsibility, we hear with special consideration what the Lord says to us in his own words. From the three readings I would like to examine just a few passages which concern us directly at this time.

The first reading gives us a prophetic depiction of the person of the Messiah – a depiction which takes all its meaning from the moment Jesus reads the text in the synagogue in Nazareth, when he says: “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4,21). At the core of the prophetic text we find a word which seems contradictory, at least at first sight. The Messiah, speaking of himself, says that he was sent “To announce a year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God” (Is 61,2). We hear with joy the news of a year of favor: divine mercy puts a limit on evil – the Holy Father told us. Jesus Christ is divine mercy in person: encountering Christ means encountering the mercy of God. Christ’s mandate has become our mandate through priestly anointing. We are called to proclaim – not only with our words, but with our lives, and through the valuable signs of the sacraments, the “year of favor from the Lord”. But what does the prophet Isaiah mean when he announces the “day of vindication by our God”? In Nazareth, Jesus did not pronounce these words in his reading of the prophet’s text – Jesus concluded by announcing the year of favor. Was this, perhaps, the reason for the scandal which took place after his sermon? We do not know. In any case, the Lord gave a genuine commentary on these words by being put to death on the cross. Saint Peter says: “He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross” (1 Pe 2,24). And Saint Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians: “Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree’, that the blessing of Abraham might be extended to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” (Gal 3, 13s).

The mercy of Christ is not a cheap grace; it does not presume a trivialization of evil. Christ carries in his body and on his soul all the weight of evil, and all its destructive force. He burns and transforms evil through suffering, in the fire of his suffering love. The day of vindication and the year of favor meet in the paschal mystery, in Christ died and risen. This is the vindication of God: he himself, in the person of the Son, suffers for us. The more we are touched by the mercy of the Lord, the more we draw closer in solidarity with his suffering – and become willing to bear in our flesh “what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ” (Col 1, 24).

In the second reading, the letter to the Ephesians, we see basically three aspects: first, the ministries and charisms in the Church, as gifts of the Lord risen and ascended into heaven. Then there is the maturing of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, as a condition and essence of unity in the body of Christ. Finally, there is the common participation in the growth of the body of Christ – of the transformation of the world into communion with the Lord.

Let us dwell on only two points. The first is the journey towards “the maturity of Christ” as it is said in the Italian text, simplifying it a bit. More precisely, according to the Greek text, we should speak of the “measure of the fullness of Christ”, to which we are called to reach in order to be true adults in the faith. We should not remain infants in faith, in a state of minority. And what does it mean to be an infant in faith? Saint Paul answers: it means “tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery” (Eph 4, 14). This description is very relevant today!

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.

However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an “Adult” means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith – only faith – which creates unity and takes form in love. On this theme, Saint Paul offers us some beautiful words – in contrast to the continual ups and downs of those were are like infants, tossed about by the waves: (he says) make truth in love, as the basic formula of Christian existence. In Christ, truth and love coincide. To the extent that we draw near to Christ, in our own life, truth and love merge. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like “a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal” (1 Cor 13,1).

Looking now at the richness of the Gospel reading, I would like to make only two small observations. The Lord addresses to us these wonderful words: “I no longer call you slaves…I have called you friends” (Jn 15,15). So many times we feel like, and it is true, that we are only useless servants. (cf Lk 17,10). And despite this, the Lord calls us friends, he makes us his friends, he gives us his friendship. The Lord defines friendship in a dual way. There are no secrets among friends: Christ tells us all everything he hears from the Father; he gives us his full trust, and with that, also knowledge. He reveals his face and his heart to us. He shows us his tenderness for us, his passionate love that goes to the madness of the cross. He entrusts us, he gives us power to speak in his name: “this is my body…”, “I forgive you…”. He entrusts us with his body, the Church. He entrusts our weak minds and our weak hands with his truth – the mystery of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the mystery of God who “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (Jn 3, 16). He made us his friends – and how do we respond?

The second element with which Jesus defines friendship is the communion of wills. For the Romans “Idem velle – idem nolle”, (same desires, same dislikes ) was also the definition of friendship. “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (Jn 15, 14). Friendship with Christ coincides with what is said in the third request of the Our Father: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. At the hour in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus transformed our rebellious human will in a will shaped and united to the divine will. He suffered the whole experience of our autonomy – and precisely bringing our will into the hands of God, he have us true freedom: “Not my will, but your will be done”. In this communion of wills our redemption takes place: being friends of Jesus to become friends of God. How much more we love Jesus, how much more we know him, how much more our true freedom grows as well as our joy in being redeemed. Thank you, Jesus, for your friendship!

The other element of the Gospel to which I would like to refer is the teaching of Jesus on bearing fruit: “I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain” (Jn 15, 16). It is here that is expressed the dynamic existence of the Christian, the apostle: I chose you to go and bear fruit…”. We must be inspired by a holy restlessness: restlessness to bring to everyone the gift of faith, of friendship with Christ. In truth, the love and friendship of God was given to us so that it would also be shared with others. We have received the faith to give it to others – we are priests meant to serve others. And we must bring a fruit that will remain. All people want to leave a mark which lasts. But what remains? Money does not. Buildings do not, nor books. After a certain amount of time, whether long or short, all these things disappear. The only thing which remains forever is the human soul, the human person created by God for eternity. The fruit which remains then is that which we have sowed in human souls – love, knowledge, a gesture capable of touching the heart, words which open the soul to joy in the Lord. Let us then go to the Lord and pray to him, so that he may help us bear fruit which remains. Only in this way will the earth be changed from a valley of tears to a garden of God.

In conclusion, returning again to the letter to the Ephesians, which says with words from Psalm 68 that Christ, ascending into heaven, “gave gifts to men” (Eph 4,8). The victor offers gifts. And these gifts are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Our ministry is a gift of Christ to humankind, to build up his body – the new world. We live out our ministry in this way, as a gift of Christ to humanity! But at this time, above all, we pray with insistence to the Lord, so that after the great gift of Pope John Paul II, he again gives us a pastor according to his own heart, a pastor who guides us to knowledge in Christ, to his love and to true joy. Amen.

For those women who go to Planned Parenthood, this is a sight that you have not seen to date. It’s a mammogram machine. It’s what Planned Parenthood led people to believe they had and used.

They lied.

Foundations don’t like it when they give an organization millions of dollars for services that are not rendered. They’re just funny about stuff like that, and Susan G. Komen is to be applauded for finally putting their foot down and pulling Planned Parenthood’s funding.

SGK Chairwoman Nancy Brinker is Susan Komen’s sister and has been making good on a deathbed promise to Susan to find a cure for this disease. Brinker could simply put all of her eggs in the research basket and go full throttle on research.

She doesn’t. She has taken a humane and balanced approach by also funding breast cancer screenings for middle-aged women, and preventive education for younger women.

The problem is that she gave millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, who said they performed mammograms, but only performed manual breast exams (feeling for lumps). That’s a problem. In the spectrum of clinical services, a manual exam is orders of magnitude less effective at detection than a mammogram.

The narrative against Komen is that needy women will now suffer because Komen is going to…

…wait for it…

…Fund organizations that will do actual mammograms for needy women.

So vexed is the Planned Parenthood crowd that New York’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg has offered Planned Parenthood a $250,000 matching grant for fundraising. This means that PP will have $500,000 within a week to continue their manual breast exams on women.

Too bad New York’s billionaire mayor didn’t seize on the opportunity to purchase an actual mammogram machine for New York’s hundreds of thousands of low-income women. Instead, he continues to fund the building of PP’s Potemkin villages.

Though it seems longer, it was only last year that Lila Rose released undercover videos of PP nurses advising a “pimp” and his bottom girl to take their teenage prostitutes to the county health department for free services if they lacked health insurance or cash.

Is that not the reason why city, state, federal, and foundation money (such as Komen’s) was given to PP in the first place?

Hear the lie directly from Cecile Richards’ own mouth, and the truth from PP employees regarding the mammograms:

The response of PP is to claim that they provide referrals for mammograms, which is pretty weak, at best. PP may also have reimbursed some centers for mammograms, but why the middle-man?

Not detecting a lump by manual exam does not mean that there are no lumps. If palpation were as good as a mammogram, we wouldn’t perform the mammograms at all. That’s pretty basic stuff. So why does PP need Komen’s money? Because PP needs money. Period.

For the best chance at catching cancer in its earliest stages, women will need a mammogram referral anyway, regardless of lump detection. So why can’t PP just give the referral over the phone when women call, or hand it to them when they walk in off the street?

Because mediocrity never concerns itself with excellence in patient care. Mediocrity is all about the money. Komen has made a wise and ethical business decision by cutting out the middle-man and funding actual mammograms. Mediocrity’s reply?

Women are going to suffer and die because Komen prefers to fund actual mammograms over squeezing breasts.

What PP has not said is that they are so committed to women’s health that their staff are all donating five hours per week to perform their manual breast screenings and give referrals for mammograms.

They haven’t said it because that’s not part of the business model.

This is PP’s most dire hour. If Komen is allowed to pull up stakes without being savaged, plenty of big corporations will pull up stakes as well. Plan to see corporations abandoning Komen, not out of anger at Komen, but for fear of Planned Parenthood. There is a simple strategy to blunt PP’s attack.

Komen, TODAY, needs to announce a new inner-city initiative where they will purchase mammogram machines for the neediest urban centers, where local governments will provide low-cost, and medicaid-subsidized mammograms as the answer to PP’s cheap squeeze. They should then issue a call to all major corporations to join in this effort.

And what better month to do it in than Black History Month where we turn our attention to racism’s residue, which has left us with enduring inequities? Given the frightful incidence of breast cancer in the Black community, it’s an initiative whose time has come.

Komen can seize this opportunity and lead the way with excellence as the antidote to Planned Parenthood’s mediocrity.

Dear Ms. Brinker,

As one who has been at odds with SGK over your organization’s funding of Planned Parenthood, I write today to offer you my heartfelt gratitude and congratulations for the principled and prudential position that you have taken in defunding Planned Parenthood.

Having lost many family members to cancer, and having several close friends experience the ravages of breast cancer, I’ve experienced this issue intimately and laud you for making good on your deathbed promise to your sister, Susan. You have done what so many researchers could only dream of.

You have rallied an entire nation around women and the disease that strikes fear not only into their hearts, but into the hearts of the men who love them passionately. You have raised hundreds of millions of research dollars and in so doing have advanced the understanding of molecular medicine in the field of oncology far beyond where it would be today, but for your foundation’s single-mindedness of purpose.

In all of that focus on research, you have not forgotten the women of today who lack the means for appropriate breast screening utilizing state of the art mammography, and the need for younger women to be educated in prevention. Toward that end, it is my understanding that you and Planned Parenthood saw a shared mission and purpose in the field of women’s health where breast cancer screening and prevention were concerned.

Many of us heard of your largesse in funding breast screenings at Planned Parenthood, screenings which we were told included mammograms. Tragically, we have come to know that Planned Parenthood lied about performing mammograms, and in so doing took money from SGK that might have otherwise benefited women through mammography elsewhere, or through additional research.

Over the past few years, repeated sting operations have time and again caught Planned Parenthood acting with treachery:

Lying about performing mammograms.
Aiding in what they perceived to be the sex trafficking of minors.
Suborning lies from perceived minors to skirt reporting of statutory rape.
Lying about the developmental status of the baby they were about to abort.

And on, and on…

SGK’s February 1, 2012 statement of clarification speaks very clearly as to why the defunding took place:

We are dismayed and extremely disappointed that actions we have taken to strengthen our granting process have been widely mischaracterized. It is necessary to set the record straight.

We regret that these new policies have impacted some longstanding grantees, such as Planned Parenthood, but want to be absolutely clear that our grant-making decisions are not about politics. Throughout our 30 year history, our priority has always been and will continue to be the women we serve. As we move forward, we are working to ensure that there is no interruption or gaps in services for the women who need our support most in the fight against breast cancer.

Indeed your stringent criteria leave little room for organizations that are repeatedly caught in sting operations either lying to, or suborning lies from young people. Such criteria also no doubt would require an organization such as Planned Parenthood to actually perform the mammograms they claim to perform, or at the very least, set the record straight when others make such false claims on their behalf.

So now you are being assailed by Planned Parenthood and their devotees for being…

…what?

Anti-women’s health?

That’s a tough narrative to sell where SGK is concerned.

If the word circulating on the internet is true, Planned Parenthood has raised over $400,000 in response to your withdrawal of funding. This is indeed good news all around. Planned Parenthood has demonstrated repeatedly that when monies are withdrawn they have the capability of stepping up and doing the necessary fundraising to offset and replace the lost income. That is a cardinal sign of a strong and financially healthy organization. It means that SGK can give their support elsewhere, confident in knowing that Planned Parenthood can thrive without your support.

You have acted here with the highest integrity and moral courage. Your manifest integrity should serve as a beacon to corporations that currently fund Planned Parenthood, and who might fear the backlash and vilifying you have been receiving should they similarly redirect their money. I would encourage those corporations to fund real women’s health initiatives by funding Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Such a move would indemnify themselves against Planned Parenthood’s predictable allegation of hating women and not supporting women’s health. It would also increase your efficacy in accelerating the arrival of that day when this terrible scourge becomes a thing of the past. Perhaps corporations switching their support might in conjunction with SGK establish a program of purchasing and donating mammogram machines to areas of need, especially for low-income women.

For now, Ms. Brinker, my heartfelt congratulations and gratitude once again for your principled leadership in upholding your exacting standards with equally rigorous equanimity, regardless of the consequences. Through your principled leadership, many more women’s lives will be saved, and many more women made whole once again.

God Bless You,

Gerard M. Nadal, Ph.D.

The first paper I ever wrote in graduate school was a review of the literature on Leprosy. It is a disease transmitted by contact that we now know to be caused by a close first cousin of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, and can be cured using the same antibiotics that we use against TB. This miracle of 20th Century medicine has emptied the leper colonies, arresting and eliminating the disease in its earliest stages before it maims and disfigures its victims.

Sunlight seems to be having the same salutary effect on the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and they have elected to leave the leper colony, as Planned Parenthood languishes with the increasing ravages of their disfigurement, unwilling to take the medicine that would end the insideous effects of their disease. It’s actually too late for Planned Parenthood, but for Komen, there is yet hope.

The sunlight began to pierce the darkness back in 2007, when Dorinda Bordlee, Vice President and Senior Counsel of the Bioethics Defense Fund met Eve Sanchez Silver who told her about her about the Komen-Planned Parenthood funding link. Silver, a breast cancer survivor and charter member of Komen’s Hispanic/Latina Advisory Council, resigned from Komen, stating,

As a Christian and life affirming citizen I can not reconcile the Foundation’s decision to affirm life with one hand and support its destruction with the other.

Bordlee began to research Komen’s grant database to confirm Silver’s claims. The most recent data available to her back then were the 2005 numbers which showed over $700,000 in grants made by certain Komen state affiliates to their local Planned Parenthood clinics. Subsequent grant totals can be read here at BDF’s site. BDF’s initial findings were picked up and pursued by a great many who then launched their own investigations.

It was discovered that Komen Founder, Nancy Brinker (Susan Komen’s sister), sat on the board of Planned Parenthood in North Texas. Jill Stanek wrote two great articles about the links between Komen and PP.

At the heart of the matter lies three essential issues regarding the deplorable decision by Komen to fund PP:

1. The causal link between breast cancer and abortion (ABC link).
2. The causal link between breast cancer and oral contraceptives.
3. The fact that Planned Parenthood does NOT do mammograms.

Yes the ABC link is hotly disputed, and only because radical proabort researchers have lied through their teeth about the literature. I’ve written 56 articles dealing with this link, which can be read here. Placing that contentious issue to the side, along with PP’s complicity in placing women at risk for breast cancer through their abortion services, we need to look at the role of PP in dispensing oral contraceptives, which have been well established causes of breast cancer.

In 2009, the same Dr. Louise Brinton who is Branch Chief in Epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute, and who chaired the sham 2003 workshop denying the ABC link, coauthored a 2009 paper in which she listed abortion and oral contraceptives under known or suspected risk factors for breast cancer. The reference for the paper follows at the end of the article.

In their paper, the authors list in Table 4. Multivariate adjusted case-control odds ratios for all breast cancer cases, triple-negative
and non-triple-negative cases, in relation to oral contraceptive risk factors, stratified by age at diagnosis under age 40 and
41-45 y, the following devastating information.

The risks for acquiring the deadliest, most aggressive and difficult to treat form of breast cancer, Triple Negative Breast Cancer based on age of first use of oral contraceptives is:

Age 22+: 250%
Age 18-22: 270%
Age Under 18: 540%

These numbers, from some of the finest minds in science, beg the question:

What would possess an organization such as Komen to ever fund an organization that dispenses birth control pills like candy? Could it be the claim that PP does life-saving breast screenings?

Certainly, Senator Barbara Boxer has been quite vocal about PP’s “mammograms”, as reported here.

In truth, PP does NOT perform mammograms. When one hears the term, “breast screening” or “breast cancer screening”, one tends to envision a mammogram. Instead, PP’s screening is a palpation of the breast, checking for detectable lumps. So, yes, if a lump is detected, and if the lump is cancerous, that could be lifesaving. But if no lump is detected? Is the woman given a referral for a mammogram?

It is the mammogram that is essential.

A woman’s best chances at beating her cancer are when the cancer is found through mammography before it is large enough to be palpated, or found through mammography in women whose breast density make it difficult to detect by palpation. By funding PP, Komen funded the abortions that lead to increased risk of breast cancer, the distribution of oral contraceptives which are well known to cause breast cancer, and the lie that women were receiving mammograms.

In an era where less than 10% of research grants are receiving federal money, there is no dearth of scientists in desperate need of funding for legitimate research purposes. One can barely walk the corridors of a university without bumping into them, so Komen should have no difficulty at all in finding and funding worthy Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s who simply cannot access the ever-dwindling supply of federal research dollars.

As far as funding prevention efforts, the neglect of the Dolle and Brinton study, or the many other papers showing oral contraception’s role in breast cancer is tantamount to a crime.

Komen is to be applauded for getting out of the leper colony and breaking its funding ties with one of the largest purveyors of death on the planet. The great work of antisepsis begun by Eve Silver and Dorinda Bordlee that was picked up and furthered by thousands will help Komen more fully achieve Nancy Brinker’s deathbed promise to her sister to do all she could to find a cure. Now that Komen is out of funding causality and lies, they may see a more robust financial future, which we all pray may help speed the end of this scourge which afflicts so many of our wives, mothers, sisters, friends, and other loved ones.

As for Planned Parenthood the mask has been ripped away, in no small measure by Lila Rose and her associates, revealing the true face of the leprosy lurking under the guise of women’s healthcare.

Reference:

Risk Factors for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer in Women
Under the Age of 45 Years

Jessica M. Dolle,1 Janet R. Daling,1 Emily White,1,3 Louise A. Brinton,4 David R. Doody,1
Peggy L. Porter,2 and Kathleen E. Malone1,3
Divisions of 1Public Health Sciences and 2Human Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; 3Department of Epidemiology, University of
Washington, Seattle, Washington; and 4Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland

Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(4). April 2009

“Trust Women”

That was the admonishment of the deceased late-term abortionist, Dr. George Tiller. It’s also the admonishment of the rest of the pro-choice crowd. Too bad they really don’t mean it.

Trust women.

Pregnancy resource centers are filled with women who are being coerced to abort their babies, who are desperate for someone, anyone to throw them a lifeline. They’re the lucky ones who find the help and hope. The women entering abortion clinics are not so fortunate. I listened to quite a few of them at the Supreme Court steps this past Monday.

Most spoke of coercion from their boyfriends, other friends, family, and abortion clinic staff. Coercion manifests in a host of ways.

Trust women.

Boyfriends threaten an end to the relationship unless the woman aborts. They become petulant and emotionally distant. In the end, they move on anyway.

Trust women.

Parents use shame and guilt, again the threat of loss of love, of standing, of belonging.

Trust women.

Friends will do pretty much the same. Along with boyfriends and family, they will remind the woman of the education and/or career that she stands to lose by having the baby.

Trust women.

Abortion clinic staff will tell the woman that “It’s just a blob of tissue, just a clump of cells,” for babies at 4,6,8,12, 16 weeks of gestation. They lie about the link between abortion and breast cancer. They withhold vital data on the psychological and gynecological post-abortion sequelae.

Trust women.

Ob/Gyn’s and genetic counselors will use the most base coercive pressures on women whose tests show even the possibility of genetic anomaly or defect. They offer up such sagacity as, “Why would you make your child suffer for the rest of its life?”

Trust women.

Gone in such practitioners is any trace of human compassion. Even for the mother who wishes to keep and love her less-than-perfect child, she is pressured to contract for the murder of that child. Whether or not she aborts, the message from such physicians and genetic counselors is clear and unambiguous:

You did this to your child. This is all your fault.

That’s a nice little burden to pile on the backs of parents.

The etiology matters little, if at all, compared to the opportunity for encountering and growing in love and integrity presented by the special needs of the most vulnerable among us.

Medicine is beset by a metastatic malignancy within its ranks. It’s a perverse and ironic timing for that malignancy, as medicine now has the means to heal, or at least attenuate the worst effects of many genetic conditions. Add to that the daily miracles being wrought by Speech, Physical, and Occupational Therapists, as well as Special Education teachers.

All of this begs the question:

Who are the people that authentically trust women?

The answer is simple:

Those who tell women the truth, offer hope and healing, and respect their autonomy.

Trust women.

I wish the other side would.

Hot on the heels of our medical conference last Saturday, Therapeutic Advances in Poor Prenatal Diagnoses, comes this letter from Archbishop Chaput to the people of his archdiocese. Opposition to this new eugenics is swelling all over the nation. Here is a bishop who makes me proud of my Church.

Earlier this week local media covered the story of Amelia Rivera, a young girl with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome reportedly denied a kidney transplant by a local hospital. Amelia’s syndrome results in serious developmental delays, and according to her parents, the hospital declined a transplant due to her diminished mental ability and shortened lifespan.

It’s unwise to assume that news media get all the details of a story like this right, or that the motives of an entire hospital’s leadership and staff are as unfeeling as an individual doctor might seem. Nonetheless, a couple of things are worth noting. First, Amelia’s parents are persons who love their daughter zealously for who she is, and who know the beauty and dignity of her life despite her disability. Second, the habit of treating genetically disabled children as somehow less worthy of life is growing across the country.

A number of my friends have children with disabilities. Their problems range from cerebral palsy to Turner’s syndrome to Trisomy 18, which is extremely serious. Prenatal testing can now detect a high percentage of pregnancies with a risk of genetic problems.

The tests often aren’t conclusive. But they’re pretty good. And the results of those tests are brutally practical. Studies show that more than 80 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome, for example, now get terminated in the womb. They’re killed because of a flaw in one of their chromosomes – a flaw that’s neither fatal nor contagious, but merely undesirable.

The older a woman gets, the higher her risk of bearing a child with special needs. And so, in medical offices around the country, pregnant women now hear from doctors or genetic counselors that their baby has “an increased likelihood” of a genetic flaw based on one or more prenatal tests. Some doctors deliver this information with sensitivity and great support for the woman. But, as my friends know from experience, too many others seem more concerned about avoiding lawsuits, or managing costs, or even, in a few ugly cases, cleaning up the gene pool.

In practice, medical professionals can now steer an expectant mother toward abortion simply by hinting at a list of the child’s possible defects. And the most debased thing about that kind of pressure is that doctors know better than anyone else how vulnerable a woman can be in hearing potentially tragic news about her unborn baby.

I’m not suggesting that doctors should hold back vital knowledge from parents. Nor should they paint an implausibly upbeat picture of life with a child who has a disability. Facts and resources are crucial in helping adult persons prepare themselves for difficult challenges. But doctors, genetic counselors and medical school professors should have on staff – or at least on speed dial – experts of a different sort.

Parents of children with special needs, special education teachers and therapists, and pediatricians who have treated children with disabilities often have a hugely life-affirming perspective.

Unlike prenatal caregivers, these professionals have direct knowledge of persons with special needs. They know their potential. They’ve seen their accomplishments. They can testify to the benefits – often miraculous – of parental love and faith.

Expectant parents deserve to know that a child with special needs can love, laugh, learn, work, feel hope and excitement, make friends and create joy for others. These things are beautiful precisely because they transcend what we expect. They witness to the truth that every child with special needs has a value that matters eternally.

Raising a child with special needs can be demanding. It always involves some degree of suffering. Parents grow up very fast. None of my friends who has a daughter or son with a serious disability is melodramatic, or self-conscious, or even especially pious about it. They speak about their special child with an unsentimental realism.

It’s a realism flowing out of love – real love, the kind that forces its way through fear and suffering to a decision, finally, to surround the child with their heart and trust in the goodness of God. And that decision to trust, of course, demands not just real love, but also real courage.

The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is never between some imaginary perfection or imperfection. None of us is perfect. No child is perfect. The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is between love and unlove; between courage and cowardice; between trust and fear.

That’s the choice we face when it happens in our personal experience. And that’s the choice we face as a society in deciding which human lives we will treat as valuable, and which we will not.

This Sunday, January 22, marks the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legitimized permissive abortion around the country. More than 45 million abortions later, the damage of that decision continues to grow — undermining our reverence for the life not just of unborn children but of the mentally and physically disabled as well.

We need to understand that if some lives are regarded as unworthy, respect for all life is at risk. We should pray that Amelia Rivera gets the help she needs, and that God surrounds her parents with the support they need.

And especially this week, more than ever, we should recommit ourselves to defending the dignity of all human life, no matter how “flawed” it may seem in the eyes of the world.

Word comes this week that Cardinal-elect Timothy Dolan received a telephone call from President Obama stating that the Catholic Church would not receive an exemption from the requirement to purchase contraception for its employees. Cardinal Dolan is less than enthused:

“It’s not about contraception. It’s about the right of conscience.”

“The government doesn’t have the right to butt into the internal governance and teachings of the church. This is not a Catholic issue, it’s an American issue. We’re strong on this issue of conscience, and that’s what’s at stake here.”

“While I appreciate his courtesy Friday morning to give me a call with the somber news, I had to tell him I was terribly let down, disappointed and disturbed.”

Yes, Eminence, it is about conscience where Obama and the Federal Government are concerned, but it’s about much, much more within the Catholic Church.

It’s about the contending issues of fidelity and narcissism that have torn the Church to pieces over the past fifty years, reducing a once-powerful and respected constituency to a laughingstock in many political circles. Obama’s actions and posture toward the Church, even the election of such a man, would have been unthinkable twenty-five years ago. His declaration to Cardinal Dolan was less a declaration of war than the final, sickening realization that we have had the terms of our self-incarceration dictated to us by the man who embodies all that we have become as a people.

In my 51 years, I have witnessed Mass attendance drop to 1/3 of what it was when I was a child. Since my twelfth year of life, we have butchered more than 54 million unborn babies, millions of them in their Catholic mothers’ wombs. My generation advanced the sexual revolution and spread AIDS like wildfire. Yes many of us have repented of our earlier sins and have pursued virtue, but many of us have not properly formed our children out of misplaced guilt and mistaken notions of what constitutes hypocrisy.

I can’t remember EVER hearing a homily on contraception or John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. I can count on two hands the number of homilies I have heard on abortion, and none, NONE on what makes for a sacramental marriage.

For as bad as it has been, the sex abuse scandal has been the LEAST damaging issue for the Church. That was a very small fraction of our priests, less than 4%. Our marriages are in free-fall, our children torn apart by divorce.

At every step of the way, rejection of what the Church teaches has been behind the disintegration. At every step of the way, we have elected increasingly radical politicians. There is a causal relationship in that pattern.

There is no “Catholic Vote.”

Enter Obama and Dolan.

Their contention, and our current condition, could be viewed as presaged by Abraham Lincoln nearly two-hundred years ago:

The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:
Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois
January 27, 1838

This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?–At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

We are dying by suicide. We are killing our babies by abortion, and now our elderly in increasing numbers through passive and active euthanasia. The preservation of resources and lifestyle are the leading reasons offered up.

Malignant Narcissism and Hedonism.

That there is reason to believe Obama could actually be re-elected indicates we passed the conscience issue long ago. Conscience was determined in our last presidential election. We elected Obama knowing full-well his declared intent.

This election will determine whether or not we’re content with our chains.

Late last Spring I became increasingly convinced that a major area not tackled by the pro-life movement in any coordinated fashion is the new eugenics movement in fetal medicine. Specifically, increasing numbers of physicians are advising, demanding, and even coercing women to abort babies diagnosed with what have become known collectively as “Poor Prenatal Diagnoses.” Such conditions as Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18, Trisomy 13, Anencephaly, Spina Bifida, etc… constitute this constellation.

Over the past two years, I have heard dozens of women tell me their personal horror stories, many of whom refusing to abort and then going on to have a perfectly normal child. We hear of countries in Europe who are boasting that they will have eradicated Down Syndrome in a few short years, not by eliminating the ongoing occurrence of trisomy 21, but by a 100% abortion rate as the diagnoses come in.

Why not tell women of all that can be done to help these babies?

I contacted Chris Gacek of the Family Research Council, who put me in touch with Jeanne Monahan, the Director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity. Together with Jeanne, and with the advice of Peg Kolm of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, and my good friend Leticia Velasquez who co-founded KIDS (Keep Infants with Down Syndrome), a working group formed around the idea of having a full day medical conference for medical professionals and the public alike. What emerged from this group is the Council on Poor Prenatal Diagnoses and Therapeutic Interventions.

And here we are. A wonderful collaborative project with others including the Lejeunne Foundation on therapeutics from the womb and throughout the individual’s life.

The conference on Saturday will be live webcast from FRC Headquarters in Washington, and is free to sign up and watch. Just follow this link to register. (We’re pretty near our limit for in-person attendance)

Conference main speakers will address the tidal wave of therapeutic interventions available for these children. They include:

John Bruchalski, M.D.
Byron Calhoun, M.D.
Alberto Costa, M.D., Ph.D.
Jeanne Monahan, M.A.
Gerard Nadal, Ph.D.
David Prentice, Ph.D.
Laura Toso, M.D.

In addition, we’ll be hearing the witness of Samuel Armas, the little baby who had fetal surgery for Spina Bifida, and whose hand was photographed reaching out from the womb and holding the finger of his surgeon. He’ll be there with his mother, Julie.

We’re also going to have a panel discussion and presentations by people who have founded organizations to support these children and their parents:

Melinda Delahoyde, Care Net
Leticia Velasquez, Kids
Christopher Bell, Good Counsel Homes
Nancy Mayer Whittington, Isaiah’s Promise
Mary Kellett, Prenatal Partners for Life

Kristan Hawkins, Students for Life

Paper Presentations by medical students.

Documentary preview and discussion by In Altum Productions Filmmakers
Jordan Allott and Daniel Allott.

The conference begins at 8:30 A.M. and ends at 5:00 P.M.

The good news is that there is a group of physicians here in New York who have been thinking along the same lines, as well as pro-life medical professionals around the country who have all come up with the same concern and the same resolve to effect a change. It’s the leading of the Holy Spirit, and just in time. Many medical school professors encourage eugenic abortion and don’t teach the therapeutics. This conference will pierce the encroaching shroud of silence and shine the light on all that medicine has to offer its tiniest patients.

So, starting this coming Saturday, The Council on Poor Prenatal Diagnoses and Therapeutic Interventions is kicking off A Year of Hope and Healing, which will see more conferences and coordinated activity in bringing to the fore the many support and advocacy groups, more physicians, scientists, and ethicists.

Please join us this coming Saturday for the live webcast, and spread the good word!

Again, it’s free to attend on-line. Just register at this link.

http://www.frc.org/player.swf

File this one under, “Thinking Out Loud.”

As years go 2011 has by all measures been a deeply challenging year for me. In the tragedy department, this year has been one that makes the law of averages work, making up for the many years of relatively smooth sailing. A recap and an analysis seem to be in order.

I’ve been to the funerals of five close friends this year; buried my Godmother and last surviving maternal aunt; traveled the road with my sixteen year-old niece who was left paralyzed from the waist down after a devastating accident in September; buried Kortney Blythe Gordon, her baby Sophy, and Jon Scharfenberger after the horrific accident that claimed their lives in October; two weeks later buried my brother-in-law, Joe Calo, who leaves behind fifteen and seventeen year-old daughters; and currently have my best friend, Father Steven Clark, recuperating from open heart surgery three weeks ago.

It’s been one year I hope never to repeat. Some might be tempted to curse God, or at least to question where He was when faced with this kind of year, and there are many who have faced a similar year, and many who have faced worse. The answer is not to curse God when we experience loss, but to redouble our praise and thanksgiving. That seems counterintuitive.

Great loss points to great blessing, which points to the loving providence of God. None of the great people in my life has been my doing, but God’s. They are like the threads of a tapestry which intersect my life for a time (some for a very long time) and then end. What the final image will look like is only God’s to know, but as I look at the many beautiful people who are no longer with us, I come to appreciate more and more God’s admonition that His grace is sufficient for me.

I think of the Apostles on the mount during the Transfiguration, how they never wanted to leave that place, that vision, that beauty. The Transfiguration was meant to be instrumental and not aesthetic. It was a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven for the Apostles who would all (save one) be martyred as they brought the Gospel to the lost.

The beauty of our loved ones produces transfigurations in our own lives, and like the Apostles we can get fixed on the beauty of the moment and lose sight of the instrumentality that such beauty is meant to have in our lives.

We never want it to end. Given a choice between the foretaste of Heaven or the ultimate reality, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d like to settle for the bird in the hand. It’s all that I’ve ever known. I suspect that God understands that pretty well. So, faced with the loss of such great beauty I reflexively thank God for blessing me with such beautiful family and friends, for all of the good in me that has come from their influence.

On the brighter side, my niece continues to slowly regain sensation and some movement in her legs. If Father Clark has had a rough surgery, I can’t escape the fact that when the surgeons went in, they found that he had huge blood clots in BOTH atria of his heart, and his continued presence is attributable to God alone.

I look at how Joseph is growing beautifully in Boy Scouts, how his social skills are growing there at an accelerated pace, how he is forming good bonds with other men who are excellent mentors and role models.

I look at the avalanche of trophies and awards all three of my children have earned in competitive bowling, how they are all developing as dancers.

Most of all for the children, they are growing in their faith, in their scholastics, and in their love for one another and their family.

And then there is Regina’s love.

Looking at the events of a year is ultimately a misleading exercise, as a year is nothing more than one revolution of our planet around a star. The focus needs to be on our lifetime, and the impact of God’s blessings over the course of that lifetime’s continuum.

When I do that, the sorrow of loss gives way to a whole new transfiguration.

To say that it’s been quite a year would be an understatement. Looking back over the year, I’ve looked at Coming Home’s statistics to see what the top ten blog posts were in terms of traffic. Almost all were articles dealing with priest’s travails: Father Corapi and Father Pavone. Rather than leaving it at that, I’ll compress the posts on each priest and report the most viewed one for each so that we may look at what else has grabbed people’s attention. We’ll start with #1.

#! Prayers for Jon Scarfenberger. I’m still completely at a loss for words at the magnitude of this tragedy and the impact it has had on me. Let’s all continue to lift the Scarfenberger, Blythe and Gordon families in prayer.

#2 Freeing Father Pavone!

#3 Susan G. Komen Gives Million$ to Planned Parenthood.

#4 Father Corapi and March Madness

#5 Pepsi, Aborted Babies, Ethics, and Tasteful Research

#6 Pro-abort’s Lies Written by my ten year-old daughter, Elizabeth; it’s the eigth highest all time on the blog. (Proud Papa smiling!)

#7 Pro-Life Academy. Biology: Cells (III) This is surprising, as it’s an article written in January 2010 when the blog was three weeks old. Who says pro-lifers aren’t science-oriented!!

#8 Exorcists Shutting an Abortion Mill

#9 Pope Benedict XVI: Love & Truth

#10 Post-Abortion Agony

Topically, that represents a nice distribution of science, human pathos, ministry, healing, and theology. In short, it captures the breadth and complexity of who we are and what we do.

I have no idea what lies in store in 2012. I only know that I am so very blessed to be walking the road with everyone here at Coming Home. My prayers for a healthy and prosperous New Year for all.

God Bless.

Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register writes on the Death of Pretty:

This post is intended as a lament of sorts, a lament for something in the culture that is dying and may never been seen again.

Pretty, pretty is dying.

People will define pretty differently. For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence. I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is. But some things were different in the back then. First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue. And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.

By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact. That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.
Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different. When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well.

As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable.

Nowhere is this pretty deficit more obvious than in our “stars,” the people we elevate as the “ideal.” The stars of the fifties surely suffered from the same sin as do stars of today. Stars of the fifties weren’t ideal but they pursued a public ideal different from today.

The merits of hotness over pretty is easy enough to understand, they made an entire musical about it. Who can forget how pretty Olivia Newton John was at the beginning of Grease. Beautiful and innocent. But her desire to be desired leads her to throw away all that is valuable in herself in the vain hopes of getting the attention of a boy. In the process, she destroys her innocence and thus destroys the pretty. What we are left with is hotness.
Hotness is a consumable. A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.

Most girls don’t want to be pretty anymore even if they understand what it is. It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity. Something to be used up and thrown out.

Read the rest here.

Pat nails it in his article. Girls have turned themselves into a “commodity,” into, “A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.”

This is the pivot point of a civilization in decline. Contraception and abortion are the bulwarks which buttress and facilitate a girl’s ability to persist in the lifestyle that comes with hotness, with wanting to be desirable and desired, “A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.”

Whereas hotness is aggressive, pretty waits. Pretty invites a man in, and then it makes demands of the man. As Pat notes, “…the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.” Therein lies the great practical value in women holding their dignity, making themselves known to the men they find attractive in a dignified manner, and then waiting to be recognized and approached by the man.

When a girl retains and lives pretty, while eschewing hotness, the bulk of men who cannot appreciate the virtue behind pretty will move on to more fruitful hunting grounds in the pursuit of immediate gratification. Pretty requires too much energy to overcome. While there are some who relish the challenge of destroying innocence, pretty attracts the noble, the good, like a magnet.

It’s self-selective for its complement in men.

With CDC reporting 1 in 4 American girls contracting a sexually transmitted disease before the age of 19 (48% among African Americans), with 35% of all throat cancers being caused by human papilloma virus, new HIV infections increasing steadily, all STD’s (with three temporary exceptions) rising steadily since the 1960′s, some 80% of STD’s occurring in those under 25, with a 540% increased risk of the most deadly form of breast cancer for women who begin oral contraceptives prior to age 18, something needs to give.

Hot is deadly.