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

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.

The recent overruling of the FDA decision to sell Plan B over the counter (OTC) to children as young as eleven years of age has engendered no small amount of outrage by proponents of the FDA plan, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has come in for severe criticism from women’s health and advocacy groups. Setting aside for a moment the undercurrent of abortion and the distrust between warring parties over the issue, this decision by Secretary Sebelius is a victory for the very children the FDA purports to serve and protect.

According to FDA labeling on Plan B:

“Ectopic pregnancies account for approximately 2% of all reported pregnancies. Up to 10% of pregnancies reported in clinical studies of routine use of progestin-only contraceptives are ectopic.”

That represents a five-fold increase in the incidence of a potentially fatal side effect of the drug’s usage in those taking the drug. The very issue proponents of OTC Plan B sale cite for selling to young adolescents, their fear of parental knowledge and involvement in their sex lives, heightens the risk of fatality in the very young.

Aiding and abetting the young in skirting parental involvement fosters a do-it-yourself gynecology where side-effects such as cramping, nausea, vomiting, and bleeding can serve to reinforce and heighten the fear and distrust that led to the child’s self-medication in the first place. Plan B taken by a child with an existing and untreated endometriosis can lead the child into thinking that the lower abdominal pain and heavy bleeding of a resulting ectopic pregnancy may well be her monthly norm. Such a mistake can be fatal, but what is an already fearful and distrustful child to do? It is entirely unreasonable to expect children, who are notoriously ignorant of their changing physiology, to engage in self-differential diagnosis and admit their clandestine activities to the parents they fear and distrust.

In research conducted by Family Health International (FHI), January, 2003.

“… the sine qua non of an OTC-switch is that patients should be capable of self-medicating by reading the drug’s package insert. The above label comprehension tests for Plan B indicate that safe self-medication is not possible for a significant segment of the population. For example, only 75% of all respondents answered correctly that Plan B should not be taken in the presence of unexplained vaginal bleeding. Among the low-level literacy group that figure declined to 69%. Furthermore, only 67% of all respondents understood that Plan B is designed to serve as a backup for regular contraception methods, not a replacement. Among those of low-literacy this figure dropped to 46%; whereas for women of high literacy the figure was 78%. Obviously, many patients do not understand much of the drug’s package insert, which argues against FDA approval of EC OTC.”

If there are any doubts about the ability of children and teens to self-prescribe such medication and act responsibly, NPR published a story about the work of Harvard’s Dr. Frances Jensen that shows how the child and adolescent brain is underdeveloped in the areas responsible for critical and prudent decision making:

She learned that that it’s not so much what teens are thinking — it’s how.

Jensen says scientists used to think human brain development was pretty complete by age 10. Or as she puts it, that “a teenage brain is just an adult brain with fewer miles on it.”

But it’s not. To begin with, she says, a crucial part of the brain — the frontal lobes — are not fully connected. Really.

“It’s the part of the brain that says: ‘Is this a good idea? What is the consequence of this action?’ ” Jensen says. “It’s not that they don’t have a frontal lobe. And they can use it. But they’re going to access it more slowly.”

Do-it-yourself gynecology is bad medicine for the young, and our daughters deserve better than such callous disregard for their lack of knowledge of their bodies, lack of impulse control, and lack of sufficient neurological development to enable them to make reasonable and informed decisions. For those who lack trust in the experience and wisdom of the adults who know them best, it is all the more imperative that we ensure they don’t fall victim to pharmaceutical merchants and their allies who would exploit the callowness of their youth.

For the women’s groups howling with rage at Sebelius, I remember a time when feminism demanded medicine’s best for women, not do-it-yourself gynecology for our teenage and pre-teen daughters.

From UPI today comes news that a team of researchers, including the Guttmacher Institute, are looking into the issue of abortion’s stigma. Here is a new front in the abortion war. In many ways, it is the vulgar inverse of post-abortion healing ministries such as Lumina and Rachel’s Vineyard.

CINCINNATI, June 29 (UPI) – U.S. and British researchers say they are examining the social issues surrounding abortion and the stigma sometimes associated with terminating a pregnancy.

Danielle Bessett, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, and colleagues at The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Cincinnati, the University of California, San Francisco, the Guttmacher Institute in New York, Goldsmiths College, University of London and Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, say there is little research on abortion stigma.

“What does exist focused on women who have had abortions and on their experiences,” Bessett says in a statement. “We’re looking at stigma in a broader context.”

Each researcher is exploring a specific group that could be affected by stigma, such as healthcare providers who perform abortions, supporters of women who have had abortions, the male partner of a woman who had an abortion, women’s experience in pregnancy after previously having had an abortion and women’s self stigma after suffering miscarriage, Bessett say.

“This is new territory into research around the social issues surrounding abortion,” says Bessett, who adds the research will be conducted in both national and international settings, including the United States, Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mexico, Brazil and countries in Europe.

“Understanding abortion stigma will inform strategies to reduce it, which has direct implications for improving access to care and better health for those whom stigma affects,” the study authors say.

It will be interesting to see what their data have to say. The intent, however, is pretty dark, and is contained in the last line of the report. The researchers wish to reduce stigma with an eye toward improving access to “care,” which is proabort-speak for “abortion.” The goal here is to identify the stigma and then embark on a new campaign of verbal engineering in order to preemptively deaden the collective conscience.

This new campaign will be the most perniciously evil to date. The first wave of verbal engineering sought to distort and deny the scientific truth of the embryo’s development. Sonogram technology has since demolished those lies and shifted the momentum to the pro-life side. Post-abortion healing ministries such as Lumina, Rachel’s Vineyard, and Silent No More have similarly done severe damage to proaborts through the ever-increasing numbers of post-abortive women and men flocking to them for healing.

The cat is out of the bag.

Since the proaborts can no longer deny or suppress the truth, they can only acknowledge that abortion does indeed hurt women, and then begin to spin like mad in the newest attempt at distortion. Knowing their evil, it should come out sounding something like this:

There has been confusion surrounding the stigma of abortion. Abortion is nothing more than a medical procedure that terminates a pregnancy. While it is true that the human embryo is indeed a human animal in its earliest stages of development, much of the stigma comes from the mistaken notion that the human embryo is somehow to be equated with a sentient human being, that is to say, a human person. Reinforcing these notions are religious belief systems which claim that there is no distinction between the single-celled zygote and the newborn baby at its mother’s breast.

The stigma, then, is a misplaced sense of responsibility, both personal and global. The role of the counselor is to reorient the focus of the pregnant woman and abortion clinic staff.

If that sounds too far-fetched, consider this week’s quote from that scientific luminary, former Vice President, Al Gore:

“One of the principle ways of [stabilizing the population] is to empower and educate girls and women,” he said, as reported by the Daily Caller. “You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children.”

“You have to lift child survival rates so that parents feel comfortable having small families and most important — you have to educate girls and empower women,” he continued. “And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”

Get the rest of Gore’s story here.

Lost in all of this is the truth of the human person, the truth of who we are. The stigma of abortion will never be programmed out of the human soul. At best, all that will be accomplished is that the researchers will add to people’s confusion, but in the end, the pieces just won’t fit together. We are either integrated, or disintegrated as humans. These folks will add to the disintegration, but will never kill the conscience.

They can’t. We’re made in the image and likeness of God.

Thoughts?

My article in today’s Headline Bistro:

The Internet is abuzz this week with reports from the U.S. Census Bureau that one-fourth of all U.S. counties are dying. The reasons given are an aging population, an increase of only 9.7% in the U.S. population over the past ten years (the lowest decennial increase since the great depression), and migration to more affluent counties in the midst of a protracted economic slump. Demographers call this “natural decrease.” The etiology, in fact, may not be so natural at all.

In the same decade that “natural decrease” has taken place, Catholic bishops have been closing Catholic schools all over the nation, much to the consternation of the laity. So what’s behind the trend?

First and foremost, we are simply not reproducing as previous generations have done. A smaller population has led to increasing demands for higher salaries, as there is less competition in the domestic labor pool, leading companies to relocate manufacturing overseas where populations are large and the cost of living is low. This has a domino effect throughout the economy.

The fact that we have an aging population and are not producing enough workers to support them in their retirement years is an economic disaster. We are beginning to see this played out in state economies that cannot sustain current civil servant salary, retirement and benefits packages, which are far more generous and comprehensive than those in the private sector.

The Church is not immune from the chaos of what many in the pro-life movement call an impending demographic winter. Parishes and schools are closing at a steady and alarming rate, and it makes perfect sense.

I recall my very large parish, St. Michael’s, in 1960s Brooklyn when I was a child. Every Mass was packed on Sundays. Three priests were on hand to distribute communion. By the early 1970s, the church was half-filled. Today when I visit, it’s one-third filled, and with not so many Masses as we had when I was a child.

The schools and churches were built to accommodate the sizeable immigrant Catholic Church, with their sizeable families, including the Baby Boom generation. In my community, families of four and five children were the norm, and families of seven or more children were not at all uncommon. Logic then dictates that if many families no longer go to church or are active in their faith, and if those who do are only having two children, then we simply do not need the infrastructure built to accommodate an active Catholic populace 50-60% larger than we have today.

Sealing the fate of the Catholic schools and parishes has been the precipitous decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Churches cannot function without priests, and a lay staff of teachers has a higher cost of living than the previous communities of religious.

Underlying all of this has been the overwhelming rejection of the Magisterial teaching articulated in Humanae Vitae. Eighty percent of Catholics simply disregard the Church’s teaching about the use of birth control and the obligation to accept children willingly and lovingly from God. Many who decry the parish and school closings are those who also decry Humanae Vitae, and do not see the connection.

It isn’t rocket science.

If we do not produce a sizeable population of workers, there will be nobody to support us in our age and infirmity. If we do not produce sizeable Catholic families and encourage priesthood and religious life as vocations for our children, our institutional infrastructure will collapse. If we do not encourage our children to live marriage as a sacramental vocation, with all that is required of it, our Church will contract like our dying counties.

The “natural decrease” is largely the result of artificial contraception.

These contractions and the suffering and inconveniences they bring are signs to us that perhaps Humanae Vitae was indeed a relevant document. They also highlight for us some of the blessings that come from openness to large families. If we are wise, if we teach our children well, these contractions can be reversed.

The signs of spring are beginning to emerge in the Church. Vocations to more traditional religious orders are on the rise, along with an uptick in the numbers of seminarians. With a protracted downturn in the economy, many are reconsidering the treadmill of pursuit of material acquisitions and discovering the simpler joys of family life.

We certainly have a long way to go in reclaiming lost ground, but there is a sense that a newness is upon the Church. This includes a fresh look at Humanae Vitae through less rebellious and more sober eyes.

My article in today’s Headline Bistro.

Next week I will join other doctors and concerned citizens and give testimony before the New York City Council on the truth of abortion’s myriad effects on women’s physical and mental health, future fertility and pregnancies.

The City Council is proposing legislation that will severely restrict the ability of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) and Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRCs) in their outreach to women contemplating abortion. (Read the particulars here). Council members have swallowed the lies from Planned Parenthood and NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) about the safety and efficacy of contraceptives and abortions, as well as the assertion that CPCs and PRCs speak of these issues with no medical expertise and are driven by “medieval doctrines,” according to one Council member.

At the center of this storm is the president and founder of Expectant Mother Care Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Chris Slattery, who operates twelve centers in New York City. Surrounding Slattery are Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the entire registry of over 250 New York City abortionists, and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Chris Slattery

Chris Slattery’s success has raised their ire. This past October, Expectant Mother Care turned twenty-five. Under Slattery, they have served over 100,000 women with over 32,000 documented saves of children from abortion. At a national average of $425 for abortions (many being much more expensive in New York), that means EMC has deprived the abortion industry of at least 13.6 million dollars. Therein lies the real issue.

New York City is the abortion capital of the United States. While we rejoice with Kansans, who last week announced that there are only three abortion centers left in their state, the absolute number of abortionists in just this city alone is nothing short of mind-boggling. Abortion is big money here in this city, and with big money comes big distortions of the truth.

Chief among the many distortions is the notion that PRCs don’t speak with medical expertise. In truth, Slattery retains medical directors for his chain of PRCs, which use ultrasound technology in their counseling of clients. (In this, I am proud of the role played by my brother Knights of Columbus in our Ultrasound Initiative, where we pay for half of the machine and require the oversight of a medical doctor).

PRCs counsel using medical information from top-tier medical journals. They reported at the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

• By 2008, at least 59 studies had demonstrated a statistically significant increase in premature birth or low birth weight risk in women with prior induced abortions.

• (According to an Institute of Medicine Report) “African-American women deliver their infants before 37 weeks of gestation twice as often as women of other races, and deliver their infants before 32 weeks of gestation three times as often as white women. . .”

• African-American women have three times as many abortions as white women, which accounts for the increases seen in premature African-American births.

• In a 14-year study conducted in Finland, of over 1.2 million pregnancy events, women who chose to abort their pregnancy died of ALL CAUSES combined (disease, suicide, accident, homicide) within a year at a rate 3X higher than women who chose to deliver.
• “According to the research, a minimum of 20-30% of women experience adverse, prolonged post-abortion psychological reactions. The results of the four largest, record-based studies in the world have shown abortion is associated with increased risk for mental health problems.”—Priscilla Coleman, Ph.D. Bowling Green State University

• John Thorp, M.D., of University of North Carolina School of Medicine analyzed three studies and found in women who had a previous induced abortion a 30% increase in placenta previa rates compared to women with no abortion history. Thorp also noted a meta-analysis by Anath et. al., which found a 70% increase in placenta previa rates in women with a previous abortion compared to women with no abortion history (OB GYN Survey, Vol 58, No. 1, 2002).

• 50% increased risk of breast cancer in women having abortions before a first full term pregnancy.

And those are just the highlights. Somewhere along the way the right to an abortion has given way to a mandate to have an abortion, especially in minorities. Ostensibly this is supposed to relieve poverty and increase opportunity. According to that logic, with blacks and Hispanics combined representing 25% of the U.S. population and having 52% (25 million since 1973) of all abortions, Harlem and Detroit ought now resemble Scarsdale and Beverly Hills. The tragic fact is that the inner city is more squalid and desperate than ever before.

Since 1960, there have been over 1.8 billion abortions worldwide – most in the name of relieving poverty, the poverty New York’s misguided City legislators believe abortion can attenuate.

So on Tuesday, Nov. 16, several of us will go into the City Council chambers and meet with certain ridicule as we fight to protect our CPCs and PRCs – centers whose sonograms, in their experience, convince 90% of women to keep their babies. We don’t fear the ridicule. We accept it as evidence of the opposition’s fear of our effectiveness. What we fear is that an illegitimate constitutional “right” is now being transmogrified into an imperative through pending legislation aimed at scaring away pregnant women before they come through our doors. Such legislation will herd thousands more each year to their slaughter.

In the weeks to come, we will be lobbying legislators with the truth as we deliver packets of medical journal articles. As we do so, we invoke the protections of our Blessed Mother and Saint Gerard Majella, patron saint of expectant mothers.

Those following daily are beginning to get confortable with the jargon (I hope). For ease of newcomers following along , please consult the glossary of terms that I’ve written to make the terminology very understandable. Also, consult the post that explains the essential background.

As we continue our analysis of the ABC literature, we turn our attention today to a study that validates the biological model of full term birth creating the terminal differentiation (maturing) of cancer-prone Type 1 and Type 2 breast lobule cells into cancer resistant Type 4 cells. This is an important paper, as it is an analysis of 47 epidemiological studies from 30 nations involving over 149,000 women.

It affirms what is called the protective effect of full term pregnancy, and does so in a striking way. The results of the analysis indicate that for every full term pregnancy, a woman decreases her risk of BC by 7%. For every year that she breastfeeds she reduces her risk an additional 4.3%.

For a great illustration-rich and detailed explanation of the protective effect from the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, click here.

Those who seek to deny the ABC link in the literature often say that it isn’t the abortion that causes the BC, but the loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy.

That’s like saying the bullet didn’t kill the victim, it was the loss of blood.

Title: Breast Cancer and breastfeeding: collaborative reanalysis of individual data from 47 epidemiological studies in 30 countries, including 52,302 women with breast cancer and 96,973 women without the disease.

Authors: Valerie Beral, et al. (Note, the paper copy I have refers to the additional authors being found on the web index to which I currently have no access).

Journal: The Lancet, Vol. 360 (no. 9328), 20 July 2002.

The authors are so clear in their language that what follows comes directly from the paper (all emphases are added by me):

Methods: Individual data from 47 epidemiological studies in 30 countries that included information on breastfeeding patterns and other aspects of childbearing were collected, checked, and analyzed centrally, for 50,302 women with invasive breast cancer and 96,973 controls. Estimates of the relative risk for breast cancer associated with breastfeeding in parous women were obtained after stratification by fine divisions of age, parity, and women’s ages when their first child was born, as well as by study and menopause status.

Findings: Women with BC had on average, fewer births than did controls (2.2 vs 2.6). Furthermore, fewer parous women with cancer than parous controls had ever breastfed (71% vs 79%), and their average lifetime duration of breastfeeding was shorter (9.8 vs 15.6 months). The relative risk of breast cancer decreased by 4.3% (95% CI) for every 12 months of breastfeeding in addition to a decrease of 7.0% for each birth. The size of the decline in the relative risk (RR) of BC associated with breastfeeding did not differ significantly for women in developed and developing countries, and did not vary significantly by age, menopausal status, ethnic origin, the number of births women had, her age when her first child was born, or any of the other personal characteristics examined.

It is estimated that the cumulative incidence of breast cancer in developed countries would be reduced by more than half, from 6.3 to 2.7 per 100 women by age 70, if women had the average number of births and lifetime duration of breastfeeding that had been prevalent in developing countries until recently. Breastfeeding could account for almost two-thirds of this estimated reduction in breast cancer incidence.

Public Health Implications (excerpted and bullet-pointed):

• The short duration of breastfeeding typical of women in developed countries makes a major contribution to the high incidence of breast cancer in these countries.
• If in the future the mechanism of the protective effect of breastfeeding on breast cancer were understood, it might be possible to prevent BC by mimicking the effect of breastfeeding therapeutically or in some other way.
• If women in developed countries had 2.5 children, on average, but breastfed each child 6 months or longer than they currently do, about 25,000 (5%) breast cancers would be prevented each year.
• If each child were breastfed an additional 12 months, about 50,000 (11%) breast cancers might be prevented annually.

Now, what does all of this indicate relative to our ongoing analysis of the literature?

First, we have detailed the normal physiology of the breast and indicated how the number of immature cells doubles in the first trimester of a first pregnancy.

Second, we have discussed the role of placental lactogen in maturing 85% of these cells to cancer resistant cells beginning in the latter half of the second trimester, and finishing shortly after week 32 (mid-third trimester).

We have also seen here further evidence of the protective effect of full-term pregnancy and breastfeeding (with the continued maturational effects of lactation hormones on the remaining 15% of immature, cancer-prone cells).

We have seen studies that indicate a 30-50% rise in the general population of women in breast cancer if they have abortion before a FFTP, which points to the loss of protective effect in bringing the baby to term and further loss of protective effect when there is no baby to breastfeed.

We have seen that even ardent advocates of abortion (I have accepted the corrections offered me in not using ‘pro-abort’), such as Palmer and Rosenberg in paper #1 stand by their methods and numbers, but point to the discredited studies that suggest recall bias in a desperate attempt to blunt the impact of those data.

It is well known and uncontested that estrogen is a WHO group 1 carcinogen. It is well known and uncontested that estrogen levels rise dramatically in early pregnancy, stimulating a doubling of the immature, cancer-prone cells of the lobules. This giant analysis in The Lancet validates directly the protective effect of pregnancy and breastfeeding, and necessarily implies the consequences of no protective effect from induced abortion.

This is not unreasonable to conclude, as the authors are presenting such dramatic statistics based upon the remaining 15% of breast lobule cells after a FFTP! It is all the more certain that when induced abortion leaves the additional 85% of lobule cells in their immature and cancer-prone state that the incidence of cancer should rise proportionally to the number of cancer-prone cells left behind by abortion.

And we’ve only just begun!

ellaOne (Ulipristal 30 mg) is the new and improved version of RU 486. Its mechanism of action is similar in that it blocks the hormone progesterone from its effect of maintaining the endometrial lining of the uterus.

Recall that while estrogen is key to stimulating the growth and development of a new uterine lining (endometrium), progesterone is tasked with maintaining the structural integrity of that lining (to which the embryo attaches). In a normal menstrual cycle, the former egg follicle, the corpus luteum, produces progesterone and dies if no embryo has been produced. Thus the definition of menstruation is progesterone withdrawal from an estrogen-primed uterus.

If an embryo happens to be nestled in that endometrium and ellaOne is taken to block the effects of progesterone, the endometrium will break down, flushing the embryo out in the process.

Whereas RU 486 was taken as a morning after pill, ellaOne can be taken several days later.

The FDA is set to hold hearings on ellaOne this coming June 17. At those hearings we will hear of how this drug is not an abortifacient, that it is meant as emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy.

Enter the verbal engineering.

The pro-aborts have actually outrun their own verbal engineering, which is always engaged in as the necessary pre-requisite to social engineering. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology defines pregnancy as the implantation of the embryo. It used to be defined as conception. However, this definitional change does have a curious logical coherency.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) continues to spawn all manner of derivative evil. It is because of IVF that the definition of pregnancy was changed. A woman is said to be pregnant when she has conceived in her body (in vivo). However, when a woman donates eggs, which are then fertilized in a petri dish (in vitro), the woman is not said to be pregnant, and rightly so. She may have 30-40 live babies in their embryonic stage in a petri dish, but her body remains without child. Thus, a mother of 40 can remain never having been pregnant.

The definition needs to be reworked, back to conception, but including IVF. I propose the following:

Pregnancy: The status of a woman whose body possesses nascent human life from the moment of in vivo conception, or has received nascent human life through artificial implantation.

It makes a difference.

Through the current IVF-inspired definition, RU 486 is held to be an emergency contraceptive. Taken early enough, ellaOne could fit that same definition. However, ellaOne can be taken when the embryo has already implanted, running up against even the current and tortured definition of pregnancy. As such, there can be no doubt that ellaOne is an abortifacient. Thus the pro-aborts are now hard-pressed to find verbal engineering sufficient as to give them cover. However, what they lack in the way of rhetorical cover, they may well gain by brute political force.

FDA is always at the mercy of Congress and the White House for funding. With the demonic trinity of Obama-Reid-Pelosi, do they dare reject this new drug? It’s a dilemma to be certain.

November is coming.

I’m republishing an article by Actress Raquel Welch. A very hopeful sign. Thanks to Deena Stephens for sending it along.

(CNN) — Margaret Sanger opened the first American family-planning clinic in 1916, and nothing would be the same again. Since then the growing proliferation of birth control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values.

And as I’ve grown older over the past five decades — from 1960 to 2010 — and lived through this revolutionary period in female sexuality, I’ve seen how it has altered American society — for better or worse.

On the upside, by the early 60′s The Pill had made it easier for a woman to choose to delay having children until after she established herself in a career. Nonetheless, for young women of childbearing age (I was one of them) there was a need for some careful soul searching — and consideration about the long-range effects of oral contraceptives — before addressing this very personal decision. It was a decision I too would have to face when I discovered I was pregnant at age 19.

Even though I was married to the baby’s father, Jim Welch, I wasn’t prepared for this development. It meant I would have to put my career ambitions on hold. But “the choice” was not mine alone to make. I had always wanted to have Jim’s babies, but wasn’t at all sure how he would react. At the time, we were 19-year-old newlyweds, struggling to make ends meet. But he was unflinching in his desire to keep our baby and his positive, upbeat attitude about the whole prospect turned everything around. I have always loved Jim for how he responded in that moment.

During my pregnancy, I came to realize that this process was not about me. I was just a spectator to the metamorphosis that was happening inside my womb so that another life could be born. It came down to an act of self-sacrifice, especially for me, as a woman. But both of us were fully involved, not just for that moment, but for the rest of our lives. And it’s scary. You may think you can skirt around the issue and dodge the decision, but I’ve never known anyone who could. Jim and I had two beautiful children who’ve been an ongoing blessing to both of us.

Later, I would strike out on my own, with my little ones, as a single mother to pursue a career in the movies. It was far from ideal, but my children didn’t impede my progress. They grounded me in reality and forced me into an early maturity. I should add that having two babies didn’t destroy my figure.

But if I’d had a different attitude about sex, conception and responsibility, things would have been very different.

One significant, and enduring, effect of The Pill on female sexual attitudes during the 60′s, was: “Now we can have sex anytime we want, without the consequences. Hallelujah, let’s party!”

It remains this way. These days, nobody seems able to “keep it in their pants” or honor a commitment! Raising the question: Is marriage still a viable option? I’m ashamed to admit that I myself have been married four times, and yet I still feel that it is the cornerstone of civilization, an essential institution that stabilizes society, provides a sanctuary for children and saves us from anarchy.

In stark contrast, a lack of sexual inhibitions, or as some call it, “sexual freedom,” has taken the caution and discernment out of choosing a sexual partner, which used to be the equivalent of choosing a life partner. Without a commitment, the trust and loyalty between couples of childbearing age is missing, and obviously leads to incidents of infidelity. No one seems immune.

As a result of the example set by their elders, by the 1990s teenage sexual promiscuity — or hooking up — with multiple partners had become a common occurrence. Many of my friends who were parents of teenagers sat in stunned silence several years ago when it came to light that oral sex had become a popular practice among adolescent girls in middle schools across the country.

The 13-year-old daughter of one such friend freely admitted to performing fellatio on several boys at school on a regular basis. “Aw come on, Mom. It’s no big deal. Everyone is doing it,” she said. Apparently, since it’s not the act of intercourse, kids don’t count it as sex. Can any sane person fail to make a judgment call about that?

Seriously, folks, if an aging sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it’s gotta be pretty bad. In fact, it’s precisely because of the sexy image I’ve had that it’s important for me to speak up and say: Come on girls! Time to pull up our socks! We’re capable of so much better.

Here are the CDC data that show what a horrifically effective job Planned Parenthood and their fellow travelers have done in destroying the lives of our young people, corrupting them in their innocence and fertility.

The data are from the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance, 2008. These data are presented as a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Planned Parenthood In New Initiative Targets 10 Year-Old Children With Condoms That Don’t Work. This is the new initiative by PP to finish off our children, pushing all-out for comprehensive sex education down to age ten.

A glance at the data tells the story. Children 10-14 have the lowest rates of STD’s as well as pregnancies. Recall when PP center Director Abby Johnson turned her life around last year and reported how PP is pushing hard for abortions, as they are the principle source of income.

Now link to yesterday’s post, linked above, and look at the data on STD’s and condom efficacy. Condoms don’t work. Even CDC and Planned Parenthood’s own contraceptive bible state as much.

Now consider how much higher condom failure rates and early teen pregnancies would rise after PP gets done completing the corruption of our youth.

As we say in the lab, the data don’t lie. The age groups are in the center of the graphs with the incidence per 100,000 for men and women going to the left and right respectively. The disease being reported is at the bottom of each graph.

Chlamydia — Age- and sex-specific rates: United States, 2008

Gonorrhea — Age- and sex-specific rates: United States, 2008

Primary and secondary syphilis — Age- and sex-specific rates: United States, 2008

Human papillomavirus (HPV) — Prevalence of high-risk and low-risk types among females 14 to 59 years of age from a national survey, 2003–2004

Genital herpes — Herpes simplex virus, type 2, seroprevalence in non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks by age group from national surveys, 1976–1980, 1988–1994, 1999–2004

Ectopic pregnancy — Hospitalizations of women 15 to 44 years of age: United States, 1997–2006

White Bars=Number of abortions per 1,000 live births.
Blue Bars=Number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years.
Black Bars=percentage of total abortions, by age group of women who obtained an abortion — selected states, United States, 2006§

§Data from 48 reporting areas; excludes California, Florida, Louisiana, and New Hampshire.

The age groups may not be so visible along the bottom of the graph. They are, from left to right:

Under 15
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
Over 40

FOX NEWS reports on a new initiative by Planned Parenthood to target children as young as ten years old for teaching the pleasures of sex. The initiative, Stand and Deliver is linked here.

From the Fox Report:

The report, “Stand and Deliver,” charges that religious groups, specifically Catholics and Muslims, deny their young access to comprehensive sexual programs and education.

The report argues that sex education should be “recast” to show sexuality as a “positive force for change and development, as a source of pleasure, an embodiment of human rights and an expression of self.”

Much like a U.N. report released last August that advocated teaching masturbation to children as young as 5, “Stand and Deliver” has set off a wave of protest among religious and conservative groups.

Mechmann also charged that Planned Parenthood’s report was compromised because it has a financial stake advocating the changes. “The difference between Planned Parenthood and us is that we don’t make money off what we teach and say. They do. They make money off contraceptives and abortions,” he said.

Well said Ed Mechman. There are dire consequences for young people. Condoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, simply do not work. Consider the following CDC data:

The graphs below come from CDC’s Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance, 2008, with the exception of the HIV data, which is also CDC data available here. For purposes of classification, I have divided these diseases into two groups: A & B. This division is entirely my own and not a CDC classification scheme.

GROUP A DISEASES

Number of AIDS cases, AIDS deaths, and people living with AIDS, 1985-2004, United States (CDC, n.d.a)

Chlamydia

Genital Warts (HPV) Initial Visits to Doctor's Office

Herpes Simplex Virus

Trichomoniasis and Other Vaginitis

GROUP B DISEASES

Chancroid

Syphilis

Gonorrhea

Explaining the Data

In making sense out of these data, they have been divided into two groups based upon some shared characteristics.

Group A data all show the incidence of disease trending steadily upward. These diseases also share another common characteristic. They all possess the capacity to remain ‘silent’, or asymptomatic in a large percentage of their victims.

HIV Less than half of infected people develop a conversion reaction with its flu-like symptoms.
Trichomonas Though curable with drugs, up to 1/3 of women are asymptomatic carriers.
Human Papilloma Virus (Genital Warts) 60% chance of infection with one contact. Up to 1/3 women remain asymptomatic.
Genital Herpes 80%-90% of people fail to recognize symptoms or have no symptoms at all. They may still shed the virus.
Chlamydia 70%-80% of women have no symptoms. 25%-50% of men have no symptoms.

HPV and Herpes are contact transmission infections. Any exposed skin on the penis not covered by the condom, or on the labia contacting exposed penile skin with condom use, can become infected with a single act of intercourse. These diseases are also spread by oral-genital transmission.

The prevalence line in the HIV graph indicates the number of people living with HIV. As is evident, the rate continues to soar.

The question needs to be asked, with the explosion in condom usage and sales over the past 25 years, why the steady rise in these STI’s? Chlamydia experts believe that the rise in the graph is the result of a combination of better testing methods and mandatory reporting that didn’t come about until the late 1990′s. While that’s understandable, the basal level of infection was not always this high in the population.

Indeed, the graphs all indicate that prior to 1968, the disease rates, even in diseases that had mandatory reporting were extremely low. The graphs tell the sad story of the sexual revolution that really got going with the widespread availability of the pill in the late 1960′s.

This soaring rate of STI’s and STD’s can be explained by the condom bible. Consider an excerpt from the following book available to be read online:

Case Against Condoms: Death by Latex
By Brian Clowes, PhD
Director of Research Worldwide
Human Life International

1 year 15 percent
2 years 28 percent
3 years 39 percent
4 years 48 percent
5 years 56 percent
10 years 80 percent

It must be stressed that these are probabilities for pregnancy, which can only occur one week per month. Slippage and breakage happen the other three weeks out of the month as well.

How then do we explain the data in Group B? Why the decline?

These diseases manifest immediately, and in the case of gonorrhea and chancroid, painfully. People seek medical treatment immediately, as all three of these diseases are curable with antibiotics. Not so for the viral diseases in Group A. There are no silent infections in Group B to enable transmission between a series of unsuspecting partners. Note too that the infections in gonorrhea and chancroid declined precipitously only at the outset of the HIV pandemic in the mid-late 1980′s. That’s when public health officers required names of partners in order to go out into the community and dry up the reservoir of pathogens. The same for syphilis.

In Group A, because the infections remain asymptomatic in so many for so long, the diseases are able to be transmitted unchecked. Unlike the pathogens in Group B, it’s next to impossible to dry up the reservoir of Trichomonas and Chlamydia because they lurk silently for months to years. The viral diseases HIV and Herpes cannot be eliminated, only held in check. To a good extent, HPV resolves spontaneously in most people, but not before being transmitted.

If condoms were so effective and could be rightly credited for the declines seen in group B, then we would have seen declines in Group A pathogens, minimally Chlamydia and Trichomonas, as well.

Some might argue that there is simply an increase in the number of young people having sex without condoms. Certainly some of these increases in Group A can rightly be attributed to this. Even stipulating this point does not diminish the 15% condom failure rate detailed above, nor does it obviate the fact that condoms do not cover the entire penis, hence not protecting against the spread of HPV and Herpes. The false sense of security leads people to engage in more frequent sex, often with several partners either at once or serially, leading to a greater probability of disease transmission through skin contact, oral sex, or catastrophic condom failure.

Finally, there is CDC’s own Fact Sheet on the Male Latex Condom for Public Health Personnel.

“Latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In addition, consistent and correct use of latex condoms reduces the risk of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including diseases transmitted by genital secretions, and to a lesser degree, genital ulcer diseases. Condom use may reduce the risk for genital human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and HPV-associated diseases, e.g., genital warts and cervical cancer.”

Finally consider this statement from the fact sheet:

“The most reliable ways to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), are to abstain from sexual activity or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner.”

It seems very much like a variant expression of traditional morality, which is abstinence before and fidelity in marriage.

CDC gives no guarantees beyond that, and very little encouragement in the way of condom safety.

Dear Friends:

We need your help, so please be sure to read our Action Items at the end of this message!

We are excited about our new YouTube video reporting on the study, Dolle et al. 2009, in which U.S. National Cancer Institute scientist Louise Brinton and Dr. Janet Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center appear as co-authors.

Dolle’s team reported significant risk increases for women with abortions and users of oral contraceptives nine months ago, but the National Cancer Institute and cancer fundraising businesses have made no efforts to issue nationwide warnings to women.

The spin from RHReality.org, the marketing arm for the tobacco industry – I mean, the abortion industry – last week was this. There is “nothing new” about the Dolle team’s findings concerning abortion. Dolle’s team had to include abortion among what researchers listed in their paper as “known and suspected risk factors,” not because abortion really is a risk factor for breast cancer, but only because abortion had been included in the 1990s studies (if you can believe that!).

The trouble is that Brinton and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) workshop in 2003 alleged that all earlier retrospective studies (using on women’s self-reports of abortion histories) were not reliable. In other words, the Dolle team in 2009 relied on data from two 1990s studies that one of its authors, Dr. Brinton, and the NCI had previously claimed were unreliable!

Dolle and her colleagues examined 897 specimens of cancerous breast tissue saved from women who participated in Daling’s and Brinton’s research in 1994 and 1996. They used new technology to test these specimens for triple-negative breast cancer, which was first described in medical journals in 2007.

Dolle’s team tested the specimens for triple-negative breast cancer and matched them with reproductive history. They found a statistically significant 40% risk increase among study subjects with abortion histories for all types of breast cancer, regardless of it being tripe-negative or not.

The YouTube video (produced by Ken Houldsworth and featuring Karly Houldsworth as narrator) is available here:

ACTION ITEMS:

Send Video to Family, Friends
Help us to make the YouTube video go viral on the internet. Send it to your family and friends.

Send Video to Legislators in Congress
Send the video to your representative in the U.S. House and your U.S. senators. Ask them to investigate the National Cancer Institute’s failure to fulfill its role in the prevention of breast cancer through timely warnings. Tell your representatives that government funding of abortion will cause more women to die of breast cancer.

Send Video to Journalists
Send the video to journalists in your area and ask them to investigate “CancerGate,” the National Cancer Institute’s cover-up of the abortion-breast cancer link. Mainstream journalists were overjoyed to report on the few studies showing no link between abortion and breast cancer (although these have since been proven in medical journals to be fraudulent). Ask them to put women’s health first above their pro-abortion ideology.

Finally, doctors from India are making doctors from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association look backwards because the latter deny an abortion-breast cancer link, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Here is a link to a news page from the Pune Mirror in India whose physician, Dr. M.C. Watsa, in his “Ask the Sexpert” column, wrote to an 18-year-old woman that:

“A breast lump can occur after an abortion. You are right to be concerned. See a gynecologist for a detailed examination.”

Click on this link to the Pune Mirror:

http://www.punemirror.in/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=30&contentid=201001112010011122571944450fed873&sectxslt=

Your help is needed in this critical work of educating the public about the abortion-breast cancer link. Thank you in advance for your care and concern.

Sincerely,
Karen Malec
Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer

Little girls are unburdened. There is a lightness about little girls in those golden years before adolescence that is unmistakeable. Its unblemished beauty is like a rose bud, with all of the promise of the splendor about to unfold.

A florist once shared that rose buds exposed to a sudden and extreme chill will not open. They wither in their unrevealed potential.

So it is when youth is corrupted, when our daughters and sons are lured into sex before they have established their own ego boundaries, when sex forges bonds that youth cannot sustain, when the inevitable is heartache-and often times worse. Their blossoming is interrupted by confusion, anger, guilt and shame. The inability to sustain the powerful bonds created by sex leads to feelings of inadequacy and isolation, self-reproach and depression.

The very people holding themselves out as the solution have been the problem all along. Planned Parenthood is aggressive in its efforts to cut our sons and daughters off from trusting in us, playing to their youthful cravings for autonomy. They and their fellow travelers in the Culture of Death have for too long pumped them full of estrogens, stuffed their pockets full of condoms, and lured them to abort their babies when the inevitable contraceptive failure occurred. In the process they have filled them with a false sense of security and left them utterly unprepared for the emotional and spiritual fallout. The girls are not the only ones to suffer.

Contrary to popular belief, boys are not aloof. It’s an act. Boys are as devastated in a breakup as girls. The macho act is just that: whistling past the graveyard. But is the damage irreparable?

Blessedly no for most of it.

It starts by focussing on the true meaning of purity. I’ve treated this in other posts, notably Purity and Play and in, Of Bridal Veils and Little Girls.

Purity of heart, mind, body and soul is the very essence of a child’s spiritual rhythms. It isn’t that sex is dirty, it’s that the beauty of sex is caught up in an entirely different set of rhythms; those of radical self-donation to one’s spouse. It is the inability to deliver on the promises made in physical union that becomes dysrhythmic, and psychologically destabilizing. Sex is a great good that many parents themselves have not always seen or honored as such.

So, first we must reconcile with our past and with God. Then we must be ceaseless witnesses to the great good of sex, appealing to the bonds of love and intimacy created during sex as one of the exclusive goods of marriage. Those who have been sexually active will intuitively grasp that portion of the message.

Young people know how pathetic older adults look when they try to be cool, using the slang of teens; they get what dysrhythmic means when presented objectively in the reversal of roles. They also get it, and are relieved when they are brought to understand that they are simply not ready to deliver on the depth of the promises made in sex. These powerful emotional realities, properly explained, demystify for teens what has been to that point a nebulous angst.

Properly restored to their rhythms they become unburdened again, the unfolding of their potential restored in its function and beauty.

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Photo via mylittlegirlsboutique.com

Bethany, a good friend of this blog, has shared this link to the World Health Organization’s list of Group I carcinogens. The following oral contraceptives are listed along with some other Group I Carcinogens for reference.

From the document:

Estrogen-progestogen menopausal therapy (combined) (Vol. 72, Vol. 91, Vol. 100A; in preparation)

Estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives (combined) (Vol. 72, Vol. 91, Vol. 100A; in preparation)
(NB: There is also convincing evidence in humans that these agents confer a protective effect against cancer in the endometrium and ovary)

Estrogens, nonsteroidal (Suppl. 7, Vol. 100A; in preparation)
(NB: This evaluation applies to the group of compounds as a whole and not necessarily to all individual compounds within the group)

Estrogens, steroidal (Suppl. 7, Vol. 100A; in preparation)
(NB: This evaluation applies to the group of compounds as a whole and not necessarily to all individual compounds within the group)

Estrogen therapy, postmenopausal (Vol. 72, Vol. 100A; in preparation)

[Oral contraceptives, combined estrogen-progestogen: see Estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives (combined)]

Oral contraceptives, sequential (Suppl. 7, Vol. 100A; in preparation)

Asbestos [1332-21-4] (Vol. 14, Suppl. 7; 1987)

Benzene [71-43-2] (Vol. 29, Suppl. 7; 1987)

Formaldehyde [50-00-0] (Vol. 88; 2006)

Gallium arsenide [1303-00-0] (Vol. 86; 2006)

Plutonium-239 and its decay products (may contain plutonium-240 and other isotopes), as aerosols (Vol. 78; 2001)

Radioiodines, short-lived isotopes, including iodine-131, from atomic reactor accidents and nuclear weapons detonation (exposure during childhood) (Vol. 78; 2001)

Radionuclides, a-particle-emitting, internally deposited (Vol. 78; 2001)
(NB: Specific radionuclides for which there is sufficient evidence for carcinogenicity to humans are also listed individually as Group 1 agents)

Radionuclides, b-particle-emitting, internally deposited (Vol. 78; 2001)
(NB: Specific radionuclides for which there is sufficient evidence for carcinogenicity to humans are also listed individually as Group 1 agents)

Radium-224 and its decay products (Vol. 78; 2001)

Radium-226 and its decay products (Vol. 78; 2001)

Radium-228 and its decay products (Vol. 78; 2001)

Radon-222 [10043-92-2] and its decay products (Vol. 43, Vol. 78; 2001)

X- and Gamma (g)-Radiation (Vol. 75; 2000)

Tobacco smoking and tobacco smoke (Vol. 83; 2004)

Most assuredly some are stronger than others. The danger in the less potent carcinogens lies in the propensity for a long-term exposure with its cumulative mutagenic effects.

Also on the list was Chinese salted fish. Not sure what’s in there, but will find out, as it was a staple in grad school.

Check out the rest of the document.

Many Thanks Bethany.