Disney Princesses and Abortion Breast Cancer Link

Recently Dina Goldstein's photo essay struck at the Disney princess myth by exposing what the series called Fallen Princesses. This particular photo shows Rapunzel as a very youthful cancer patient...and is strangely accurate, as documented by David Jay's Scar project. Thirty year old women with no family history of breast cancer, began showing up at the oncologist's office.  Goldstein's image is successful without being sexualized as are many of the images in Pink-tober ads to promote breast cancer awareness. 

"Rather than being playful, which is what these campaigns are after," Peggy Orenstein writes, "sexy cancer suppresses discussion of real cancer, rendering its sufferers--the ones whom all this is supposed to be for--invisible.  Moreover, while a month-long breast cancer awareness campaign or Pink-tober gets promoted by various cancer charities and purveyors of popular cultural,it is widely called pinkwashing, its basic denial as clear as the cigarette makers disputing the now accepted truth that smoking causes cancer.  Just as with the tobacco manufacturers, the breast cancer industry represents governmental agencies and big business, including the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, and those in various medical communities. 

Unwillingness to own up to having aborted a child was supposedly the reason given for denial of the ABC link (abortion-breast cancer).  Such "recall bias," would lead healthy women to cover up an abortion.


It's thus hugely significant that a meta-analysis examining a whopping 36 studies of induced abortion and cancer risk was just published in China. Abortion is not stigmatized in China, where 40 abortions occur for every 100 live births. As a result, there is no reason to conceal a history of abortion, and "recall bias" is in this case irrelevant. Endorsing the conclusions of the previous studies, Dr. Yubei Huang, et al. report that induced abortion presents a 44% increased risk of developing breast cancer.  
                                           
The medical community agrees that childbirth improves a woman's odds against cancer, because the maturation of milk-producing cells in the breast helps to resist cancerous agents. While pregnancy is a period when a woman is vulnerable, live birth gives the breast cells time to mature.  Think about it.  Cutting short the protective action of breast cell development makes induced abortion a risk factor for breast cancer.  In other words, the physiology of the breast itself suggests that induced abortion increases vulnerability to breast cancer.

Several credible peer-reviewed epidemiological studies, the physiology of the breast, and experimental studies done in mammals all show there is increasing evidence of the ABC (abortion-breast cancer) link.  While any study can be seen to have some flaws, the mounting scientific evidence lends factual support to the claim that abortion serves as a predictor for breast cancer.  

In light of this increasing evidence, Pink-tober seems less designed to get at the real causes of cancer than to sell cancer-awareness merchandise and to titillate and protect sex rather than the lives of women. Rather than standing in line to buy more pink stuff, we need to acknowledge, as Dr. Denise Hunnell points out, that hormonal contraceptives and induced abortion are "leading etiologies."  Since these are both largely avoidable by behavioral changes, Dr. Hunnell suggests aiming our efforts on prevention. In the face of damning evidence of the ABC link, the million dollar abortion industry and its supporters hunker down to demand more treatment options.        

Young women in our culture are being fed a fairy tale all right, but it's not Disney's doing; this is the outworn feminist fairy tale of free love.  You know, the Woodstock era endless "Summer of Love" Seventies that brought you the pill and abortion in return for a golden life of equality.

 Now that myth has been dispelled by the old person's disease becoming the young women's epidemic, maybe the spell of feminism will fall away.  Here's a better lingo for our times: Rather than simplistically "think pink," we need to recognize the ABC Link.

"Maybe the witch thought she was protecting Rapunzel, not punishing her."

--Alyssa B. Sheinmel, The Beautiful Between

Is There a Mind Meld At Georgetown?

 Relishing spirited discussion but promoting open dialogue with those whose views differ from our own is upheld as basic to democracy if not intellectual inquiry. For this reason, free speech on campus was traditionally celebrated or at least upheld as a basic right.  Not so much today.

College is not just a disinterested dispenser of information and skills; colleges also cultivate group think indoctrination in current ideology.  Perhaps the best evidence of this mind meld-like hold on college students' intellectual faculties is seen in the lengths college administrators go to in order to silence dissension and the willingness of students to go along. The University of Cincinnati, in fact, claims they do not exist to provide a free speech forum, as noted in this analysis of campus censorship by a group called FIRE(Foundation for Individual Rights Education):

    

Georgetown University recently held a "Coming Out" day on campus, and the conservative group TFP (Tradition, Family, Property) who filmed their interaction with them was asked to leave.  In the TFP video, it is clear the university administrator prefers to silence rather than allow dialogue with those holding conservative views.  Likewise, the student newspaper fails to question the reason for TFP's presence on campus, and in fact essentially falls in line with the university's censorship of the conservative group.  Given the power base, those who utter conservative views are asked by the administration to leave, escorted off campus, or relegated to small peripheral  "free speech zones" away from the actual public square. 

  
Although tagged and posted as "News," the campus Vox Populi article appears to be an an echo chamber for the administration's liberal viewpoint rather than a voice of all the people, since the Catholic position is not represented even on this ostensibly Catholic campus. Instead, reporter Isabel Echarte's news story "Yet Another Conservative, Catholic Group Thinks Georgetown Isn't Catholic Enough" ridicules the video as tiresome, juvenile, and not worthy of response.  

Admittedly, the title of TFP's video, "The Smoke of Satan at Georgetown University on Coming Out Day" is over the top,  intended to provoke viewership.  Yet, the Vox article further criticizes the video maker's right to question those celebrating homosexuality on a Catholic university. 

Indeed, Vox Populi does little to serve as a voice representing alternate viewpoints.  Rather than examine the conservative position, Echarte belittles TFP for using "philosophical jargon." While the video includes three phrases referencing Catholic doctrine, these are necessary to understand Catholic teaching.  Those taking classes on a Catholic college campus should presumably be aware of such "jargon" or be willing, as college students, to grapple with the terms.  

Above: A free speech wall ripped down by students, suggesting students are becoming intolerant of opposing viewpoints.

Of the phrases that could be construed as "philosophical jargon," two are introduced by a "Coming Out" day spokesperson: "hierarchy," and "individual revelation."  The term "hierarchy" is typically used to malign Church leadership, the media often suggesting that an all-male leadership can't possibly understand any sexual choices other than celibacy.  This may be the way the "Coming Out" spokesperson uses the word, since "hierarchy" is paired with "individual revelation," seeming to contrast the terms.

Actually, the Church sets in contrast "private" as opposed to "public" revelation, in order to distinguish scripture from ongoing claims of miraculous events or experiences, such as healings.  Whereas Catholics are required to believe in public revelation, private revelations are subject to extensive review and may not ever be officially sanctioned by the Church.  In the context of the video, it appears the "Coming Out" spokesperson is making a case for acceptance of alternative lifestyles such as homosexuality on the basis of private revelation.

The TFP person conducting the interview points out that homosexuality is considered "intrinisically disordered" by the Catholic Church.  This phrase asserts that homosexual actions are inherently or in themselves not directed toward a person's well being. According to Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson N.J., head of the committee on doctrine, "Homosexual acts are never morally acceptable.  Such acts never lead to happiness," he said, "because they are 'intrinsically disordered,' meaning they are not directed to the bonds of marriage and the goal of procreation that are 'part of God's design.' But having an inclination that is disordered does not in any way diminish human worth."

 Echarte might have included such definitions and thus moved the debate to genuine dialogue.  Instead, her Vox populi article demonstrates the "Mutz paradox."  This term was coined after Diane Mutz's book, Hearing the Other Side.  She found that the higher a crowd's educational level, the less willing they are to hear divergent views.  The result is an echo chamber.

Journalists from the Washington Post and the New York Times admit to submitting veto power to the liberal power base.   In another example mentioned in "Mainstream Media Censors the News," a journalist admitted that CNN had accepted advertising money from a third world dictator, later succumbing to becoming a mouthpiece for state-sponsored propaganda. 

This reality of media corruption requires what might be called a total review mentality in which every assertion is checked for "nutritional value." Steven Johnson uses the phrase in "Everything Bad is Good for You" to refer to the value of junk tv.  Like junk tv generally junk news forces us to be smarter, to track the real story by noticing what gets left out, to notice how adversarial shout downs, slander, ridicule, and straw man formulas dominate as sophisticated digital tactics. The left is now the new far right, willing to suppress those who disagree with them.

College students need to learn how to see through intolerance in- the- name- of- diversity--you know, the bullies who smear and snipe at anyone whose views do not adhere to the dominant narrative.   So, Georgetown students encounter a doctrinaire celebration of diversity on "Coming Out" day  while not encouraged to discuss, let alone fully investigate the Church's teaching on homosexuality. Make no mistake, this is a form of censorship.

  Of course, there is nothing wrong with loving people in their variety and their beauty, but that does not need to mean embracing any and all beliefs as equally valid and true.   

  

*"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie -- as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged.


Signed,

The Philosopher's Daughter

Eyes Wide Shut: Show Me the Flower in the Rifle Barrel

Crosseyed and Painless

What does it take to wake a college student?  They are understandably stressed out, distracted by classes, homework, jobs, and exams.  Students are high energy too, knowing they need to deliver the facts on demand.  There's a  bit of the college student in all of us!


But you know those facts don't always do what you want them to, as the Talking Heads song "Crosseyed and Painless"  reminds us.


"Facts won't do what I want them to"           

In my own life, pulled along in the excitement of ideas and a hectic work life I  floated in a dreamy haze of inaction for Van Winkle years. My generation's 60's style free love sold to us as a social good.... Seriously? 

Now we are told that certain photos must not be shown and it seems cannot be seen. In the interest of women's "good."  
       ......

"Facts are simple and facts are straight"

Images speak.  Sometimes they cry out.  So, here's the image deemed too controversial (notice, the photo's accuracy was not questioned); nonetheless, you were not allowed to "see" it, to look, and to examine the truthfulness of claims regarding the status of the preborn. (The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and the LA Times refused to publish this image, part of an advertisement created by Heroic Media.):

Artist Donna Lee
"Facts are written all over your face"

Rather than undifferentiated cells, this photo shows a medically- accurate fetal model held in a hand.   Science is based on observation, and it isn't just scientists who have eyes or the new eyes provided by ultrasounds-eyes that tell us a 20 week old fetus has separate arms, legs, body, and face.  Science is making it possible for all of us to have eyes to see.

If the photo had shown earlier human development, not an infant able to be nestled in a human hand-- there would appear nothing morally problematic: "if you get the abortion early enough, the fetus doesn't even look like a baby." Yet, already at fertilization, there is human life, looking the way it's supposed to look at that stage of development, increasingly revealed by science, to be rapidly replicating, coordinated human development.

"Facts go out and slam the door"

 The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal ran the original advertisement  while stipulating that the wording make "it clear that it was a paid advertisement."   The Chicago Tribune demanded  a different picture of a live 20-week old baby en utero--was it the 3 dimensionality of the  photo image that was so disturbing?  If so, there are now 3D images of  infants in utero, so we can all see the life of a developing fetus with greater clarity than ever before.  

What's interesting about this is that we are told, on the one hand, that images of abortion victims are too graphic; on that grounds, this clearly sanitized photo of a fetal model should be more acceptable--the infant is not decapitated or bloody--the photo omits the gritty realism of the effects of the abortionist's scalpel.  Yet, the photo does capture in an intimate and personal way, the size and form of the baby.

Yet, this image too was and apparently is too graphic for the general public: You were not allowed to see the real size and anatomy of a fetus that gives lie to the myth that abortion merely rids the woman's body of a "clump of cells."  Could "clump of cells" not describe any member of the human family?

Look for yourself. The miracle of human life developing at an unbelievably rapid pace inside the uterus is nothing less than astonishing.  

 To be politically correct today is to have eyes wide shut. As the image of a 20 week old human embryo shows, there's a third story involved, and it's going unheard. 

Yes, the woman experiences a crisis, but that does not undo the developing life inside her.  Is abortion really a peaceful response to a crisis? Is it really a social good? 

We've now had 40 years to gather in the windfalls the feminists promised: abortion would end  poverty and child abuse.  In reality, both have been perpetuated, if anything, by abortion.  "Make love, not war" we declared, effectively protesting the war by the appeal of sex- as- liberation as peacemaking.   Making love instead of  war sounded good.  Flower children, after all,  handed daisies to soldiers.  

The movement effectively drew on an image of flower child innocence.  "Love, not war" was propped up by "love, don't judge," all played out by "good" flower children.  Creepily, aggression toward the weakest and the most essentially voiceless among us sustains this ongoing "free love" ethic. 

Abbie Hoffman's "Flower Brigade" was accompanied by protests in which college students demanded sexual liberation.  Simultaneously with the idyllic flower power movement we were threatened with economic collapse from a population bomb--prophesied in the Malthusian overtones of Paul Erlich and increasingly articulated by feminists who in effect declared war on our offspring.  

Yet we had to wait for an image as powerful as the daisy threaded into a rifle barrel to understand the impact of our Beetle's generation's particular mode of aggression. Women who took up the liberationist mantra later reported feeling "coerced" into abortion.  No matter that the population explosion never went off.  We all got the memo: curb our actual procreation.  Make love not babies. 

What was inherited from the Summer of Love was a sexuality colonized by social progressives and consistently linked both to the peace movements and the need for contraception and abortion as a means of correction for the sin of human propagation.   The generation after the baby boomers recognize their parents efforts to sustain romanticisation of their youth prior to selling out.                    

 Those who coined the "free love" edict continue to claim: no one gets hurt.  It was left to the generation after the baby boomers to recognize sexual libertinage as a failed project. The wreckage of divorce, single parents, and STDs was all around them, reminders that sexual license and abortion were not unquestionable social goods.  Increasingly clear is the way the current base has echoed the 60s strategy of linking sexuality to political change.  And the body count from peace loving yet uncommitted sexual acts now dwarfs casualties of the Vietnam war.




"Crosseyed and Painless." 

Hooking up, after all, is not the same thing as love--how could genuine love for the other include the fall out we began seeing and continue to see despite our best efforts at a  black out.  The facts are living turned inside out. 

Some people wake up on their own; Most of us need an alarm clock.  Images of the victims--an ever mounting pile-- from our 60's frolic provide a counter balance to the pretty image of the flower child with tangled hair, bared breasts, sweetly sniffing daisies with unfocused eyes.... Victims, even without clearly defined faces, call to us ever louder with the new ultrasound technologies.  And that alarm is getting harder to ignore.