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The Real War on Women
By Jim Fritz
We have all heard the derogatory comments about the religious waging a “War on Women” because we protest against abortion and ”health care” which advocates free birth control. Well, are we waging a war on women if we restrict something harmful to them? Not likely! Why are the feminists and so-called progressives pushing abortion and birth control? Both are certainly harmful to women. I discovered one reason in a flyer produced by Bayer HealthCare -- the statement that contraceptive coverage is less expensive than the cost of covering an unintended pregnancy. Another reason is that feminists believe it will advance their perceived “struggle” for equality. Others believe we need to reverse the already debunked “population explosion.”
Studies have proven abortion and “reproductive health care” are really not better alternatives. The results shown by a recent study of the effect of abortion on women who have not previously carried a child to term are not pleasant. The first abortion increases the risk of breast cancer by as much as 44 percent. A second abortion increases the risk to 77 percent and so on. Why do progressives, health care officials and feminists refuse to believe the results of these studies? Mary Eberstadt, in her book, Adam and Eve after the Pill, did an excellent job of explaining this phenomenon. Although not the first to proclaim this, she refers to it as “The Will to Disbelieve.” We have all seen this. She relates how during the Cold War, moral truths remained in dispute at the highest intellectual level, especially on American campuses. Almost the entire world knew how disastrous Communism was, but in our elite universities the political science departments were dominated by strains of what is known as “anti-antiCommunism.” Professors believed and taught that being against communism was worse than being in favor of communism. They insisted Capitalism was at least as bad as Communism even following the wholesale slaughter of Afghanistan civilians by Communists during this same time period. In other words, these intellectuals not only denied the truth but did so vehemently. How does this relate to the Real War on Women? Ms. Eberstadt relates this analogy to the powerful will of feminists, progressives and others for disbelief in the harmful effects of another world-changing social and moral force.
Let us give some examples. Recently a medical doctor, formerly with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, erroneously blamed the Vatican for denying the Little Sisters of the Poor the alleged health benefits of hormonal contraception. In truth, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the real oppressor.
The doctor’s position is that all women should be taking oral contraceptives. Why then are contraceptives not being prescribed to them by their physicians, regardless of sexual activity or lack thereof? It is because the National Cancer Institute reports risks associated with the use of birth control drugs. These risks call for careful and prudent use of such hormones. The Institute reports: “Overall … the risks of endometrial and ovarian cancer appear to be reduced with the use of oral contraceptives, whereas the risks of breast, cervical, and liver cancer appear to be increased.” In fact, concerning breast cancer, it continues: “The risk was highest for women who started using oral contraceptives as teenagers.” The doctor, who blamed the Vatican for withholding the Pill, has “the will to disbelieve” and sticks with his statements no matter the published facts and the negative consequences to women.
Let us look at some other truths the health care industry, feminists, progressives and others choose to disbelieve at a terrible cost to women.
Over the last 20 years, a select group of doctors and scientists left political correctness aside and studied the Pill’s long-term impact on women’s health. They discovered incidence of many harmful effects: blood clots, heart attacks, strokes and increased risk of lethal infections. Worst of all is the Pill’s increase in women’s risk of breast cancer, the only major cancer still on the rise. In the 1970s, the risk of breast cancer for women was one in twelve. By the 1990s, this risk had increased to one in eight.
There are a multitude of studies on the link between the Pill and breast cancer.
In 2006, Dr. Chris Kahlenborn published a study on breast cancer in the journal, Mayo Clinic. He discovered that a woman who takes the Pill for six months or more before having children increases her breast cancer risk by 44% over the national average. The risk was greatest for women who used the Pill for four years or more before having children.
In 2007, the International Agency for Cancer Research classified the Pill as a Class One carcinogen, putting it in the same group as arsenic, asbestos, formaldehyde and plutonium.
The mainstream media has categorically refused to report these findings. The New York Times knew of this study but chose not to report it. The Wall Street Journal’s health editor was notified but likewise refused to write about it. Vanity Fair interviewed the physician who led the study, but then printed one line from the interview and ten lines from the opposing viewpoint. As one doctor reported,”The oral contraceptive pill is the Holy Grail. It’s all about female liberation. The pharmaceutical companies make hundreds of billions of dollars off it every year. But we are making the case that this is about women’s health.” The silence on the Pill’s harmful effects and its link to breast cancer is deafening and extremely detrimental to women. Women are allowed to die for the sake of political correctness.
Other studies, as documented by Professor Janet Smith and found on her website, www.janetesmith.org, are the following:
- The Pill causes blood to clot. For women who have never smoked, do not have diabetes or hypertension, the Pill still doubles the risk of heart attack.
- Those who smoke have twelve times the risk of heart attack.
- Women on the Pill have over twice the risk for stroke.
- The risk of lung blood clots is two to three times higher for women on the Pill.
- Women on the Pill are more likely to develop lethal infections such as HIV and HPV.
- Women who use the Pill for five to nine years have twice the risk of cervical cancer.
- The Pill increases the risk of liver cancer in women by 50%.
Janet Smith has recorded much information on the effects of the Pill in her CD Contraception: Why Not. She also gives serious consideration to questions regarding the relationship between contraception, divorce, abortion, poverty, and other social ills. One of her studies presents some interesting effects of the change in the women’s hormones and the resulting effects on the relationship with the woman’s husband.
The War on Women has not been waged by the conservatives, the Church or oppressive men, but by the men and women who refuse to believe the truth and wish to promote the sexual revolution, control the population and supposedly reduce health care cost. All of this at the detriment of women’s health, the lives of the unborn, increase in divorce, infidelity and other social ills.