Life Issues Forum

After reading this recent article in Life Issues Forum by Susan Wills, I felt compelled to share it. This is a direct copy-paste, so nothing has been added or changed. Please give it a read! What Susan shares is accurate information that should be made more public, but is sadly not discussed very often. If you would like to read this in its original format, please click here.

A Foolish Inconsistency on Contraception
By Susan E. Wills, Esq.

October 31, 2012

Here’s a riddle for readers. There are drugs so safe, so effective and so essential to women’s well-being that they are recommended for continual use by all healthy women 15-45 (or thereabouts) for 30 years or more, and that almost every employee health plan will soon have to provide them “for free” under the Preventive Services mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

But these same drugs have twice been determined, by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force), to be too dangerous for doctors to prescribe long-term to healthy women above age 45 or so. In middle-aged and older women, they are to be used only for the shortest possible time, at the lowest possible dose.

What could these Jekyll-and-Hyde drugs be?

Okay, it was a trick question. The synthetic hormones estrogen and progestin—used as combined oral contraceptives (COCs) by most fertile women, and in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) by menopausal/post-menopausal women—are only promoted as being safe and benign. In reality, whether used in COCs or in HRT, they’re more like the sinister Mr. Hyde.

After reviewing the latest research on the risks and benefits of pills containing estrogen and progestin, the Task Force offered a sobering recommendation: “Do not prescribe combined estrogen and progestin for the prevention of chronic conditions” (emphasis in the original Clinical Summary). 

Yet in its 2011 contraceptive mandate, the Institute of Medicine treated fertility like a “chronic condition” that had to be managed with synthetic hormones (to prevent pregnancy) for upwards of thirty years! Now the Task Force concludes that when taken as HRT, these hormones significantly increase the risk of serious adverse events in healthy women, compared to matched controls who received placebos.

The increased risks for women using HRT (compared to matched controls) are 26% for invasive breast cancer, 41% for stroke, 61% for gallbladder disease, 205% for probable dementia, 207% for deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and 213% for pulmonary embolism (PE).

Is there any medical reason for these inconsistent recommendations and warnings? Are younger women immune to the adverse effects simply because of their age? No. Research has shown that, at any age, whether in COCs or HRT, progestin is associated with increased risk of DVT, PE, heart attacks, strokes and problems of the liver and eyes. The main difference is that it’s easier to measure the onset and progression of these diseases and conditions in older women because they are more prevalent with age.

Could the dramatically increased risks be caused by higher doses of hormones in HRT than in COCs? No. Typical COCs contain far more progestin that HRT pills. Loestrin, for example, has three times more norethindrone acetate than Femhrt and Activela (HRT pills). Yasmin (another COC) contains six times more drospirenone than Angeliq (an HRT pill), and Ortho Tricyclen contains 2.8 times more norgestimate than Prefest (an HRT pill).

Estradiol, the estrogen used in most COCs and in HRT, is associated with increased risk of breast cancer, endometrial cancer and gallbladder disease. Although the amount of estradiol in HRT pills is higher than the amount in in COCs, women “rarely have severe side effects from taking estrogens to replace estrogen,” according to the Mayo Clinic website—unlike premenopausal girls and women who are given synthetic estrogen on top of the estrogen they produce naturally.

Is it too much to ask that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) be consistent with respect to the two uses of estrogen/progestin? Could they not put the health of young women ahead of the interests of drug manufacturers, Planned Parenthood and those obsessed with divorcing sex from its natural consequences? Women deserve honest answers to these questions. HHS should be warning them about the risks of combined estrogen/progestin in contraceptives, as in HRT, not forcing almost every woman in America to pay for it in her health coverage.

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Susan Wills is Assistant Director for Education & Outreach, Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Go to www.usccb.org/prolife to learn more about the bishops' pro-life activities.

Wake Up Call

This article is the main topic of discussion here. It is Ms. Cecile Richards, proclaiming that 99% of women use contraception anyway, so what's the harm in HHS mandating its use?

She is so wrong!

Every once in a while I get truly upset (and that means angry). When that happens, I start posting things all over facebook and twitter about all the bull statistics that people love to falsely tout as if they were proving their agenda was correct with the backing of the masses. Last time I checked, biology is not actually a democratic issue. In other words, one cannot change something that deals with life and death simply by gathering enough votes.

That would only work if natural law did not exist. Oh wait! That MUST be the premise that Planned Parenthood is operating upon. More than that, I believe it is the end that Planned Parenthood has been striving to achieve for decades! What great leaps of discovery (and what lucrative business) will be possible if natural law isn't there to "get in the way" of progressive science?!

This is in no way as simple as "the left" or "the right" of politics. It is actually far more simple, because, as I have pointed out, it is not a political issue. It is, of course, because man has made laws concerning biology, and so constituents are called upon to vote in one way or another. At the end of the day, however, and for that matter, at the beginning of the day too, this is still a biological and natural issue, that comes before legislation and politics.

I recall about ten years ago when I was first entering the "teenage" scene. I heard comments from my parents and others' parents about "relativism" in the media. Movies, especially, were "relativistic." At the time, my comprehension of what they meant was limited. I understood that they meant that some "bad" things were being allowed when they shouldn't be. I did not really understand what "relativistic" was.

However, as an adult who can look over the progression of what was a 90's PG movie and what is a current PG movie (do they even make those anymore?), I understand the concept. I understand it, because I see it alive all around me. Particularly in any are that deals with personal/private issues (which typically are biological/natural). Health care, family planning, marital relations, sexual activity, etc...these are "taboo," but flipped upside down. These things were once taboo as far as they were considered inappropriate or improper for the public sector. Now, they are taboo in that no one should have a say about anyone else in their behavior, habits, preferences etc...to the extent that all public portrayal and licensing of these behaviors is completely acceptable SO THAT no one is excluded or isolated in negativity.

Ok, first of all, that is a ridiculous sentence. Second of all, it's sickeningly circular. No one gets anywhere in relativism. Relativism is NOT progressive. It's not exactly regressive either. It's just a status quo. That is the entire concept! Maintain some absolute LUKEWARM status quo so that everything and anything is acceptable and nothing is unacceptable.

See, even if you aren't Christian and don't find that disheartening or sickening, someone who is simply LOGICAL can understand the concept that when "anything" is acceptable and "nothing" is unacceptable, you enter into a sort of "black hole" where the vacuum of reason is constantly being sucked away, leaving nothing but the abyss of stasis. Stasis is not healthy, because it is not growing, and as it is not growing, it's more like a state of existing (which is always struggling to survive) rather than living (which is proper to the beings we are). Maybe I've lost you.

If I could put some cartoons in here, I would. Picture the following.
Little plant begins to grow.
Other little plant tries to come up next to it, but plant A is not thrilled.
Plant B needs more soil/nutrients/sunlight to continue to live.
Plant A is not sharing.
Person who is growing these plants (pretend that is all of us voters/leaders/people who decide things about our culture) tells them to share evenly, because everything is acceptable and nothing is unacceptable.
Since that clearly doesn't work well, both A and B cease to grow, because there is not enough for either of them. Why? Because the one who had the reason and logic to determine that there is a "right" and "wrong," a better answer and a poorer answer, decided to choose neither the good or bad answer, but some lukewarm crap in the middle. Death followed.

Granted, I'm not on a tirade about sharing resources or anything like that. While I do care about important social justice issues, those are not very applicable when the people themselves are dying because of legalized infanticide and other lovely forms of killing innocent children.

That is what relativism is, my friends. It says "we're all ok," and since that is not actually possible in a human society (you know, sinners and saints), the cultural theme (relativism) tries to stuff down the saints so they aren't so good and make the sinners look better so no one feels too guilty, etc...

Remember that time that everything had to be "equal opportunity," and we all have the same rights as everyone else? Too much of a good thing, is a bad thing. These concepts, when appropriately enacted, are good. I'm certainly not advocating that we pick some group of people to be "inferior" or "superior" and return to the feudal system. I am advocating that "equality" taken to an extreme actually hinders growth and health in a culture because we aren't actually the same. We do have equal dignity, of course. We are also different, though, and that is a gift that should allow us to thrive. But relativism is scared of thriving.

Ugh, anyway, the major issue I raised within the relativism umbrella is that we don't even blink an eye when people are LYING outright to the world about things that really ought to matter... you know, killing babies. 99% of women do not use birth control. I promise. That is a fabricated statistic. Beyond that, even if they did, it still wouldn't make it right to kill children (assuming that many birth controls are abortifacients, which they are). Other fabrications by Ms. Richards and Planned Parenthood include that the Catholic Church is trying to take over and force our laws upon the poor, unsuspecting world, and PP is there to work with HHS to defend everyone (that's a summary, not a direct quote, of course).

But here is a direct quote from Ms. Richard's article: "The beauty of birth control is if you don't want or need it, you don't have to use it. That's a decision women can make perfectly well on their own, without the interference of government or religion. And that's something on which we should all be able to agree." The funny thing is, and sense my sarcasm if you will, mandating that health care plans carry birth control and abortion services even in religious institutions that conscientiously object is absolutely the "interference of government." What else is it? Is HHS not a government organization? I am at a loss here. Of course women can or cannot use birth control.. they were able to before this law. I fail to see how this argument is in her favor. I think that's because I'm trying to use REASON. (Remember, in a relativistic culture, you aren't really supposed to do that.)

Here, I brought in another article, in case the first one wasn't convincing. Here, Ms. Richards states, "According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2011, state legislatures passed more than triple the number of anti-women's health provisions than in 2010 -- the highest ever." Oh no! I'm sorry, I thought those were laws to save lives, I failed to see how they were anti-women's heath. In fact, based on the many statistics about how dangerous abortions and contraception can be for women, I thought those would be laws that were pro-the lives and health of babies and mothers. I guess I'm just dumb.

This is more for the laughter, but this is further in the same article quoted above: "But now, due to anti-women's health laws passed in that state last year, those women will have to travel long distances ─and presumably go out of state in some instances -- for safe, legal abortion care. That means time away from work, transportation costs, someone to take care of the kids -- it all adds up to an additional burden on women who are already going through a very stressful experience." Well, here's a thought, Ms. Richards. Maybe the women who are pregnant might understand that the act of making love has the power and potential to bring forth new life. Maybe they would understand that even better if we are assuming that they already have kids who they are going to need to have a babysitter for, while they go have their new baby killed???

One more, than I'll stop. Here she says, "Opposing Roe and essential women's health care isn't just bad policy -- it's bad politics. That's because Americans agree with the protection that Roe provides. Polling consistently reaffirms that a majority of Americans support a woman's right to make her own decisions about pregnancy in consultation with her doctor and her family." Interesting. Here's a nice Gallop poll that disagrees with this.

Anyway, she's turning into a political issue, which means that she too misunderstands the fundamental issue that is at stake, or she willfully chooses to try to destroy it. I will certainly not pretend to know her agenda. All I can see is that these facts are not factual, and that the issue is life and death. It is black and white. It is non-negotiable. As relativistic as our culture wants to be, this isn't something that can fall into the vortex and "just be ok." The vortex will spit it back out. That is because people understand, inherently, that we come from somewhere, and go somewhere, and this experience of being born and dying is one that every person must face, whether they are in agreement or not. It cannot be "voted" away. While mankind tries to find ways to conquer or dominate life and death, he continues to be born and to die. Because natural law is what it is. It is part of the divine law, and it is based in the Truth. God has created us, and we cannot escape the reality we live in.

This blog made me very happy, because people aren't really that stupid. Moreover, it does seem that the younger generation of Americans is rather aware that life and death are very, very real things. It is full of hope, and that is what real progress is about. Living in hope, and not accepting a status quo where relativism eats us alive.

Anyway, as Padre Pio said, "Pray, hope, and don't worry." In this case, I'm praying, hoping, and writing a blog post to try to get other people to shake off the slumber and wake up.

An Article Worth Your Time

In conjunction with some of the recent discussion posted below, I would like to share an article written by a coworker of mine that I found useful as well as true. I highly recommend reading through it.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/things_planned_parenthoods_tru.html.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

      If I were to give you all of what was on my mind, we would be here for more pages than I can count. I cannot express the vigor with which I am burning up over the injustice that is rampant in our society. Now, granted, there are many injustices, and many small battles to fight on many fronts before the war of good and evil will be finished. Yet, the one battle I know myself to be forever caught up in is the attack on the human person specifically in the constant attempt to separate the soul-body unity into parts which do not affect one another. This attack also comes in various forms, but the most base is the attack on human sexuality. This attack distorts and disfigures human love, human relationships, the human family, human gender, human gift of life, simple human value and the entire human family.
     Contraception is a rejection of the fruit of love, a rejection of the gift that two people give to one another in their sexual intimacy. It rejects not only the gift that may come from their union, that of a child, a new human life, but also the personal gifts of each person. It rejects the intrinsic value of the person, of the body, of the unity between soul and body, of human action, and the value of the other person who is to receive the gift. The truth is, however, that this value cannot be rejected, precisely because it is intrinsic. It belongs to the character of the human being, the very nature of persons, to posses a dignity and power that is transcendent and beyond them. This is why the unity of body and soul which is the human person is so pivotal to anthropology and to this battle. To create a dichotomy that in reality cannot be created will most certainly cause confusion, darkness, injury and suffering. Note, in reality these two can never be separated (perhaps excluding death in this discussion, although I would argue there is still a unique bond that will be revealed and fulfilled at the Second Coming). Speaking of persons, one cannot ever be simply a physical being, for if you were, you would be dead. This is why Descartes' conviction of "I think, therefore I am" has so often captivated people - because in some sense, this is true. However, it cannot be true solely on that premise.
     Yet, this is not about Descartes or philosophy per se, this is a point on humanity. Once more, you cannot separate the body and soul. You can certainly think abstractly about each as if they were independent, and you can understand certain senses and affects that are proper to each, but neither is ever truly independent of the other. So it would seem that contraception inherently lies, a rather serious untruth. To say with your body and soul that you give yourself to the other while at the same time stating that your body has properties which you will withhold or limit is contradictory. Perhaps this is not clear - there is no way to participate in sexual union with another person and not imply the total gift of self to the other. The very nature of this type of intimacy demands a certain vulnerability and trust, whether conscious or not, that involves the utmost transcendence of the person in the act.
      These points must be fleshed out one hundred times over, but I do not have the room here. I highly recommend referring to various Church documents for further reading (a good place of collected sources is here: http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/contraception/index.shtml) and also some of the profound works on human sexuality by the soon-to-be Blessed Pope John Paul II. "Love and Responsibility" and "The Theology of the Body" are two excellent sources. Also recommended are "Humanae Vitae," "Familiaris Consortio," "Mulieris Dignitatum," "The Nuptial Body" by Angelo Scola, "Redemptoris Hominis," "Gaudiem et Spes," and of course, the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
      Once more, the battle is about recovering the human person within the truth and fullness of his being. There is no removing the gift of filiality - of sonship before the Father that is given to us primarily in our nature as created in His image, and then deepened in a profound way at Baptism and the reception of the other sacraments. Man is good, according to God's word. He therefore has a responsibility to be aware of this inherent value of his being, and to act accordingly. Not only to act according to his own good, but the inherent goodness of every other man. As I was discussing above, contraception cuts out the heart of the human person by insisting that man reject himself above all else. It is a lie to oneself even before it is a lie to another. It is a direct statement of doubt of the intrinsic value of the embodied person. Yet, this value is real, and is experienced in reality every day, at all times. It is existence. It cannot be removed. Therefore, man chooses to dwell in a state of self-denial in his acceptance of this demeaning activity.
      It is not hard to understand how this level of doubt or rejection that forms a base in our cultural behavior then feeds into the many other manifestations of the human rejection of the good of the person and of life. Abortion, homosexual activity, masturbation, other forms of sexual abuse, pornography, etc... are examples of the human family that has been torn apart, and the human person who is suffering from a lie that has become the bedrock of his self awareness. I have read personal testimonies of women on Planned Parenthood's facebook page insisting that they are more sexually pleased on their own than from their husbands. I have read personal testimonies of mothers who have chosen to have one of their conceived twins "removed" (aborted) because they had only been anticipating one child from their in-vitro fertilization. I have read of young children who at 9 years old have had their first full-out sexual union with someone, and have found that after they are unable to process their experience. They understand themselves as disembodied, as if they were not the acting subjects in the encounter. They are detached, much as young children are when they are sexually abused. Yet, these children choose to be intimate (if that word is even applicable with children since their emotional, physical, spiritual, and psychological elements still in growth and developing, and certainly not mature), rather than being forced into intimacy. But there is something distinct about our culture that has insisted to them that this is appropriate and normal. I have read of parents encouraging their three and four year old daughters to explore their bodies sexually and to stimulate themselves if that is possible. There are state programs offering condoms for free, discretely in the mail, to any young man age 9-18. There are of course an unbelievable amount of magazines, television shows, movies and free images that are purely sexual and are the constant experience of young people. Better Homes and Gardens is replaced with a barely-clothed Rhianna, and everyone is supposed to be alright with this.
     Children need protection, deserve protection. We all, actually, deserve protection from this onslaught. As we age and mature, we begin to develop a greater sensitivity to what "love" truly is, and how it encompasses more than just a physical body. Yet, our culture insists on the divorce between love and sex, between sex and marriage, between children and sex, and between children and marriage. We have watched as this has wrecked havoc on our society, and yet we continue to perpetuate the phenomenon. Divorce, rape, sexual abuse, prostitution, STDs, ABORTION, cohabitation, multiple sexual partners, and homosexual activity are simply "put up with," and by that, we must admit, we mean "accepted as a norm." C.S. Lewis wrote a brilliant discussion of love in a book titled "The Four Loves," in which he discusses love of affection (storage), love of friendship (philia), love of romance (eros) and love of totality or unconditional love (agape). This sort of discussion of love in all of its beautiful dynamism and richness, in the ways in which we participate and take up these elements of love within one another, is simply a foreign language today.
     I must go, but I beg of you to take some time to evaluate your understanding of the gift of love, and the beauty of the human person in its fullness. Recognize both the wonder of the human body and the gift of sexual union while also recognizing the depth and breadth of our personal participation in intimacy with another. We deserve not to sell ourselves short. We deserve to comprehend some of the gorgeous plan that our Creator had in mind when he formed us in our mother's womb. We deserve to recognize the generous and gratuitous gift of adopted sonship in Christ that has been offered humanity, and what it means to be in the image and likeness of God.

Let us pray for purity, for defense from temptation and evil, and for the gift of the Holy Spirit that we will come to greater wisdom of the goodness, truth and beauty of personhood.
Most Blessed Mother, protect us and pray for us.

Gardasil and What Is Right

I'm not going to go through this too much - it's worth reading on your own.

http://boards.medscape.com/forums/.29f0db66?@456.fATvaFVQcE0@

But this was my response to many of the comments:

"This information is unfortunately not going to help those who have already been infected because it is not a cure. However, if presented to young people prior to sexual activity, self awareness and a better understanding of the body can aid them in practicing self control and a much healthier lifestyle. Ideally, there would be much less of a need for drugs such as gardasil if young people were better informed and able to make conscious decisions for their health. http://www.irh.org/nfp.htm http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/index.shtml http://ccli.org/nfp/basics/faq.php http://www.acog.org/publications/patient_education/bp024.cfm http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/action.shtml http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/depo.shtml"

The truth is that the best way to prevent the prevalent spread of HPV is quite simple. Abstinence. Not because it's rigid or even because it's moral (which it is), but because it is healthy. Plain and simple, you cannot get an incurable virus which is transmitted through sexual contact if you do not have sexual contact!

There are so many points to this which can and should be addressed, most especially through the philosophy of the Theology of the Body. This is the basic truth that man is looking for - an anthropology that elevates man from this animalistic idea of "no way to avoid sex so just band-aid it with drugs and contraception and abortion." This understanding gives man dignity and respect, and demands that we allow for the necessity of practicing control to earn such virtues. Nothing good is free, right?

Well, not actually. Many free things are very good, like God's loving us into existence and continuing to love us despite our failures. But beside the fact, the point is that humanity is seeking healing and answers, which the truth offers, but isn't ready to buckle to the weight of what the answers mean. I don't even have time to go into half of what I want to say about these issues, but I'll come back to them and begin to break them all down. For now, read the links!