ProWomanProLife

Doctors have discovered that the accepted origins of ovarian cancer have been wrong. From CTV,

MONTREAL — Ovarian cancer is one of the most feared diseases, as it hard to detect and often leads to death.  [...]

But a research team at McGill appears to have made a breakthrough by learning that the cancer actual begins in the fallopian tubes.

“We were barking the wrong tree. The name we got wrong, we got the origin of ovarian cancer wrong. We got the test that we should be using for this wrong,” said Dr. Lucy Gilbert, the MUHC oncologist who lead the research.

This is good news for all women, and should remind us that medicine, like every other science, is an evolving field. What we believe to be the case today could look very different from what we believe in the future. That gives me hope for the practice of abortion.

WECARE for “World Expert Consortium for Abortion Research and Education” is going to be very useful, indeed.

Today, WECARE posts an assessment of the “abortion is safer than childbirth” study.

Excellent assessment, worth reading in full. It gives a sense of just how politicized the research around abortion is.

This site, WECARE, is going to be extraordinarily useful.

WECARE stands for World Expert Consortium for Abortion Research and Education.

In a world where it appears the Guttmacher is the only agency publishing or assessing abortion-related research, this is long overdue. (The Guttmacher is the research arm of Planned Parenthood. That doesn’t mean everything they do is flawed, but as they say, if you follow the money and it leads you to abortion providers, one certainly needs to be aware of that bias! That said, in my past life as a journalist, I once interviewed a psychologist, who, unprompted, said some of the Guttmacher’s work specifically to do with abortion is some of the shoddiest work he had ever seen. And this was no “pro-life” psychologist, and he did not think he was speaking to a “pro-life” journalist. I digress.)

Anyway, bookmark this site, because when it comes to getting great, up-to-date scientific information about abortion, it’s hard to find.

An item published earlier this week on LifeSite News announced that a UK academic was arguing in favour of ectogenesis (pregnancy outside the womb).

My initial reaction upon reading the LifeSite item – beyond the initial oh my… was that I could probably have poked holes in her arguments when I was a bona fide ethicist myself but recovering as I am from the physical and mental demands of a multiple pregnancy I … wait… did I just prove her point?

I think we should all calm down.

First, all academics, including UK ethicists, are under constant pressure to publish new and innovative material. Arguing in favour of ectogenesis is a little out there but not entirely surprising given this particular ethicist’s research interests. Secondly, the ethicist is a philosopher looking at pregnancy through a sex inequity lens, not a medical doctor announcing upcoming experiments in his newfangled hatchery. I can’t think of a western country who has a healthcare buck to spare on this type of research and experiment, can you? Thirdly, go rent a National Geographic In the Womb video and remind yourself of how wonderfully complicated conception is. Decades of research have only marginally improved outcomes for very premature children. There is very little we can do to replace the womb environment, even for fully formed infants.

Growing a human being from scratch outside the womb? Nice idea (I mean it, I’ve been pregnant seven times) but not a chance.

Medical research and innovation has not been able to beat the flu yet. Let’s not forget that.

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Andrea adds: This is Véronique’s post, for our Facebook readers. In case it isn’t abundantly clear that I have not been pregnant seven times!

You might nod your head in agreement with Charles Lewis at the National Post on this one:

We should be horrified about children frozen in lockers like pieces of meat. We should then ask why it bothers us and why what is invisible does not bother us at all.

But then stop and think about the true ramifications of this. Many pro-lifers take the Pill, for example. And so far as I am aware, there isn’t really a way to confirm that the Pill doesn’t work some of the time by causing a very early abortion. (Ie. it makes the lining of the uterus inhospitable for an already created embryo.) Then there’s in-vitro. Many people who would never have an abortion do that, but this tends to create multiple additional embryos that then “hang out” somewhere or are discarded.

This question of whether we should care about that which we cannot see is more troubling than you think on first glance.

I’m going to try and read Embryo soon to try and get a better handle on all this.

If you’re pregnant, trying to conceive, or think you might be pregnant, there’s a new study you should be aware of.

The risk of miscarriage may be higher among women who take certain anti-inflammatory drugs in early pregnancy, a new study suggests.

The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs in the study included ibuprofen such as Advil, naproxen, diclofenac, and celecoxib (Celebrex), some of the most common medications used during pregnancy, according to earlier research.

Just to be safe, I’m going to switch out the Advil in the medicine cabinet for aspirin.

Someone just sent me this study. It’s from 2008, so not new, but I was not aware of it. The executive summary (beware the clinical language, talking about this poor little guy):

 A 28-year-old woman, with only moderate asthma treated occasionally by albuterol, became pregnant 3 years after a miscarriage and 1 year after a full-term pregnancy resulting in a healthy, normal child. No use of illicit drugs was reported. She decided to terminate this pregnancy and started the French protocol for chemical abortion at the beginning of the seventh week of gestation (day 43). She received oral mifepristone 600 mg and, 2 days later, misoprostol 400 μg. One month later, despite significant metrorrhagia, an ultrasound examination showed ongoing pregnancy, with no anomalies observed in the fetus. The patient requested genetic consultation during the fifteenth week of pregnancy; thus, pharmacovigilance advice was solicited to counsel the woman on teratogenic risks. A follow-up by a sonographer was started because the woman decided to continue her pregnancy. The woman delivered a boy at 33 weeks and 3 days of pregnancy; his measurements were within normal parameters for his age of gestation: weight 2.28 kg, length 46 cm, and cranial perimeter 31 cm. The boy presented with transient respiratory distress, which was corrected rapidly. Diagnosis was immediate for left facial palsy, microretrognathia, and axial hypotonia related to Möbius syndrome (Figure 1). Eight weeks after birth, the left facial palsy and microretrognathia were still present. At month 4, the infant was able to suck without help, but he was still hypotonic and unable to lift his head completely or grasp objects.

 A couple of things. Mostly, my point is that there is no “undo” button, not for sex resulting in pregnancy and not for abortion–these are final things. But here we see a mother who was able to change her mind on extinguishing the life within her. I applaud this, but I also feel terribly bad for her son, who will live with some challenges thanks to her earlier decision.

These sorts of cases also highlight that life is a continuum: we start out very small and funny-looking (take a look at photos of very early gestation pregnancy); we grow into… what you see walking all around you every day. Mothers don’t drink or smoke to protect that development, knowing very well that the person growing inside them is the person they will always be. It just all highlights that a person’s a person, no matter how small.

And lest there be any confusion on the matter, this abortion survivor is a person too, fully human and fully loved, even with some disabilities. I’m sadly quite sure that the report offers this advice in order that some women should choose to get the job done right, once and for all:  

Ineffective use of mifepristone and misoprostol in the first trimester of pregnancy may be associated with a risk of Möbius syndrome, primarily due to misoprostol activity. Women with ongoing pregnancy after failed abortion with misoprostol administration should be informed of this risk.

Ain’t never been any logic I could see in the pro-choice world. And debates on the topic can get pretty annoying, pretty fast, for everyone. Pro-lifers expose the inconsistencies and pro-choicers  splutter some variation of “I’m entitled to my entitlements!” 

Anyhoo, great article here highlighting how people who are pro-choice should not be uncomfortable with “selective reduction.” It’s abortion, plain and simple, and if we’re AOK with that (and remember, we’re all supposed to be) then choosing which fetus of twins or triplets should live is really all the same.

This bifurcated mindset permeates pro-choice thinking. Embryos fertilized for procreation are embryos; embryos cloned for research are “activated eggs.” A fetus you want is a baby; a fetus you don’t want is a pregnancy. Under federal law, anyone who injures or kills a “child in utero” during a violent crime gets the same punishment as if he had injured or killed “the unborn child’s mother,” but no such penalty applies to “an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman . has been obtained.”

Reduction destroys this distinction. It combines, in a single pregnancy, a wanted and an unwanted fetus. In the case of identical twins, even their genomes are indistinguishable. You can’t pretend that one is precious and the other is just tissue. You’re killing the same creature to which you’re dedicating your life.

Just so we’re very, very clear, this has nothing to do with inappropriate sexual encounters. Nope. Nothing:

A new study has found a third of women suffer from post-sex blues — and it’s not because they regret bedding the partner beside them.Researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Australia followed more than 200 young women and found 32.9% suffered negative feelings — or postcoital dysphoria — after “otherwise satisfactory intercourse.”

I’m going to take a stab at the “symptoms” of “postcoital dysphoria.” Ten bucks says it sounds something like this: “I can’t believe he hasn’t called.” “He doesn’t love me.” “I don’t love him, why did I do that?” ”Was I used?” “Why hasn’t he called/emailed/texted/responded to my calls/emails/texts?” “Could I be pregnant?” “I hope I’m not pregnant.” “What if I’m pregnant?” Followed up by “Why hasn’t he called?”

It’s called being a woman. Dysphoric, indeed. So keep searching, science, for the ever elusive answer to this new “medical condition.”

I was watching Book TV last night and saw the most amazing presentation. It was award-winning Alexander Tsiaras, creator of Anatomical Travelogue, giving a video presentation at Idea City ’03. He was talking about his company and their “travel” videos inside the human body. Tsiaras and his team collect massive amounts of data and imaging of the human body through all its stages, then “visualize” this data as computer images. His book, From Conception to Birth: A Life Unfolds, is a celebration of the first stages of human life. It opens, “Is anything more fascinating or marvelous than the conception of a human life?” It was amazing to see someone, a scientist, a software developer, simply celebrating the beauty of conception without any perceivable agenda. The Idea City presentation was great, but this was even better: