Your tax dollars at work
In keeping with the broad tradition of 'abstinence-only' sex education, yet again, your tax dollars are funding what is supposed to be a trusted resource for women in crisis, yet instead, is preaching false information in order to dissuade those women from obtaining an abortion.
One pregnancy center told a congressional aide the risk of cancer after an abortion could be 80 percent higher, the report noted. Ford said she doubted a pregnancy center would go that far, but the Web site for a pregnancy center in Albuquerque says the risk for cancer after an abortion is 50 percent or greater.
In February 2003, a National Cancer Institute workshop concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.
Now, I'm sympathetic to the arguement that tax dollars shouldn't be used to fund things that people find morally reprehensible. I sometimes think that the greater good of humanity outweighs the 'moral issue', in cases like stem cell research.
However, if these centers are recieving federal money, at the same time as religious conservatives are railing about abortion being "federally subsidized", the least they could do is provide women with the truth in the middle of all their preaching.
posted by Katinula | 6:43 PM
1 Comments:
I certainly agree that pregnancy centers should tell the truth. I do somewhat wonder about the accuracy of the democratic report, while I doubt it is outright lies, it may be a case of deliberately created sample that creates a false impression as to the frequency of this problem. A less biased source would be preferable for things like this.
On a related note, I can imagine that the question of whether abortions cause cancer might be a difficult one for science to resolve, not because it would be technically difficult, but the subject is intensly political, emotional and personal. Scientists are still humans, and sometimes being dispassionate is more than they can manage. One can also easily imagine both sides of this debate managing to find junk science to make their case.
I am not saying that abortion increases the chance of cancer, and I certainly expect that even if it did it would be a quite modest increase in risk at best, but it is interesting to wonder how accurate information can be on a subject like this. That makes it difficult.
I expect that the pregnancy centers who say this for the most part believe that they are being truthful. Makes the issue even more complicated.
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