Obama admin: birth control mandate is final; bishops vow to fight

WASHINGTON, January 20, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After being deluged with complaints from outraged religious groups, Obama’s health department has dug in its heels, saying its decision to force employers to provide abortifacient birth control drugs will continue as planned – although faith-based groups will be given a year reprieve. In response, U.S. Catholic bishops have not minced words, vowing to fight the order as “literally unconscionable.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday that faith-based entities like hospitals and universities will have until August 1, 2013 to provide employees with free birth control as part of their insurance packages. The mandate will also force such groups to pay for sterilizations and, because the FDA has approved abortifacient drugs such as Ella as “contraception.”…

American Evangelicals beginning to rethink birth control

ROCKFORD, Illinois, January 11, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new book from one of the world’s foremost scholars in family issues examines how mid-twentieth-century evangelical leaders followed the mainstream and bought into birth control, and, briefly, abortion.

The book, titled “Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973,” by Dr. Allan Carlson, comes at a time when some American evangelicals are rethinking their position on birth control. For instance, there are the followers of the Quiverfull Movement who “eagerly accept their children as blessings from God,” eschewing not only artificial birth control, but even natural family planning. In this way, they say they “trust the Lord for family size.”

“Raised within a religious movement that has almost uniformly condemned abortion, many young evangelicals have begun to ask whether abortion can be neatly isolated from the issue of contraception,” reads the publisher’s description of the book. “A significant number of evangelical families have, over the last several decades, rejected the use of birth control and returned decisions regarding family size to God.”….

 

Health Canada warns birth control pill has high risk of clots

OTTAWA, December 6, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In June Health Canada announced that it would be reviewing the safety of the contraceptive pills Yaz and Yasmin over concerns users may experience a two to three times greater risk of developing blood clots, compared to those who use other brands of contraceptive pills.

The results of the review, released December 5, state that “drospirenone-containing oral contraceptives (marketed under the brand names Yasmin and Yaz) … may be associated with a risk of blood clots that is 1.5 to 3 times higher than other birth control pills.”….

Armenian Study: Induced Abortion Nearly Triples Breast Cancer Risk

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer notes that an Armenian study-whose authors examined diabetes mellitus type 2, reproductive factors, and breast cancer-found a statistically significant association showing a 2.86-fold increased breast cancer risk from one induced abortion. [1] The study, led by Lilit Khachatryan, included researchers from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the University of Pennsylvania.

Khachatryan’s team reported a statistically significant 13% increased breast cancer risk for every one year delay of a first full term pregnancy (FFTP), with delayed FFTPs until ages 21-30 or after age 30 resulting in 2.21-fold and 4.95-fold increased risks respectively, as opposed to women with FFTPs before age 20. (Abortion is often used to delay FFTPs.) Giving birth resulted in a 64% reduced risk.

 

Due to political correctness, the authors also inaccurately claimed, “Most evidence (of an abortion-breast cancer link)…points to no effect.” Professor Joel Brind (Baruch College, City University of New York) said that is “plainly false.” [2]

 

Fifty-one of 68 epidemiological studies since 1957 report an abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link (not counting biological and experimental evidence).

 

Khachatryan’s team cited only one (severely criticized) study, Melbye et al. 1997, to support their false claim of “no effect.” [3,4,5] Although Melbye’s team found no overall increased risk, they reported a statistically significant 89% increased risk for those having abortions after 18 weeks gestation…. (Source)

Catholic college would shut down before submitting to Obama abortifacient contraceptive mandate

BELMONT, North Carolina, November 23, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The president of Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina says they would rather close their doors than submit to a mandate by the Obama administration that threatens to force Catholic institutions to cover abortifacient drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives in their health plans.

“I believe we would go there,” said Dr. William Thierfelder, according to the Gaston Gazette, at a press conference Friday after they launched a lawsuit against the Obama administration. “The point is I don’t think we’re going to have to get there. There’s many steps in between that we can take before we come to that conclusion.”

…

Syphilis rates soar 134% among homosexual black men, fall among general population

WASHINGTON, DC, November 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The U.S. Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) most recent data on the spread of sexually transmitted diseases reveals that among homosexual black men the syphilis rates rose a staggering 134% between 2009 and 2010. During the same time frame, syphilis rates among the general population fell by 1.6%.

Birth Control Pills Linked to Prostate Cancer

Could birth control pills be linked to an increased incidence of prostate cancer around the world? That’s the provocative question being raised in new research published this week in BMJ Open.

Dr. Neil Fleshner, a urologic oncologist and researcher at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, says he and his co-author had long wondered why men in North America and Europe develop and die of prostate cancer more often than men in other countries.

“For years, there’s been concern that perhaps maybe pesticide exposure or some kind of compound in our food or water supply may be responsible for prostate cancer,” he says.

So he and his team reviewed data from the United Nations World Contraceptive Use report, looking at contraceptive use among women around the world.

They found that the use of IUDs (intrauterine devices), condoms, and other vaginal barriers were not linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer, but the use of the birth control pills was significantly associated with both a country’s number of new cases of prostate cancer and deaths from prostate cancer…. (Source)