Archive for the 'Health Issues' Category

**Warning: This post includes graphic language from a Planned Parenthood website.**

For years, pro-lifers have been warning about the dangers of teenwire.com, Planned Parenthood’s website for teens. (Pro-life blogger Dawn Eden wrote one of the best articles on why Teenwire is so bad in the Christian magazine Touchstone a few years back.)

But now, Teenwire is no longer Teenwire.

It’s now Teen Talk, according to teenwire.com’s Facebook page:

Basically: new look, same content.

But no matter how “fancy-pants” Planned Parenthood wants to dress it up, the advice it gives is never in the best interests of teens’ physical health (not to mention spiritual health).

Use your own good judgment to decide if you want to check out Teen Talk, and definitely don’t watch any of the videos if little kids are around. (more…)

For years, many people who call themselves “pro-choice” have said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”.

Many pro-lifers have pointed out how strange it is that abortion advocates would want abortion to be “rare”, because, after all, if abortion is supposedly “safe”, and if it isn’t actually the killing of an innocent human person (and therefore is the moral equivalent of having a tooth pulled), why does it matter if abortion is “rare” or not?

Now, though, it turns out that many abortion supporters admit they really don’t care if abortion is rare—including people like Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Canadian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who “worries” [!] that Sarah Palin’s decision to give birth to her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, “may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere opt to follow suit”.

Worrying that fewer babies with Down syndrome will be killed?

The brutal honesty is very revealing.

Related

• McCain’s VP Pick
• More Down Syndrome Testing Will Lead to More Abortion

We in the pro-life movement are pretty excited about John McCain’s choice for a running mate – Sarah Palin.  She’s solidly pro-life and is loved by the people of Alaska whom she governs.  But that’s not all, folks.  She’s a pro-life witness to boot.

When Sarah was pregnant with her last child, Trig, she was told that he had Down Syndrome.  This sort of news alone can be difficult to embrace, but her doctors went on to encourage her to abort.  Sarah and her husband refused.  This is the quote we are seeing all over the media:

“We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

God bless Sarah Palin and God bless America.  This continues to be an most interesting presidential race.

We’ve heard before how bad Teenwire is. Now, Planned Parenthood has a new website aimed at teens, and American Life League looks at it in the latest ALL Report.

Use your own good judgment to decide if you want to watch the ALL Report, and keep in mind ALL’s disclaimer:

While our report does NOT present the nasty stuff, please use great discretion when viewing the contents of the site, and be sure not to watch any of the videos with kids around.

For those in the “pro-choice” movement, all they have to say about how to prevent STDs is: Use condoms. That’s all they have to say because it’s all they can say, and it’s all they can say because they believe it’s unrealistic to expect anyone—especially teens—from practicing self-control and chastity.

And yet we know that’s not true. (more…)

**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…)