Archive for the 'Health Issues' Category

**UPDATE, 4/18, 4:55pm: A Yale spokesperson says Shvarts’ project was a hoax. Shvarts disagrees.

There has already been a lot of reaction among pro-lifers to the news that a Yale student, Aliza Shvarts, plans to display for her senior art project “a documentation of a nine-month process” during which she repeatedly got pregnant and took drugs to induce abortions on herself.

An article in the Yale Daily News also reports:

[Shvarts] said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America, has issued a challenge to the major pro-abortion groups:

“I call on Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW and all other so-called pro-choice groups to condemn this. Abortion should never be trivialized as a matter of ‘art.’”

It will be hard for them to do that, as these groups have been saying for decades that women should be able to have abortions for any reason at all. (more…)

At a campaign stop in Johnstown, PA this Saturday, Barack Obama was asked, if he were elected president, how his administration would deal with HIV/AIDS and preventing STDs in young girls.

Obama responded:

– or we give them really expensive surgery and we don’t spend money on the front end keeping people healthy in the first place. So when it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include — which should include abstinence education and teaching the children — teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include — it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals.

But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. You know, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.

First, regarding this last part: If Obama really is interested in not withholding information from teenagers that will help them avoid getting an STD, what kind of information is he talking about? (more…)

If you’ve ever seen The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, you’ll probably recognize the recurring scene in which:

…Bullwinkle would attempt to pull a rabbit out of a top hat (to Rocky’s dismissal: “Again?!” or “But that trick never works!”, and Bullwinkle’s [response], “Nothing up my sleeve…Presto!” or “This time, for sure! Presto!”), only to pull out something unexpected instead (such as a bear), and occasionally even Rocky himself.

It’s funny, because it’s a cartoon, and nobody ever got hurt due to the fact that Bullwinkle was a slow learner.

What’s not at all funny, though, is that for the past several decades, our culture has taken this same Bullwinkle approach (”This time for sure!”) to promoting so-called “safe sex” “safer sex”.

Condoms, condoms, more condoms, and even more condoms are the answer to preventing STDs, right? (more…)

2007 Heisman Trophy Winner Tim Tebow [AP photo]

A wise man once said that “every man in the street is a great might-not-have-been”.

The story of University of Florida quaraterback Tim Tebow — the first sophomore ever to win the Heisman Trophy — is an example of why this is true.

While his mom, Pam, was pregnant with him in 1985, she:

…fell into a coma after contracting amoebic dysentery, a bacteria transmitted through contaminated drinking water.

Her treatment required a series of strong medications. As a result of those medications, doctors told Pam the fetus had been irreversibly damaged, and they strongly advised her to have an abortion.

She refused because of her faith, she said.

Pam spent the last two months of her pregnancy on bed rest, and on her due date — Aug. 14, 1987 — she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who she described as “skinny, but rather long.”

Chelsea at Reflections of a Paralytic has posted video of an interview on ESPN where Tim mentions how his mom decided against doctors’ advice to abort him.

[HT: JivinJ]

There’s a beautiful article in today’s Chicago Tribune about Linda Sanchez, a Texas mom who has breast cancer and was treated with chemotherapy while pregnant. Her daughter, Isabella Marie, was born three days ago, weighing 5 pounds, 2 ounces.

From the article:

Isabella became the 70th baby born under a University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center program that once was controversial, but which last year formed the basis of the first national guidelines for the treatment of pregnant women with breast cancer. Until this program, women with cancer who learned they were pregnant were told to abort [emphasis added].

“Told to abort”? “Told to abort”? So much for “choice”…

That’s what Sanchez, 27, was told last spring after she learned in a span of a few days that she was pregnant and that she had breast cancer.

Good thing for Linda and Isabella that Mom got a second opinion. Our prayers are with them.

Read the whole thing.

We got word a few days ago about a new video — posted on YouTube earlier this week — with animation explaining how the birth control Pill has the potential to cause embryonic abortions.

As of yesterday, it had been viewed 1,000-some views. As of now, the number of views is over 4,000.

The narrator of this slickly produced video, Nell Andrzejewski, is a longtime friend of ours, and has frequently taken part in our Face the Truth Tours.

Check it out:

Whenever I give my talks, I always manage to slip in how terrible birth control is. From a Catholic perspective it’s morally wrong, but I give a few other reasons. First off, most birth control is aimed at women, which is unfair. Secondly, most, if not all birth control for women is harmful. The Mayo Clinic even recently made a connection between contraception and breast cancer!

But the thing that I have found most interesting is this new discovery: birth control is harmful to those who don’t even use it! The saying, “my body my choice” (which is used for all reproductive choices, not just abortion), just doesn’t hold true. No action is ever isolated.

(more…)

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post the other day on whether or not teen aged girls should be taught about their fertility. It seems like both sides are afraid to teach Fertility Awareness (also known as Natural Family Planning or NFP). Those in favor of “comprehensive sex ed” say it’s too complicated and teens won’t follow through. Teens would rely on only part of the method and not be fully “protected.” (Funny – we say the same thing when it comes to teens and birth control – teens won’t follow through). The abstinence-only folks think that it will cause teens to become sexually active since they will now know when to avoid sex to avoid pregnancy. (more…)

Reader and frequent commenter Young Christian Woman is starting a ministry called Stand and Be Counted, which encourages couples to name and spiritually adopt an aborted child. Her blog post on the new ministry is here.

The Little Sisters of the Poor are looking for a few good young women. Sister Carolyn Martin has asked us to promote a series of vocation discernment retreats they’re sponsoring in several cities throughout the country this year. More information on the retreats is available here.

Check out this joint statement — “It Started Here. Let It End Here.”:

We are three bloggers who also live in the Dallas area. We are deeply committed to ending abortion in this country. To that end, we have committed ourselves to the following: On each First Friday for the next eleven months, we will fast and pray before the Blessed Sacrament for an end to abortion…

We ask anyone reading these words to join us. Fast and pray with us each First Friday, no matter how far removed you are from Dallas…

(more…)

In a comment on John’s post, Bad Ideas and Good Ideas, Michael-2 gave a link to an article on a study done in Germany about Natural Family Planning. I think it’s worth posting about. You gotta love hearing positive things about NFP in the news. Although the article focuses on the effectiveness of NFP as a contraceptive, it’s a step in the right direction. When a couple uses NFP, they can’t help but begin to view the body differently.

On a side note, though I realize for Catholics NFP has a moral base to it, I marvel at how well the Catholic Church takes care of her children spiritually and physically. Not only is NFP good for the soul (and relationships), but it’s healthy for the body. When practicing NFP, a woman’s body is not poisoned with chemicals and there is no need for self mutilation for either partner, which by the way may cause dementia in men! And if you need to avoid pregnancy for some good reason - it’s effective!

Last Sunday, an article appeared in the Chicago Tribune that referred to Gardasil as a “cancer vaccine”.

Yesterday, the Tribune printed my letter to the editor criticizing their inaccurate terminology:

This is regarding “Cost, insurance issues limit use of cancer vaccine” (News, Feb. 4). This headline implies that Gardasil is an inoculation again cervical cancer itself. It is not. Indeed a sidebar alongside the article reports that developer Merck & Co. claims that “Gardasil prevents 99 percent of infections by two HPV strains that cause about 70 percent of cervical cancer.”

(more…)

And its grade is a big fat F:

CWA: Morning-After Pill Fails Tests

Journal reports that no study found a decrease in pregnancy or abortion rates, even with increased use

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 /Christian Newswire/ — Well-known advocates for the morning-after pill have admitted that “increased access to emergency contraception pills enhance use but has not been shown to reduce unintended pregnancy rates” in a meta-analysis of studies conducted in 10 countries published this month in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. They also state the drug’s effectiveness may be “substantially … overstated.”

(more…)

Starting this week, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists is recommending that all pregnant women be offered a test for Down syndrome.

I wonder who’s happy about this news, considering that more than 80% of babies diagnosed in utero with Down syndrome are aborted.

In looking for reactions to this and other prenatal screening stories, I came across this must-read commentary. The author, Paul Adeline, reports about a group of individuals with Down Syndrome who — God love them — disrupted the 2003 International Down Syndrome Screening Conference in an effort to have their opinions heard. (more…)

Some quick links:

Miss Kelly at Modestly Yours has a must-read post titled “Sexual Freedom Is Damaging to Students”. It’s about a new book called Unprotected, written by an anonymous psychiatrist at the student counseling center of a major American university who has seen firsthand the horrible effects inflicted — especially on women — by so-called “safe sex” and “sexual freedom”.

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Christina at RealChoice has a great post titled “Pre-Roe Mortality, Redux”:

Just about anybody that’s paid attention has heard the claim that “thousands” — or, more specifically, “5,000 to 10,000″ maternal deaths a year in the United States from criminal abortions back in the bad old pre-Roe days. In fact, Planned Parenthood’s amicus brief filed with PP v. Casey still cited this bogus “fact”.

Let’s start with the numbers. Where did they come from?

Find out here.

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JivinJ reports on some disturbing statistics from the United Kingdom about the number of teens having “two or three abortions”. (more…)

Take this quiz.

HT: Mary Meets Dolly