February | 2012 | Ezerwoman's Blog

Archive for February, 2012

Komen & Planned Parenthood

Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Faith & Practice, Life issues, Parenting & Education, tagged abortion, breast cancer, mammograms, women's health on February 4, 2012| 3 Comments »

My mother died of breast cancer. My aunt died of breast cancer. My cousin died of breast cancer. My niece, at age 28, was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy because she wants to beat the disease. Dear friends of mine are bravely battling breast cancer.

With these women in mind, and in good conscience, I haven’t been able to support Susan G. Komen for the Cure. That’s because Komen helps to fund Planned Parenthood. This has always concerned me for a number of reasons, one of which is the connection between abortion and breast cancer. I can’t support any organization that wants to prevent something as life-threatening as breast cancer by giving to an organization that makes a profit doing abortions.

PP has claimed, over and over, that it provides mammograms for poor women. It claims to help poor women most especially in Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods. However, PP doesn’t do mammograms. Apparently, at PP locations nationwide, only manual palpations are provided. That’s sub-standard for low-income women, especially black women whose incidence of breast cancer is higher than any other demographic. Instead of funding PP, I wonder if Komen would purchase mammograms for caring pregnancy centers like the one in my community? Then, Komen could be sure that their money wasn’t going to a monolithic, already government-funded, profit-making provider of abortions. Abortions which put women at risk perhaps of breast cancer, but most certainly of some other physical, emotional, or spiritual harm.

The debate over the abortion/breast cancer connection may continue for years. That’s because it can be difficult to honestly examine all the facts when two ideologies are opposed. Or when money and politics hold sway. Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a Clinical assistant professor of Surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, has seen firsthand how abortion hurts women. Dr. Lanfranchi has extensively explained how abortion increases breast cancer. She has treated countless women facing breast cancer. Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., was named a 2010 Castle Connolly NY Metro area “Top Doc” in breast surgery. She testified under oath in a 2002 California lawsuit against PP that she had private conversations with leading experts who agreed abortion raises cancer risk, but they refused to discuss it publicly, saying it was “too political.”

If you’re willing to study the connection between abortion and breast cancer for yourself or a loved one, there are other doctors like Professor Joel Brind, endocrinologist at Baruch College in New York who, together with others, published a 1996 paper in the Journal of Epidemiol Community Health showing a 30% greater chance of developing breast cancer for women who’ve had induced abortions. You might also visit the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer.

There was a glimmer of hope earlier this week. Komen announced that it was going to stop their annual grants to PP. But, now it appears they have changed their mind. PP had a little something to do with that. PP doesn’t like it when communities or congressmen like my own Steve King or Florida’s Cliff Stearns stand up to it. PP doesn’t like it when they are exposed for covering up under-age prostitution and sexual abuse. PP doesn’t like it when clinic directors walk away because they can’t deceive women any longer. PP doesn’t like it when American taxpayers tell the government to stop pouring more money into their already overflowing coffers. PP’s annual report of 2008-2009 notes that they received a record $363 million from government grants and other taxpayer funds. They set another record that year by performing over 324,000 abortions. As Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana said, “The largest abortion provider in America should not also be the largest recipient of federal funding under Title X.” But, apparently, U.S. tax dollars aren’t enough. When it appeared their partnership with Komen for the Cure might be broken, PP moved quickly. What happened this week is a powerful message from PP to the country: Don’t mess with us.

PP is like any organization. It has a mission. PP started under the direction of Margaret Sanger and has remained true to the ideology and mission of eugenist Sanger. Sanger specifically set up her clinics in black communities. Today, PP has located nearly four-fifths of its American clinics (79%) in minority neighborhoods. Abortion has killed more black children than the totaled numbers of AIDS and violent crimes. PP is in the population control business. It also works to separate children from parents and train adolescents to “follow their sexual instincts.” Visit PP’s TeenWire web site (www.teenwire.org) to learn that PP considers boys with boys and girls with girls as a “normal” sexual choice and an effective form of birth control.

PP is a place women turn to in times of fear and desperation. PP may bring momentary relief, but it brings no joy. Someone dear to me still carries the PP receipt of her abortion in her wallet together with a photo of what her child might have looked like cut out from a magazine. That child is her only child. There were no more. This woman also mourns another life, that of her sister who died from breast cancer. I know my friend wants to help raise awareness and fund cancer research. But, she also wants to help lead women away from other harmful things. Like cervical cancer, STDs, and sterility. For that reason, she supports advocacies for women that don’t partner with PP.

Sources: Concerned Women for America
and LifeNews, 1-2-2012

Read Full Post »

Making Wrong Choices Unthinkable

Posted in Citizenship, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, tagged abortion, Christianity, euthanasia, morality on February 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It is not that Christians can make this a Christian nation. Or a Christian culture. We may not be able to prevent laws, such as nationalized health care which appears to mandate many practices a Christian doesn’t and can’t Biblically support. But, Christians can choose to not do wrong things and, thus, affect their family, neighbors, and community — one person at a time. History records that it is possible for small groups of people to make wrong things unthinkable and even, eventually, illegal.

In Rome, it was culturally acceptable to take an unwanted, newborn baby outside the city gates and abandon the child to the elements. It was, basically, legal. But, Christians helped to make that behavior unthinkable by rescuing the newborns. They took them home, adopted them, and founded orphanages.

William Wilberforce and a small group of Biblical men and women in England determined to obey God and help their country stop the practice of slavery. It took 30 years of Wilberforce’s life. Slavery did become illegal but, first, it had to become unthinkable. Christians who knew slavery was wrong helped others see the practice as economically and morally unthinkable.

What can we learn from this as we Christians in America face legalized abortion? Legalized euthanasia? Legalized embryonic stem cell research? Legalized national health care? We can choose not to engage in the procreative act of sex outside the faithfulness of marriage. We can choose to see every human life as God sees it: so valuable that Jesus Christ would die for him or her. We can choose to live in ways that honor the Creator of life so that even non-believers are encouraged to make choices that build a moral society.

Read Full Post »

Assault on Freedom of Religion

Posted in Citizenship, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, tagged birth control, conscience, nationalized health care, religion on February 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Pliny the Younger was a provincial governor in the Roman Empire. He asked Emperor Trajan if he should execute Christians who refused to burn incense in worship of the emperor. “Pliny, in keeping with the customs of the empire,” writes Wesley J. Smith, “didn’t care about forcing Christians to believe that the emperor was a god. But, in public, they had to behave as if they did.” It wasn’t that Christians were targeted for their faith, but over their refusal to declare themselves part of the reigning social order.

Smith, in writing his article “Free Birth Control vs. Freedom of Religion,” said he thought of Pliny when reading about the specific rules being created to implement nationalized health care. Some of these rules seriously conflict with Christian faith and conscience. Under nationalized health care, religious organizations will be required to provide insurance coverage for practices they believe to be morally wrong. The “free-birth-control” rule will require all employers (with a very narrow exception) to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services – free of charge. It will not matter if the employer is a religious organization and will violate its doctrine by providing the insurance. With such a rule, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is imposing a legal duty on faith organizations. What is that duty? To comply with the values of the state whenever engaging in public action or charitable enterprise among the general society.

But, what about “freedom of religion?” More and more, U.S. officials refer to “freedom of worship” rather than “freedom of religion.” They are not the same thing. The former means an individual is free to believe whatever he wants and worship privately without interference. The latter means an individual is free to express their core faith out in society even if not endorsed by the state. Freedom of religion, as defined by the Founding Fathers, allows Christians to maintain a Christian school, hospital, or inner-city mission – true to Biblical teaching and practice — where the general public is served. Freedom of worship would not allow that.

The specific rules of nationalized health care, as directed by HHS, knowingly force religious organizations to pay for medical services to which they are theologically opposed. These rules represent a frontal assault on freedom of religion at an institutional level. This is not a trivial matter. “To date,” writes Wesley J. Smith, “public controversies over ‘conscience’ in health care have mostly involved individuals – e.g. doctors, nurses, pharmacists – whose personal morality or religious conviction conflicted with the provision of certain medical procedures or substances.”

But, explains Smith, “the free-birth-control rule goes much further than creating a potential conflict between the general law and individual religious beliefs. Rather, the rule targets the right of religious organizations to conduct their public activities consistently with their religious dogma and moral values – except within the narrow confines of an actual church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or monastery.” How narrow might this be? “The group health insurance covering nuns in a Catholic religious order,” writes Smith, “would probably not have to cover contraception. But insurance provided by the same order’s elementary school probably would. Ditto a hospital established by the nuns.”

“Despite much screaming from opponents,” Smith explains, HHS “has refused to broaden the religious exemption in the final rule — forcing religiously founded organizations to violate their parent church’s teachings, a frontal assault on the freedom of faiths to operate institutional outreach organizations consistent with their beliefs. If this rule stands, it won’t end there. If Catholic organizations can be compelled by federal diktat to violate their religious tenets, so can other religious organizations in different contexts.” According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, even if a religious employer does not cover contraceptive services, they are to tell where such services can be obtained. “Thus,” observes Smith, “the Obama administration is attacking even freedom of worship by forcing exempt organizations to tell their employees where and how they can violate church teachings.”

“This birth-control rule,” concludes Smith, “is the latest and most egregious example of government forcing religious organizations to conform their operations to reigning secular moral values. In this sense, faith organizations are being compelled to participate in a metaphorical Caesar worship. As in the Roman Empire, the government will allow religious organizations general freedom of worship, but, increasingly, not freedom of religion. Pliny would approve.”

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow
at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant
for the Patient Rights Council and the Center for Bioethics and Culture.
To read Wesley J. Smith’s article, please visit National Review.

Read Full Post »

Thank You Susan G. Komen

Posted in Life issues, tagged breast cancer, Planned Parenthood on February 2, 2012| 2 Comments »

On behalf of women and children, I thank the Susan G. Komen Foundation for stopping all grants to Planned Parenthood. Those grants were in excess of a half million dollars annually. Why did Susan G. Komen pull their funds away from Planned Parenthood? Because Komen will no longer fund organizations that refer clients elsewhere for mammograms. Planned Parenthood claims they do mammograms, but they don’t.