December 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two Australian researchers have argued that the Catholic Church should make the oral contraceptive pill “freely available” to all her nuns to reduce the “risk of those accursed pests, cancer of the ovary and uterus.”
The Comment that appeared in The Lancet December 8th stated that the world’s 94,790 nuns pay a “terrible price for their chastity” because not bearing children increased their risk of ovarian and uterine cancers.
“If the Catholic Church could make the oral contraceptive pill freely available to all its nuns, it would reduce the risk of those accursed pests,” you can almost hear the authors Kara Britt and Roger Short sigh as they throw their hands in the air in a gesture of hopelessness.
I suspect that anyone aware of Catholic feast days would be outraged at the timing of this Comment. I further suspect that any reasonable person would be surprised, if not appalled by the Comment’s dearth of scientific rigour and its vague insinuation against the Catholic Church. I shall address the Comment’s timing, scientific rigour, and vague insinuations one by one.
To release the Comment titled “The plight of nuns: hazards of nulliparity” on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a day honouring Mary conceived without sin, smacks of vulgarity if not irreverence. Vulgarity because the pill assaults a nun’s motherhood-potential which, functioning as a biological sign, points each nun to imitate Mary’s virginal motherhood and bear Christ to the world. Irreverence because the pill dishonours the procreative bodily integrity of women, an integrity which in Mary provided the matter for the greatest fruitfulness the world has ever seen in the mystery of the Incarnation. Was the timing of the document merely a coincidence? It seems most unlikely.
Any nun truly concerned about her health should be appalled by the Comment’s conclusion, one that could only be arrived at through a lack of scientific rigour.
I spoke with Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a breast surgical oncologist and co-founder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, who told me that the pill, far from decreasing the risk of breast cancer, actually increases it.
She told me that while it is true, as the authors of the Comment point out, that research shows that chances of ovarian and uterine cancer are lessened with use of the pill, the same research also shows that the use of the pill dramatically increases chances of cancer of the breast, cervix, and liver.
Dr. Lanfranchi referred me to the International Agency on the Research of Cancer (IARC) which released a 543 page monograph in 2005 compiling the world’s existing studies on the effects on women of estrogen/progesterone combination drugs.
After more than 10 cohort studies and 60 case-control studies that included over 60,000 women with breast cancer, the IARC had no alternative to but to classify estrogen/progesterone combination drugs as a group 1 carcinogen for cancers of the breast, cervix, and liver.
“The totality of the evidence suggested an increase in the relative risk for breast cancer among current and recent users [of hormonal contraceptives],” they said, concluding that the “combined oral estrogen-progestogen contraceptives are carcinogenic to humans (Group 1).”
“You don’t take a carcinogen to avoid cancer,” said Dr. Lanfranchi, who could only describe the Comment’s conclusion as “stupid.”
Lanfranchi suggested that if the Comment was really about protecting women from the “hazards of nulliparity,” they should have addressed the 20% of women in the U.S. who are currently nulliparous. “No one is suggesting that 20% of [American] women take the pill,” she said.
“I think that it shows ignorance to suggest that anyone take a drug that’s listed as a group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical, and liver cancers by the IARC to reduce two other types of cancer.”
“It’s just not an intelligent way to go about this.”
“I have to admit, this was a ridiculous thing for them to say. I’m surprised that The Lancet would publish this.”
My conversation with Dr. Lanfranchi made it clear to me that the authors of the Comment had arrived at an egregious conclusion in suggesting that the Church make the pill “freely available” to nuns. Far from helping the holy women remain cancer free, the pill would actually introduce cancer causing agents into their bodies needlessly putting them at risk.
What concerned me furthermore about the Comment was its vague insinuations against the Catholic Church and her evangelical counsel of chastity for consecrated religious.
The authors argued from the premise that the “Catholic Church condemns all forms of contraception except abstinence.”
It must be stated for the record that the Catholic Church does not have a vendetta against estrogen/progesterone combination drugs, only against the use of them for rendering the marriage act sterile. In the same way the Church is not against guns, only against the use of them for murder. Thus the Church is not against the thing itself, only against certain uses of the thing.
It must also be stated that the Church does not consider abstinence as a form of contraception, as the authors imply. Abstinence is simply a decision not to engage in the marital act. In contracepted sex, the lover or the beloved willfully do something to his or her body to render sterile the life-creating potential of the marital act.
After setting down the Church’s prohibition on contraception, the authors argue that nuns should be “free to use the contraceptive pill to protect against the hazards of nulliparity” citing as proof the passage from Humanae Vitae where the Church teaches the moral lawfulness of “therapeutic means necessary to cure diseases of the organism, even if an impediment to procreation.”
It is one thing to use estrogen/progesterone combination drugs to cure actual “diseases” of the organism, it is another thing to use such drugs against the potential “hazards” of nulliparity. By quoting Humanae Vitae’s passage on licit medicine, the authors treat a ‘disease’ and the ‘risk of a disease’ as if they were the same thing. What they insinuate is that nulliparity in a chaste woman is really the same thing as a disease to be treated.
After setting forth the Church’s prohibition on contraception and underscoring the Church’s position on licit medicine, the reader expects the authors to conclude that nuns should make use of estrogen/progesterone combination drugs for therapeutic reasons.
But this is not what the authors conclude.
“If the Catholic Church could make the oral contraceptive pill freely available to all its nuns, it would reduce the risk of those accursed pests, cancer of the ovary and uterus, and give nuns’ plight the recognition it deserves,” they say.
This conclusion paints the Catholic Church to be the big bully, the overbearing anti-woman institution who should be ashamed of herself for not making oral contraception “freely available” to all its nuns.
What do the authors mean by “freely available”? Do they actually want the Catholic Church to pay for contraceptive pills for all her nuns?
I believe the phrase “freely available” has to be interpreted in light of the authors’ first premise, namely that the Catholic Church “condemns all forms of contraception” and in light of the following sentence where they say that nuns “should be free” [italics added] to use the contraceptive pill. Reading these three statements in tandem implies that the authors believe that despite the Church’s teaching on licit therapeutic medicine, she still harbours an anachronistic grudge against the oral contraceptive pill, the scientific marvel of the post-modern world.
The authors imply that the Church’s grudge puts all those sweet little nuns at risk of ovarian and uterine cancers. Bad Church for putting nuns at risk, they imply. The Church should get out of the dark ages, catch up with modern science, and for once do something good for those poor helpless nuns who suffer from the hazards of chastity, they imply.
You might think I am reading too much into the authors’ words. I might agree with you, except the words of Dr. Lanfranchi keep ringing in my ears: “You don’t take a carcinogen to avoid cancer.”