‘Necessary’ Abortion?

THE POST-ABORTION REVIEW, March 7 — Dr. Joel Brind debunks the myth commonly used by pro-abortion-ists who say that “therapeutic abortions” are necessary for women diagnosed with cancer while pregnant, reported the Post-Abortion Review.

Brind, a leading expert on the abortion-breast cancer link and head of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, notes studies have shown that pregnant women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and carry to term generally live longer than women who have abortions. In one study, while only 20% of women who carried to term were still alive 20 years later, all of the patients who chose to abort had died within 11 years reported the Post-Abortion Review.

Brind hypothesizes that the lower death rate may be due to hormone changes in the last stages of pregnancy that switch the cells from a growth stage into a milk producing tissue. Since this hormonal change shuts down cell division (cancer is characterized by out of control cell division), this hormonal shutdown signal may be a powerful form of “natural chemotherapy.”

New Bioethics Journal

THE LEAVEN, March 9 — A new voice in bioethics is unequivocally Catholic, reported the Kansas City, Kan., archdiocesan newspaper.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston has published the first issue of National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. The publication's editor, Edward J. Furton, said it would “come out of the Catholic life of reason and moral tradition.”

Father Jerry Spencer, Kansas City's archdiocesan health affairs coordinator said the new journal will interest those looking for solid scientific reference, regardless of their faith background.

Magazine Lauds Big Families

TODAY'S PARENT, December/ January — The popular Canadian magazine recently published an article extolling the benefits of big families, written by Dorothy Nixon, mother of two children born two-and-a-half years apart.

Nixon reflected on her brother-in-law who raised seven boys, “I'm beginning to think having small families, period, is highly impractical. A large family is like a complex organism, designed by nature to produce human beings who are responsible and cooperative, not to mention good at negotiating, alliance building and protecting themselves. Large families produce children for the real world, children with survival skills.”

Beyond benefits for children, Nixon wrote that parents of large families benefit from having siblings entertain one another. While her brother-in-law's children play outside for hours together, Nixon wrote her children refuse to go out saying, “There's no one to play with outside!”