One cannot escape Breast Cancer Awareness month around town -- from the supermarket to the local high school football games, one is constantly reminded to help women by giving money to cancer research.
Actually, I did find one place that did neglect to spread the pink: health.com. They have kindly shared some information with women who are wondering how to have sterile sex, listing the down-side of oral contraceptives: mood swings, decreased libido, breakthrough bleeding, nausea, headaches, breast tenderness, and dizziness. Such a small price to pay! And if one experiments long enough, she just might find a way to minimise these "annoyances" and almost be free from such side effects.
Missing, of course, is the possibility of breast cancer, which has been firmly linked to hormone-based contraceptives when used long enough -- especially before the first pregnancy.
“I was viewing a local TV program several nights ago where the guests — [including obstetricians] — discussed the signs and symptoms of breast cancer, how to avoid breast cancer and the contributory factors on how women may be afflicted with breast cancer. I was shocked that they never mentioned the role of oral contraceptives in triggering breast cancer,” said Dr. Bullecer. “One of the doctor-panelists even denied the pill-cancer connection.”
“As a doctor of medicine and a pro-life fighter, I cannot afford to just close my eyes and ears to the truth that the use of oral contraceptive pills, as well as Depo-Provera injectables, can cause cancer,” Dr. Bullecer said. “The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared on July 29, 2005 that ‘artificial contraceptives’ are ‘carcinogenic,’ on par with cigarettes and asbestos.”
“[T]he World Health Organization has identified synthetic estrogen as a ‘Group 1 Carcinogen,’ which increases the risk for the most common and deadly cancers for women—most notably breast cancer, which accounts for 26% of cancers in women. Studies that show a heightened risk of breast cancer for users of oral contraception have been published in the most prestigious medical journals,” according to Nichols and Dr. Hunnell.
Additionally, “The National Cancer Institute emphasizes that contraception brings a risk of other cancers including cervical and liver cancer, and notes that teenagers constitute the group whose risk most increases with contraceptive use,” the authors said.
The risk is compounded with abortion, which is so often procured by those who engage in sexual relations with no intention of having a child. Abortion is naturally the next step for "contraceptive failures" -- in fact, most women seeking to terminate their pregnancies were already using some sort of birth control. And here we remind the reader that both birth control and abortion contribute to the high levels of breast cancer in our society today.
Unfortunately, none of this enters into the snazzy campaign currently blanketing the country, in which authentic concern for women's health devolves into the same old lust-driven marketing. Who will really speak for women?
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