This one has to do with the common claim of the anti-abortion crowd that abortion adds to a woman's breast cancer risk. It doesn't. At all. Full stop.
If there are ethical and medical objections to make to the practice of abortion, then by all means, those ought to be argued and assessed on their merits. But it's clear that the anti-abortion movement has always been about religious ideology first, with scientific facts a distant second. And they've been perfectly happy to tell women pernicious lies about their health risks in order to further inculcate them with fear and guilt over what is already a sad and difficult decision.
I've always said that proper sex education is the key to reducing unwanted pregnancies and, by extension, abortion. Education, of course, must deal in information and not disinformation. Why isn't it surprising that religious extremists who are all too willing to attack others for their "moral relativism" are perfectly happy to engage in such themselves, if doing so helps to further a particular social agenda?
Interesting. I had thought that the abortion/breast cancer fearmongering was based on Orwellian cherrypicking of facts, i.e., being pregnant and breastfeeding protect against breast cancer, so compared to your risk if you go ahead and give birth, your risk after an abortion is higher.
ReplyDeleteOf course, by that logic all the good Christian girls should go out and get knocked up as soon as possible to protect them from breast cancer!
But regardless I agree with your assessment of their honesty. Yeah, they're all about cancer prevention if abortions raise risk, but strangely reticent about the HPV vaccine, which would make free love less risky.