Pink Orthodoxy and The Real War on Women

Copernicus painting of a heliocentric universe

As with all revisionist history, the truth is more complicated than the myth.  Mikolaj Kopernik was a canon in the Polish cathedral in Frombork, Poland.  Educated in elite universities in Krakow, Bologna and Padua with support from his uncle, the bishop, he was a church administrator, a lawyer, practiced medicine and to pass the time translated ancient poetry from Greek to Latin, formulated currency reform and painted.  He died in obscurity in 1543 and was buried unmarked beneath the cathedral floor with a hundred others who spent their lives working for the Church.

MIkolaj chose to be known by the Latinized version of his name, Copernicus, and his enduring legacy and thirty year passion was astronomy.  Two months prior to his death, he published in Latin, “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium”, or “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.” In it he challenged the scientific orthodoxy that had persisted through ancient Greece and Rome of a geocentric universe which taught that the sun, the planets and the stars revolved around the earth.  His heliocentric hypothesis was indeed a revolution based on his mathematics and observations from the planetarium in a corner of the cathedral grounds.  An esoteric academic work, it was little contested by the Church or anyone else.

“There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.” Martin Luther about Copernican theory

Everything changed when in the conflagration of the Protestant Revolution, Protestant theologians proclaimed a heliocentric universe as contrary to Holy Scripture.  After Galileo took up the Copernican heliocentric model in 1616, the Church was grievously wrong and reacting to the Protestant position, added “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” to her list of banned books. The Pope ordered Galileo held in home confinement.  The book remained on the list for over two centuries until 1835.  The Church has since acknowledged the error.  Science and faith are two complementary, not opposing, aspects of human understanding and truth.

Science can purify religion from error and superstition.  Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.” Pope John Paul II

In our secular humanist culture, orthodoxies are dearly held, and contrarian evidence is enthusiastically ignored.  One such article of faith recklessly endangers women, especially young women.  “Women’s reproductive rights” as a principle of secular orthodoxy transcends politics, transcends religion and transcends science as well.

Two news stories in the last week or so were not covered extensively in that most ardent defender of the faith, those impregnable bastions of orthodoxy, the liberal press and electronic media from the New York Times to MSNBC et al.  The first defense against heterodoxy is to disregard all evidence that contradicts the precepts; the second is to suppress the sources.

The first story informs us that new incidences of cancer worldwide are up substantively from 12.7 million in 2008 to 14.1 million in 2012.  According to the World Health Organization, deaths from cancer rose in the same period from 7.6 million to 8.2 million.  Deaths from breast cancer rose to 522,000 last year.  Diagnosis of breast cancer rose 20% in four years to 1.7 million women in 2012.  Despite enormous effort in expense and brilliance, cancer seems to keep on keeping on, especially as the developing world claims the dubious benefits of modern culture.

The second story is indeed the ‘elephant in the living room’ that is becoming more and more difficult to overlook. Dr. Joel Brind (Professor of Endocrinology at City University in NY) and Dr. Angela Lanfranchi (breast cancer oncologist, medical school professor and surgeon) founded the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (BCPI) in the late nineties and have for many years been voices crying in the wilderness regarding the correlation between induced abortions, birth control drugs and breast cancer.  On their website (see link) dozens of studies over many years document these relationships.  A small minority of studies doesn’t show this correlation, and those are the studies most frequently cited by Planned Parenthood and other defenders of abortion, including the current administration in Washington.  The negative finding studies were sometimes funded by abortion advocates or employed flawed methodology in compiling their statistics, according to BCPI.

Last week, the voice of BCPI was joined by a most unlikely chorus – a China based meta study and a study based in India that ties without doubt induced abortion and breast cancer. The meta-analysis from China was published in the peer reviewed international journal, “Cancer Causes and Control.”  A meta-analysis studies data from many experiments and draws conclusions from all of them.  China’s recently modified one child policy has resulted so far in 336 million induced abortions, so there is no lack of subjects available.  The results showed a 44% increase in breast cancer risk for women with a single induced abortion, a 76% increased risk for women with two, and an 89% raised risk for women with more than two.  Dr. Brind commented their findings as “of the sort of magnitude that has typified the link between cigarettes and lung cancer.”

A study in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine found a six fold increased risk for breast cancer for women who have had abortions.  The governments of China and India support abortion, so there is no political motivation for these findings.

For birth control pills, the evidence is also clear.  The birth control pill is actually listed along with tobacco, formaldehyde and plutonium as a group 1 carcinogen by both the American Cancer Society and the World Health Organization.  Group 1 carcinogens are proven to cause cancer.

The reason these facts are not discussed with the women showing up for abortions or birth control pills at Planned Parenthood and other providers and/or advocates for these things is secular orthodoxy revolving around “women’s reproductive rights.”  That Planned Parenthood performed over 327 thousand abortions last year at an average billing of between $300 and $950 ($202 million per year at average) perhaps could influence their reticence[1].  That the pink epicenter of breast cancer awareness, the Susan G Komen Institute funds over $500,000 per year to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening[2] may have something to do with their reluctance to publicize these facts. Federal funding for Planned Parenthood under the Obama administration has risen to an all time high of tax payer money – $540 million last year or $1.5 million a week.  Great incentive exists to limit scrutiny.  History will eventually sort out this, as it sorted out a geocentric universe.  For 1.7 million women last year, the sorting will be too late.

“The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism.  The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.”  Dennis Prager