HHS contraceptive mandate threatens more than religious freedom

It’s an assault on sensibilities. Worse, it’s perpetuating the real ‘war on women’ along with the myths about a phony one. Because the drugs being claimed under the umbrella of ‘women’s preventive health services’ are actually dangerous for women’s health. Who’s talking about that?

Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, for one. She’s president and co-founder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute and one of the nation’s leading authorities on the causes of breast cancer and reasons for the soaring incidence of it over the past several decades. Her interest in investigating the abortion-breast cancer link started when she began seeing younger and younger women in her office with breast cancer and discovered abortion was a common denominator. Through seminars and reports and anything else she can disseminate, Dr. Lanfranchi has been trying to point people to this link as a warning, with science and scientific studies proving its cause and effect. Resources on that are available on the BCPI website.

So is the latest information on the risks of birth control drugs to women’s health. Video of Dr. Lanfranchi’s presentation at ‘The Pill Kills National Symposium’ and the Q&A followup are found here, along with a concise brochure making the most important points clear and punctuated. It’s called ‘The Pill Kills: The Life Threatening Medical Consequences of Oral Contraceptives’ and answers basics like ‘What is the “Pill”? and lists ‘The 4 Ways The Pill Kills’ among other essentials. And with about 82 percent of American women taking these drugs, they are essentials.

 I talked with her Monday, in light of the ruling last Friday by a federal judge requiring the government to make the morning-after pill available over the counter to women and girls of all ages without a prescription.

Dr. Lanfranchi said in the time since the FDA approved the birth control pill over 50 years ago, we’ve learned a lot about it’s effects and “we’re only beginning to understand the impact” it has had on women’s health. “A lot of people know something is wrong,” she said. “But they’re not being told by their doctors.”

By contrast, look back to 2002, she said, when ‘hormone replacement therapy’ was proven – and reported – to cause a 26 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer. “At the time, there were 30 million women on hormone replacement therapy,” she told me. “After this news came out, about 15 million of them stopped abruptly.” And a follow up report in 2007 showed a markedly lower incidence of breast cancer.

So why the silence on the risks of ‘The Pill’? “It’s a group 1 carcinogen,” Dr. Lanfranchi said emphatically. “It can cause blood clots that can be lethal. Women are fertile only about 100 hours a month, but they’re putting this molotov cocktail in their bodies the other three weeks and nobody is talking about the dangers.”

She is, and her voice has been added to amicus briefs in lawsuits filed by Hobby Lobby and others against the federal HHS mandate requiring employers provide access to contraceptive drugs including the morning-after pill, which threatens not only the religious freedom and conscience rights of employers, but the health of the women taking these drugs. The BCPI newsletter has more information on that action in its current issue, found online at their site.

This needs more coverage. Women are finding out the hard way, and trying to warn others because it seems no one else will. Help them. At least check out the information, even if you’re skeptical. Some people are paying a terrible price now for the deception and coverup of these facts. Countless others will, down the road. That need not happen.