Deadly Health Risks for Women: The Unspoken Side of the Obama Birth Control Mandate

This post was written by Jenn Giroux, and reposted with permission from The Guiding Star Project. In this post Giroux discusses the claim that women are healthier on birth control. You can view this post at Jenn Giroux's site: http://jenngiroux.com/2012/02/14/deadly-health-risks-for-women-the-unspoken-side-of-the-obama-birth-control-mandate/ and also at The Guiding Star Project: http://theguidingstarproject.com/having-our-say Jenn Giroux has been a Registered Nurse for 26 years. She also founded the “Speaking of Motherhood” project in an effort to educate women of the harms of birth control and to elevate the profession of motherhood. She and her husband, Dan, live in Cincinnati, Ohio and have 9 children.

For far too long there has been an ominous silence across America on arguably the most controversial and devastating issue of the day — birth control. As so often we see in history, oppression gives rise to courage and, no question, courage is exactly what we are seeing in Church leaders and layman alike in response to the Obama administration’s recent birth control mandate and more recent unacceptable modifications.

The Birth Control Mandate has forced the issue of contraception to move from being the elephant in the room to center stage. Perhaps in time we will see that it was a hidden blessing for our country. For years pro-life organizations refused to discuss or take on this topic despite the fact that free access to birth control increases the number of surgical abortions[1][2]. Most people repeat over and over that birth control decreases the number of abortions. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, today for every child born in the US, there are an estimated 2 children killed in the womb from both surgical and chemical, abortifacient drug abortions [3]. What isn’t being talked about is that the new mandate also pre-disposes women to serious long term and permanent health problems. In conjunction with the defense of both religious liberty and the spiritual well-being of women, we must also refute the absurd and deceptive statement that “women are healthier on birth control.”

Providing free hormonal birth control to women under the guise of ‘preventative services’ and ‘women’s health’ is a lie and women of all faiths deserve to know the truth.

Hormonal birth control methods can enter the body in various ways. These ways include ‘The Pill’ (by mouth), the Mirena IUD (Intrauterine Device), the implant (placed under the skin), ‘the Patch’ (absorbed through the skin), and the Vaginal Nuvaring. There are many other estrogen -progestin name brands that can be added to this list. Any way you name it, these hormone drugs dispense poison into a woman’s body.

Perhaps HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should inform her President of the following before he makes additional statements to the press like “it is cheaper to prevent than to treat.” Consider this:

— Since 1975 there has been a 400% increase in “in situ” breast cancer among pre-menopausal women under 50 years old. This mirrors the increased use of birth control over these same years. (“In situ” is a medical term which means “at the location” [4].

— A Mayo Clinic study confirms that any young girl or woman who is on hormonal birth control for 4 years prior to their first full term pregnancy increases their breast cancer risk by 52%. [5]

— Women who use hormonal birth control for more than 5 years are four times more likely to develop cervical cancer. [6]

— The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a research arm of the World Health Organization, classifies all forms of hormonal contraception as a Group 1 carcinogen. This group of cancer causing agents also includes cigarettes and asbestos. [7] Why is it that the FDA can require cigarette manufacturers to place warning labels and real life photos of corpses on cigarette packages to warn consumers of the health dangers yet they, in turn, take an equally harmful substance (hormonal birth control) and force companies to give it away free to young girls without parental consent and woman of all ages?

— For high school boys and men to take steroid drugs, it is a crime. Whereas girls and women taking steroid drugs (i.e. hormonal birth control) are now treated as if they are taking a sacred, life preserving vitamin that women cannot live without. [8]

— In October 2010 the NY Times carried an article about Hormone Replacement Therapy drugs. It quoted the America Medical Association (AMA) as warning women that these post-menopausal drugs which were originally marketed as keeping a women “young and sexy” were discovered instead to be more likely to cause advanced and deadly breast cancer.[9] It stopped short of making one other startling revelation: The only difference between hormone replacement therapy drugs which cause deadly breast cancer and the hormonal birth control drugs (now mandated by the Obama administration) is that the birth control drugs are six times the dosage — and are the very same drug!

Never before has the US government mandated that private companies must provide services and it adds insult to injury when this mandate includes substances that harm women and cause them to unknowingly self-abort their babies a certain percentage of the time when they are using these substances.

How is it possible for women to self-abort when birth control is meant to prevent pregnancy? It is possible because many of these birth control methods still allow the woman’s body to ovulate every month. If sexual relations occur during that time, it is possible to get pregnant. Recently doctors tried to figure out why some women could not get pregnant using artificial insemination. They conducted a study which discovered that the lining of a woman’s uterus must be at least 8mm thick in order for a baby, in its tiniest form, to implant and grow in the womb. They found that the use of hormonal contraception (in any of the forms mentioned above) generally keeps the uterine lining below 6mm.[10] To be clear, if a baby is conceived by a woman on hormonal birth control the embryo cannot implant and grow to full gestation of 9 months if the integrity of the uterine lining is too thin. Instead the baby, in its tiniest form, is unknowingly self-aborted by its mother. This is what is meant by the word “abortifacient.” It isn’t just the “morning after” pill or “Ella” that is in the abortion inducing drug category. It is nearly all of the hormonal birth control that is being mandated.

Since Roe v Wade there has been over 55 million surgical abortions. These chemical abortions add an estimated 250 million additional abortions to our nation’s holocaust. [11]

This is not information that should be kept from the public. Women deserve to be told the truth. They are not being warned that birth control methods are causing breast, liver, and cervical cancer. They are not being told about the “silent killer” effect which is causing them to unknowingly abort their babies. They are instead being told that they are healthier on birth control because it decreases ovarian and uterine cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, out of 100 women with cancer, 31 have breast cancer, 6 have uterine cancer, and 3 have ovarian cancer. This is not a healthy tradeoff of risks that is worth taking. [12]

If, indeed,” it is cheaper to prevent than to treat” then it is time for the White House, Kathleen Sebeilius, and all health agencies within the government to sound the warning trumpet to warn women on hormonal birth control about these devastating medical consequences.

Clearly, birth control does not help women at risk, it places women at risk.

NOTES:
[1] http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html ;

[2] Jones RK, Darroch JE and Henshaw SK, Contraceptive use among U.S. women having abortions in 2000–2001, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2002, 34(6):294–303.

[3] International Pharmacists for Life 2003;http://www.prolifephysicians.org/abortifacient

[4] www.cancer.org

[5] Kahlenborn et al., “Oral Contraceptive Use — as a risk factor for pre-menopausal breast cancer: a meta analysis,” Mayo Clinic proceedings 2006 pp. 1290-1320, 2006

[6] Bosch, et al, “Effect of oral contraceptives on risk of cervical cancer…” International Agency of Research on Cancer, 2002

[7] International Agency for Research on Cancer, a research arm of the World Health Organization, 2010

[8] http:www.mayoclinic.com/health/performance-enhancing-drugs/SM00045

[9] New York Times, Oct. 19, 2010

[10] Rabe T et al, The Effects of Monophasic and triplasic Oral Contraceptives on Ovarian Function and Endometrial Thickness Eura J Contra Reproductive Care 1997 2, 39-51

[11] Kuhar et al,”Infant Homocides through Contraceptives,” International Pharmacists for Life, 5th Edition 2003

[12] www.bcpinstitute.org
© Jenn Giroux

Hand-washing and White-washing

Sometimes I read or hear about some part of history and I just have to breathe a sigh of relief that people no longer hold such misguided beliefs. Such times are often accompanied with a smug chuckle as I ponder how people could have possibly believed as they did. For example, as early as 1843 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes knew that hand-washing prevented infection, and he advocated it to reduce the rates of women dying from childbed fever in hospitals.¹ In the late 1840s, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis observed that laboring women who were attended by medical students had three times the infection rate (as high as 25%) as those attended by midwives. Horrifying to today's ears, medical students would go from dissecting cadavers in the autopsy room to examining women in the maternity wards without washing their hands in between. Semmelweis mandated that doctors and medical students wash their hands in a chlorinated solution prior to examining patients. With this simple practice, he was able to reduce the rate of childbed fever to less than 1%.¹ With such amazing results one would think that he would have been hailed as a hero for saving the lives of so many women and that the practice of hand-washing would have spread rapidly as other hospitals sought to reproduce his successes. On the contrary, despite such striking results, his ideas were met with ridicule and hostility.

Decades later, others who believed in the germ theory of disease were ridiculed as well by their colleagues. Even as late as 1910, over half a century after Semmelweis's discovery, hand-washing was still not a widespread practice among healthcare workers. Today thankfully, the Centers for Disease Control advocate hand-washing as the number one way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

Today we wonder how those physicians could have refused to wash their hands even when presented with such striking results. Maybe washing their hands between patients was too inconvenient and they didn't want to change how they did things. I'm sure most were decent people, doctors who went into the profession in order to help others. Maybe they didn't want to face that they, themselves, had been the cause of so many deaths. Whatever their reasons, they would cause the deaths of many more women who would die of childbed fever in the decades to come.

Unfortunately, there is much truth to the ancient writings, "What has been, that will be [again]; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun." (Ecc 1:9)² Today's medical debates are not about the importance of handwashing of course, but it seems that many people, including the medical establishment, are reticent to let go of long-held beliefs about how some things are done.

More recently, in 2002, preliminary findings of the Women's Health Initiative were published about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) among post-menopausal women. The results showed an increased risk of breast cancer for women on HRT.³ This study made the news and made it into magazines and although only around 2% of women were on HRT at the time, this translated into millions of women. After hearing about their increased risk of breast cancer, millions of women stopped this therapy. By the following year, this dramatic decrease in the number of women on HRT translated to an 11% reduction of breast cancer rates.⁴

It's important to know that women who have gone through (or are going through menopause) only needed a small amount of estrogen-progestin combination to experience relief of menopause symptoms. Birth control pills, used by young women, are the exact same hormones, except in much higher doses. A young woman whose body is already producing the full amount of estrogen and progesterone in her cycle, needs even higher doses if the aim is to completely shut her natural cycle down to prevent ovulation and pregnancy. Why would the medical community think that a known carcinogen in older women would be perfectly safe in much higher doses given to younger women?

In 2005 the World Health Organization classified Oral Contraceptives as a Group One carcinogen, placing it in the same league as asbestos and cigarettes. ⁵ Even though only 2-3% of women were on HRT in 2002 and presently about 28% of women of childbearing age are using the pill⁶, higher for women in the lower age-range than the higher, there has been very little media coverage. If 2% used HRT and millions stopping it caused an 11% reduction in breast cancer rates the following year, imagine the impact if millions of women stopped using the pill.

A woman has a 40% increased risk of breast cancer if she uses the pill prior to her first full-term pregnancy, at least a 72% increased risk if she used it for four or more years prior. For Depo-Provera, the effects are even worse. A woman who uses Depo-Provera for two or more years prior to the age of 25, has a 190% increased risk of breast cancer⁷.

What has been the reaction of the medical community to all this? To inform their patients of these risks? To change the way they view and treat women's bodies? Unfortunately, the reaction of the mainstream medical community has been quite disappointing, similar to their reaction to the implementation of hand-washing in the 1800s. Some ridicule physicians who refuse to prescribe birth control because they feel it is bad medicine. Secondly, they downplay the risks. They gloss over the alarming evidence and emphasize that after 10 years of discontinued use of oral contraceptives, the risk goes away, as if a whole decade of increased cancer risk were not that big of a deal.

Unfortunately many women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are being diagnosed with breast cancer. It is the leading cancer death in women aged 20-59 ⁷. Some women might not have a decade available to sit around and wait until this risk goes away. Unlike post-menopausal breast cancer, premenopausal breast cancer is especially aggressive and often unresponsive to typical cancer therapies.

Why do so many still deny or downplay the very real risks of hormonal contraceptives? Maybe because it would be inconvenient to change the way they currently practice gynecology. Maybe because they don't want to admit they have been causing the deaths of young wives, daughters, and mothers. Maybe because the myth still persists that Natural Family Planning is difficult to learn or is ineffective. [Though a study of over 16,000 poor women in India (some of whom were illiterate) showed a birth rate of less than 1% for those using the method in order to avoid pregnancy⁸ - showing that NFP is both effective and easy to learn.] How long before the medical establishment begins to change the way they currently practice gynecology? Another decade? Half a century? More? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I know that I don't want to wait around for them to change their ways before I choose health for myself now.

Addendum: (added January 28,2012 11:30am)

I have been asked about the claims that the pill lowers the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers, and so I feel I should address this. It is true that while the pill increases the risk of liver, cervical, and breast cancer, it lowers the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers. However, as Dr. Angela Lanfranchi has pointed out, it is not an either/or equation. A woman's risk of getting ovarian and endometrial cancers are low, whereas if she takes the pill for any length of time, her risk of getting the other cancers that the pill causes is higher than her original risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer. Furthermore, even if in special cases a woman is at a high risk for ovarian cancer, such as if she has a family history of it, I still feel it is a poor solution to offer her breast cancer instead. If a particular woman is at high risk for these cancers then I feel being diligent about cancer screening would be a better solution, as well as steps to reduce any other risk factors if possible.

Sources

1. Christine L. Case. Ed.D, "Handwashing." National Health Museum, 27 Jan 2012, http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/hand_background.php

2. Ecc 1:9 NAB

3. Jacques E Roussouw MBChB MD, Garnet L. Anderson PhD, Ross L. Prentice PhD, et al., "Risks and Benefits of Estrogen Plus Progestin in Healthy Postmenopausal Women," The Journal of the American Medical Association, 288 no. 3 (2002): 321-333 http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/288/3/321.full

4. Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., (lecture, Women Deserve the Truth, St. Norbert College, De Pere, WI, 24 September 2011).

5. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, "Carcinogenicity of Combined Hormonal Contraceptives and Combined Menopausal Treatment," World Health Organization, (September 2005) http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/ageing/cocs_hrt_statement.pdf

6. "Facts on Contraceptive Use in the United States," Guttmacher Institute, June 2010, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html

7. Chris Khalenborn, MD., "Breast Cancer, Abortion, and the Pill," One More Soul, 7 Dec 2009, http://onemoresoul.com/contraception/risks-consequences/breast-cancer-abortion-and-the-pill.html

8. R.E. Ryder, "'Natural Family Planning': Effective Birth Control Supported by the Catholic Church," British Medical Journal, 307 no.6906 (18 Sep 1993): 723-6 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8401097

Extended Family Living

The subject of extended family living has been ruminating in my head for a couple years now. As I struggled with the demands of working and caring for family, and later on as I struggled with the demands of being a stay-at-home mom, I kept bumping into the same thought: "I don't think things are supposed to be this way." I know women who become disheartened because they don't understand why they struggle so much to keep up with housework, children, and the demands of running a house even though they have all modern conveniences, when women used to make their own clothes, work in their garden, make everything from scratch, hand-wash their clothes and so on.

There's something wrong with comparing ourselves to our fore-mothers though. Women didn't do all these things alone. They did them in community. While women used to walk miles to get water, when they walked to the river or well, they walked there with other women, chatted with them while they filled their jugs, and walked back together. Today, women in developed countries need only go to their kitchen faucet to get water, but she likely stands in her kitchen alone. Women gathered berries, made clothes, and pounded grain for flour, but they likely did this with other women, while they all kept an eye on the children playing close by, perhaps taking turns helping mitigate conflicts or helping the children with some small task (if the older children didn't do this).

It seems in many cultures the grandparents care for the emotional needs of the children, giving them much of their time and attention, while the parents attend to much of the physical work that needs to be done. I have heard of one tribe that views the parents as not having enough wisdom in order to teach the children, and this culture very clearly views it as the grandparents' duty to attend to the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional needs of the children, and it is the parents' clear duty to attend to their physical needs.

As I thought about these things more and more, I decided that I wanted community--and not the community that is a group of friends that get together for coffee and playdates regularly from all their different areas of town (though that IS nice), but I wanted even more than that. I wanted the kind of community where the neighbor that you know lives 10 steps away from your front door and you are involved not only socially, but also in the nitty-gritty tasks of daily life. It seems to me that in this country of excess, where people love their privacy and having everything in their lives precisely to their liking, that we have lost something. We live our lives exactly to our choosing without interference from others, but at what cost?

I saw a documentary called "The Lost Boys of Sudan" which documented the transition of Sudanese orphans to refugees living in the United States. They encountered electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones, computers, refrigerators, and many other things for the first time. These boys had walked barefoot across a country to escape death and civil war and had lived and survived by working together and looking out for one another. Sometimes they didn't have enough food to eat, and they had no modern conveniences but they were together. The film documents another thing that many of them encountered for the first time after coming to live in the US--loneliness and depression. They weren't used to living with only two or three other people, everyone working different schedules and basically doing their own thing. They were used to living in community.

I think all my pondering might have began the day I read an article in Mothering magazine about an extended family who decided to live together. The dad, mom, and their children lived in a house; one of the sets of grandparents had their own house; and the other grandmother had her own house. So these three groups of people sold their houses and built their own "complex" as they affectionately named it, where they all had some of their own private spaces, but also had some communal space where they all gathered for meals and hanging out regularly. They also came to some sort of agreement about how bills and groceries, cooking, and all those things of living together would be managed.

Being too poor to buy a house I thought that this dream of extended family living might be far off into my future, but, I'm happy to report that it has actually happened for me! A few months ago my wonderful in-laws decided to move to town and to rent an apartment in the same building as ours. Here's how it works for us.

I'm cooking for my family anyway, so I just plan on cooking for two extra and we have dinner almost every night together. Depending on our schedules, we sometimes hang out in the evening, playing a game or watching a movie. They contribute some money to the grocery bill and often help with dishes. I try to respect their "me-time" and not send the kids to their apartment all the time, though sometimes they go there to hang out when I'm making supper because I figure they'll be coming over in just a little while anyway. My in-laws love kids and are really good at entering their world and playing. Periodically, they'll pop-in and want to take the kids outside to go for a walk or go to the park or something so I end up having an unexpected hour or two to myself! I volunteer at Elizabeth Ministry and am there most Thursday mornings, and while I used to bring the children, my father-in-law now babysits on those days (and I'm able to get a lot more work done when they are not there).

I think this arrangement is good for the children because it seems they get the benefit of everyone's gifts. My in-laws are such nature-lovers and they have to get outside everyday. Although I theoretically know how good it is for children to get outside and explore nature, I'm so at-home in the cozy indoors that it takes a lot of effort for me to make myself take them outside. So now, they get out a lot more and explore the riverside, the plants, sunsets, and so on because of their grandparents' enthusiasm. My children also get more attention because my husband and I are not their sole source of it. Although I try to keep my priorities and not let the housework take precedence over their needs, on the other hand, supper DOES need to get cooked, and the house DOES need to be liveable, and there are just things that need to get done. So now, instead of feeling like I have to maintain an impossible juggling act, and feeling like I have to choose between my children or my other domestic duties, or my husband feeling like he always has to choose between playing with the children in the evening or having some time for himself, it seems it is easier to meet the needs of everyone with our current arrangement.

I think the arrangement is great for my in-laws as well. During the summer my father-in-law works on building their cabin in another state and my mother-in-law lives alone and works a lot. So now she gets a home-cooked meal most nights without having to cook it herself, or my father-in-law having to cook for just one or two and she doesn't need to spend her workweek alone until she can squeeze in time for a family visit on her days off. We can hang out for an hour or two and still have our day.

My in-laws and I are very similar in our views of raising children and they are very supportive of our unschooling. Our religious views differ, but I think we are respectful of each other's beliefs. We sometimes share our views of the world and God, but I haven't perceived any sort of expectation that I should "convert" to their way of thinking, (and hopefully they haven't perceived that in me!)

I'm curiuos about others. Have you ever considered or would you consider extended family living? Why or why not? Do the personalities in your family allow for such an arrangement? Do you do this already? How does it work for you?

Growing Room

I've made a couple of observations lately. The first thing I've noticed is that I plan, a lot, probably quite a bit more than most others do. For those who know about the Myers Briggs personality types, I'm an ENFJ. That J in me likes things orderly and well-planned. The second thing I've noticed is that, judging from questions that I keep getting and conversations I seem to keep having, there are things that I have no intention of ever planning, that most others do.

Those things that I include in the "need to be well-planned out" list are many. I like organization. In fact, thinking of ways to streamline household duties, reduce clutter, and downsize household possessions is almost a hobby for me; I treat it as an art form that I am constantly refining. When it comes to our finances, I make a budget, and keep track of our expenditures. I plan the weekly menu and make out the weekly grocery list at the same time, adding the items needed to make the things on the menu to the list. That way, when I make the evening meal, I have the things that I need in the house, and I rarely need to think of what to make for supper before 4:00. I just look at the menu that's kept on the refrigerator and then make it.

I also make a daily schedule for myself. I like having a schedule because I feel like it helps me live in the present moment. Instead of stressing about all the things I need to get done, if I have a schedule I can relax, knowing that it is scheduled and I will have time to focus on each thing I need to do. Secondly, having a schedule helps me make sure I'm spending my time doing the things that are really important to me. I decide on the things that are important to have time for and I try to make sure the schedule reflects that. I also plan some things according to my monthly cycle. During menstruation, I know I'll need more rest and solitude so I try to keep social activities down and my husband picks up more household chores. During this time women are more interested in reevaluating their lives and discarding things that they feel are no longer working for them so I feel this is a good time for me to go to Confession. The house isn't very neat at this time as I don't have much energy or motivation to do a lot of things, but I try not to feel bad about it, because it's important to honor our needs in each of our phases. When I'm fertile, I know that I'll have a lot of creative energy to burn up so I typically plan on writing and doing other creative activities during that time.

The things, it seems, that many other people plan for that I don't are things like how many children I plan on having, or even when I will have those children. There have been times in my life when we were extremely poor and caring for my family was often overwhelming. During those times, I certainly didn't want to have more children. We had all we could handle. But who can say that she can predict how she will feel in the future? Children become more independent. Finances improve. And hearts and minds change. People who at one time thought they were finished, sometimes decide that they would like more children. So although I practice Natural Family Planning, and have used it in order to avoid pregnancy right now, I have never wanted to make a permanent decision about when I will be finished having children forever. I have only ever known that right now I want to avoid pregnancy, or right now, I would like to try to achieve. Before I was married I used to say that I wanted four children, close in age to each other. Now? It's possible that our family is complete right now, at two children, or maybe it isn't. I don't know. And having children close in age? My views are changing on that too. I've had the privilege of spending time with families who have both teenagers and toddlers. It has been really beautiful seeing the concern and tenderness that the older children bestow on the youngest members of their family. I've also read some articles about the humanizing effects that babies have on people. So now I'm open to the possibility of having children that are spaced further apart.

Another question that I get asked frequently is how long I plan on homeschooling. I've talked to people that plan on homeschooling through second-grade, others who plan on it through high school. Me? I don't plan. Situations change, finances change, and children and families change. Again, how can I predict what the future will hold? Maybe one or both my children will decide at some point that they want to go to school. I've known homeschoolers that had these great dreams and plans about all the things that they were going to do with their children, but in reality it just wasn't turning out that way, and after careful thought and consideration, they all decided that school was the best option for them right now. I've known schoolers who were anti-homeschool and never imagined that they would be going down that path, but then, for a variety of reasons, they do. Therefore, I plan on homeschooling as long as it works for our family.

Other things I don't plan? Precisely what my children will be learning at any given time. For brevity I typically say we are homeschoolers, because people know what that is, but more precisely we are unschoolers and I don't spend my time creating and implementing lesson plans. But, in my schedule, I make sure to have time to spend with my children doing creative and enriching things. I try to make time to ensure that I am doing my best to bring the world to my children and my children to the world. I rarely plan exactly what we will be doing for "homeschooling" on any given day, because I leave that up to my children to decide. If I suggest something that they have no interest in, we don't do it. If there is something that they are interested in reading about, exploring, making, building, then we do, and preferably for as long as they are interested in doing it. I don't plan what we will learn next year or the year after that. How can I know what they will be curious about then? How can I know what talents they will want to develop or what new knowledge will be interesting to them?

I know this culture is big on planning. Babies are born and their lives are planned for them pretty much through high school, if not through college. High school graduates are expected to know what their major will be and what profession they plan on entering. A popular interview question is "Where do you want to be five years from now?" Adults are expected to know precisely the timeline of their career advancements and on what schedule marriage and children will enter that timeline. If things don't happen according to such preset schedules for learning, advancing, achieving, avoiding, etc., people can feel like failures. So I really love schedules, I do, but for some things, I prefer to simply allow room for growth.

Pornography Hurts Everyone

Perhaps the most important lesson that I have learned in my life is that I am my body, and that my body is good. I cannot claim to value myself if I don't take care of and honor my physical self. I've also learned that while my whole body is sacred, certain parts of my body are especially sacred. I know this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they are the parts that do something so marvelously profound as to give life to another human being, and conversely, if those parts are abused or assaulted, the utter violence that it causes to the very core of a person tells me that those are no ordinary parts. These parts have a special dignity and deserve extra care and reverence.

Because the private parts are so intimately connected to the very core of a person, it follows that they must never be used as someone's plaything, or as a means of profit. People are not things. Even within marriage, spouses must not use each other. In saying this, I hope to make it clear that I am not advocating sex only as a means of procreation and then only in the missionary position and with a very serious and stern purpose and expression. On the contrary, my experience is that when I completely enjoy, reverence, and respect the person my husband is, and the more respected, reverenced, and loved I feel, the more passionate, fun, tender, exciting, and fulfilling sex is. Sex that occurs outside of such a relationship, or viewing another's most sacred parts outside of this context, (e.g. pornography) is always inherently violent, because it reduces a complex, intricate, amazing person to a thing.

Pope John Paul II has said that the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of a person, but that it shows too little. All of a person's physical parts are on display, but all the unique and intimate parts of his or her personality are left unknown. In pornography, the sexual parts of a person are not used to communicate love to another but used to exploit the person.

I remember a couple years ago coming across an essay that described one porn film. What the author described was the absolute humiliation of another human being, a woman, which apparently many men find "entertaining." I remember I cried that day. I remember how betrayed I felt because the men who are called to witness the selfless love of God the Father, the men who are called to image the love of Christ who sacrifices himself for our good, instead so often choose to sacrifice the vulnerable for their selfish ends. What the author described wasn't even "hardcore" porn. It was mainstream. I thought, this is a multi-billion dollar industry? I remember I didn't even want to leave my house for a couple of days because of how unsafe this new awareness made me feel. I wondered how many people that I encountered every day in the store, on the sidewalks, in church, in restaurants, in the post office--how many found pleasure in the humiliation of another person? That is to say, how many found my own humanity as a woman unimportant or even nonexistent?

Those who believe that pornography is okay often assert that the movies aren't real. They are actors and actresses. But for that actress, it is real. She is being humiliated on camera, not for the purpose of raising awareness of domestic violence or verbal and sexual abuse or some such thing, but so that others might receive gratification in it.

Gratification.

Such people also like to argue that she is an adult who is there of her own free will. I ask though, is it okay to humiliate people if they will let you humiliate them?

Since then, I have learned that pornography is extremely harmful to those who view it, as well as its workers. Many people suffer from pornography addictions in our present age and through the work of brain scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and others, it is now known that many deviant sexual behaviors cause chemical changes in the brain similar to those experienced by drug or alcohol addicts. Mark Kastleman, a co-founder of a pornography recovery program, writes that such behaviors "trigger the brain into releasing powerful neurochemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine and endorphins, producing a 'rush' or a 'high.'" It also harms their social relationships. Kastleman writes:

In this fantasy world, people imagine things like, "She wants just me." "He adores me—I'm desired, craved, loved." The person sees the experience as exclusive, private—"It's just me and her." The experience is seen as exciting, pleasurable, taboo, and privileged—giving the facade of intimacy, exclusivity, loyalty, and trust. And all of this is easy, convenient, instant and sometimes cheap or free. It does not require the risk and work of developing and nurturing a true intimate relationship.

Just as pornography isolates the inner person from his or her body, those who become pornography addicts become more and more isolated as they retreat from real, connected, and deep relationships with others. Though pornography is a fantasy, addicts often use it as a substitute for real intimacy.

Some feel that though most of porn is degrading, there exists such a thing as "feminist" porn, where women choose to take part and are in control. I feel, however, that whenever a person's sexual parts are used or viewed outside a loving relationship, the person is objectified. Even in "feminist" porn, women's most private bodily parts are sought after, without the knowledge of their hopes, dreams, thoughts, fears, etc. "Empowering porn" to me sounds like "empowering cutting." I, myself, used to cut in order to feel more in control. I, myself, have dressed and acted "sexily" in order to feel powerful. But cutting did not empower me and neither did using my body to stimulate men. They merely gave me illusions of power, while reinforcing the lie I believed about myself that I was a thing to be used, or that it was okay if others saw me as an object. Being looked at by others as something less than a person is degrading. What has truly empowered me is beginning to believe that I am a person with profound dignity, and the presence of others who treated me with great respect (even when I didn't believe that I was worth that respect).

It is well-known that victims of trauma will often recreate their trauma in an attempt to make sense of it. That is why girls growing up in an abusive home will often marry an abuser, or why kids with an alcoholic parent will often become an alcoholic. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, a clinical psychologist writes,

Most strippers, as with other women who work in the sex industry, are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Research indicates the number is between 60%-80%. One study found that 35% of strippers have Multiple Personality Disorder, 55% had Borderline Personality Disorder, and 60% had Major Depressive Episodes. These are severe psychiatric problems and many of them are connected to childhood sexual abuse. These are women who when they were little girls would get into their beds each night and roll themselves into a fetal position and every night he would come in and peel her open. The physical and visual invasion of little girl's bodies damages them psychologically and gives them a psychologically unhealthy view of sexuality. Often as adults they reenact their childhood trauma by working as strippers, Playboy models, and prostitutes. The men who, now as customers, physically and visually invade the adult women's bodies, reenact the role of the perpetrator. These women work in the sex industry because it feels like home.

It makes me sad that those who do not know their incalculable value do not have hordes of people to raise them up and show them their true worth, but instead have many people willing to exploit and reinforce the falsehood that they are things.

Aside from learning that I am not a thing, another invaluable lesson that I have learned in my life is that human dignity is an absolute. Nothing can take a person's dignity away. Nothing a person does, and nothing someone does to another, can take away his or her dignity. Dignity is ours. May we live according to this truth and communicate this truth to others—especially to those who are in need of hearing it most.

Links:

Struggling with a pornography addiction? You can get help here.

"If Pornography Was Good For Us, We'd Be Healthy By Now."

Empowering the Poor with NFP

I want to tell you story. In some ways, the story is not new. We've all heard it dozens of times—the story about a family living in abject poverty, a family so poor that they can't feed the children they have yet they keep having more. In other ways, this story I'm about to tell is new. It's new because of the story's ending. In India there are many such families, but some women provided a unique solution. Rather than trying to secure funds for condoms, hormonal contraception, clinics, and medical personnel to run the clinics, the Missionaries of Charity (the religious order founded by Mother Teresa) simply taught the people Natural Family Planning. For those unfamiliar with Natural Family Planning, it is a means by which a woman observes the naturally occurring signs in her body to know when she is fertile and when she is not. If a couple wishes to avoid pregnancy, they abstain from sex during the week she is fertile. If they wish to achieve pregnancy, they take advantage of her fertile time.

The familiar adage says, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." Rather than a solution that requires that the poor have continued access to medical clinics and health care personnel, and the continued source of funding that would be required to ship and distribute condoms and other devices, the sisters simply empowered poor Hindus, Christians, and Muslims with the knowledge of how their bodies work, a knowledge that would serve them their whole reproductive lives.

Mercedes Wilson, founder of Family of the Americas Foundation, writes this about how she first learned a natural method of family planning:

I first learned about the natural signs of fertility in 1968 while living in Melbourne, Australia. Having read an article in the local paper about a new natural method of family planning, I visited the center where the Ovulation Method was being taught. To my amazement, in less than half an hour I learned this simple and safe method that enables a woman to postpone pregnancy without endangering her physical and emotional health with chemical agents or dangerous devices.

We were taught the scientific fact that the only time the man's sperm can survive in the woman's body is when the natural signs of fertility are present. In fact, sperm survival is dependent on the presence of a particular type of cervical mucus obvious to a woman during her fertile phase, which is about 100 hours per cycle.¹

Since this meeting, Wilson has spent about 50 years teaching NFP to people (including the Missionaries of Charity) throughout the world.

In 1993, the British Medical Journal published a study regarding the effectiveness of NFP in India.² It is from this study that comes some of our best source of NFP statistics. It is difficult to get statistics regarding the effectiveness of NFP for a couple of reasons. One is that, in the US, not a lot of people practice it, so it is hard to get enough participants in order to have a representative sample. Secondly, it is difficult to get statistics derived solely from people who truly used the NFP method, which relies on abstinence during the fertile period if the couple wishes to postpone pregnancy. Some methods of fertility awareness allow a couple to use a condom or other barrier device during the fertile phase. The problem with this is that the condom has a typical-use effectiveness rate of 85%. Therefore, statistics from people who relied on condom use during the fertile phase will show that such Fertility Awareness methods have an 80-85% effectiveness rate. In India however, where the poor learned NFP and relied on abstinence during the fertile phase, a study of 19,483 poor women had a pregnancy rate of less than 1%.

The benefits they received went beyond the ability to plan their family size, however. Mercedes Wilson tells of how women in India would be dragged away and forcibly sterilized against their will. Women could be spared this violation, however, by carrying a card with them that stated they used NFP. In this instance, not only were the poor empowered with the knowledge of their own bodies, its use also protected them against government abuse.³

NFP has also had great success in China. The effectiveness rate in couples using NFP to avoid pregnancy has remained at about 99%. In this country where the one-child policy is strictly enforced, use of NFP has also lowered the abortion rate in some communities. In a study comparing two similar communities, one in which NFP is widely practiced, and one in which the IUD is widely used, the IUD community had seven times the abortion rate as the NFP community (though they had been statistically similar prior to the introduction of NFP).⁴ Furthermore, the simple use of the Billing's Ovulation Method allowed 14,524 out of 45,280 (32.1%) previously infertile couples achieve a pregnancy.

Though many people maintain that the poor of the world need sustained Western intervention and complicated, expensive, (and sometimes abusive and ethnocentric) population control programs, the success of Natural Family Planning shows that simple knowledge of the fertility cycle is all that is needed. Once people have this knowledge, they can then be autonomous in deciding if and when to expand their families.

Footnotes

1. Mercedes Arzu Wilson, "Love and Fertility." (Family of the Americas: Dunkirk, MD, 2006) Preface, v.

2. R.E.J. Ryder, "'Natural Family Planning': Effective Birth Control Supported by the Catholic Church," British Medical Journal. 307 (18 September 1993).

3. Mercedes Arzu Wilson, (lecture, Master Teacher Institute for the Ovulation Method, St Norbert College, De Pere, WI, 22-25 Sept 2011).

4. Shao-Zhen Qian, "China Successfully Launching Billings Ovulation Method" World Organisation Ovulation Method Billings. 2002. http://www.woomb.org/bom/trials/chinaLaunching.html

For Those in the Area

For those in Wisconsin an event is coming up at Elizabeth Ministry retreat center at which I will be a presenter. Please come to any you are able. If you come to all that is great; if you can only attend one, that is fine too. I hope to see you there.