"The Pill" linked to cancer after all?
Not exactly news, but even after about six months, I still don't see anyone paying any attention to this.
Fact: Until about 2002, pretty much everyone believed that oral contraceptives increase the risk of breast cancer.
Fact: On June 27, 2002, a bunch of doctors published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine indicating that oral contraceptives actually don't increase the risk of breast cancer. Thereafter, proponents of birth control began citing this study to the exclusion of all others.
Fact: On July 29, 2005, the International Agency for Research on Cancer made a statement that yes, actually, they do raise the risk of cancer after all. They arrived at this conclusion by reviewing past studies (one of which, I can only presume, was the 2002 NEJM study).
Fact: Six months after this article is published, people are still claiming that oral contraceptives aren't harmful (Planned Parenthood, especially).
Again, we have a clear example of people in the birth control crowd being either utterly disingenuous or downright sloppy. It simply isn't responsible, as long as there is legitimate doubt on the matter, to claim that birth control pills are definitely not harmful.
And they're still missing the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room - that if you are on oral contraceptives, and you conceive a child, it is quite likely that the child won't be able to receive nutrients from its mother. This is commonly called "starvation" when it happens after birth, and although it's nice to talk about "decreasing the possibility of implantation," let's call a spade a spade - when it happens before birth, it's called "abortion."
The only way you can honestly say that birth control doesn't cause abortions is to rewrite the definition of pregnancy to say that it begins when the fertilized egg implants. But even if you do this, you still must remember that life begins at conception - maybe you're not terminating a pregancy, but you're definitely terminating a life.
Moral of the story - don't use birth control pills. Forget the carcinogenic effects that they may or may not have. There is no doubt about their abortifacient effects, and that should be enough.
Fact: Until about 2002, pretty much everyone believed that oral contraceptives increase the risk of breast cancer.
Fact: On June 27, 2002, a bunch of doctors published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine indicating that oral contraceptives actually don't increase the risk of breast cancer. Thereafter, proponents of birth control began citing this study to the exclusion of all others.
Fact: On July 29, 2005, the International Agency for Research on Cancer made a statement that yes, actually, they do raise the risk of cancer after all. They arrived at this conclusion by reviewing past studies (one of which, I can only presume, was the 2002 NEJM study).
Fact: Six months after this article is published, people are still claiming that oral contraceptives aren't harmful (Planned Parenthood, especially).
Again, we have a clear example of people in the birth control crowd being either utterly disingenuous or downright sloppy. It simply isn't responsible, as long as there is legitimate doubt on the matter, to claim that birth control pills are definitely not harmful.
And they're still missing the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room - that if you are on oral contraceptives, and you conceive a child, it is quite likely that the child won't be able to receive nutrients from its mother. This is commonly called "starvation" when it happens after birth, and although it's nice to talk about "decreasing the possibility of implantation," let's call a spade a spade - when it happens before birth, it's called "abortion."
The only way you can honestly say that birth control doesn't cause abortions is to rewrite the definition of pregnancy to say that it begins when the fertilized egg implants. But even if you do this, you still must remember that life begins at conception - maybe you're not terminating a pregancy, but you're definitely terminating a life.
Moral of the story - don't use birth control pills. Forget the carcinogenic effects that they may or may not have. There is no doubt about their abortifacient effects, and that should be enough.
posted by matt at
12:42 PM
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