Column by Amanda Wallace. Email opinions@kykernel.com.
This past week, abortion detractors have pushed me beyond my previous mode — racy —and into a hard, left-leaning “pro-choicer.”
I have always found those titles to be silly. I am a huge fan of life, and I’m sure the people who find abortion morally abhorrent do not wish for complete fascism. It is only on abortion that we make these grandiose implications about our neighbors.
If I believe in gun rights and wish to have an RPG launcher in my garage, my neighbor might believe me to be crazy, but probably wouldn’t call me a murderer, or claim I was perpetrating genocide.
Genocide is not a word to be bandied around. It is not something you say casually. Genocide is a word you use to describe real monsters: Hitler and Saddam, and those who were involved in the massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda.
If you are a student of history, you’ve read and seen pictures of true horror, true genocide: The man with machete cuts across his face; the Sudanese baby girl being stalked by a vulture as she takes her last breath; the seven mass graves found at the Sobibor death camp; true evil that words are simply incapable of expressing, moments in history where you want to ask “why?” because you never thought your fellow man would be capable of that. That is genocide.
So, with this historical context, how dare anyone call a legally upheld medical procedure that name?
Moral outrage brings out the fighter in us all, but must it be expressed in violent imagery, or in the rhetoric of hate? Does anyone truly expect to change someone’s mind with the picture of a beaten little boy or a woman’s chest ripped open to remove cancerous tunics?
This is not the language of peaceful discourse. This is “the Lady Gaga approach” to politics — I will shock you into paying attention to me. You can’t talk back if I’m screaming over you.
When the disease that killed my grandmother is brought into a fight it has no part in, I am not only taken aback, I am offended on a level so deep it makes me physically ill.
According to the Susan G. Komen site, “the scientific evidence does not support a link between abortion and breast cancer.” Sure, some women who have had abortions now suffer from breast cancer. Some women who eat cereal every morning for breakfast also have suffered from breast cancer.
Causation and correlation are not the same thing. There are no words for a family broken by cancer. It should never be used as political ammunition.
I believe in free speech. Every man is entitled to make himself a fool. The right to free speech should not make a person a beast. I have been told I was going to Hell by preachers who don’t know me from Eve. I have had fliers politely pressed into my hand by well-meaning people that show pictures of baby chicks being debeaked. All of these are things I can live with. When I am visually assaulted on the way to class, I cannot express my anger.
What is the point? Because it is doubtful these images are effective. Shock rarely is. For those that support the cause, their moral outrage is defended. For those that do not, their belief that their opponent is “crazy” is confirmed.
I know they will ultimately be as effective as this column. Because these are the kinds of things where opinions are not changed by screams and lurid, bloody images. They are changed by time.
Long after we are dead, a victor will be declared, and we will not care, and maybe then, we’ll have peace.
Until then, please keep your blood and gore to yourself.
Amanda Wallace is an English junior. Email opinions@kykernel.com.
For more on the link between abortion and breast cancer, go to http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com.
I can’t know the motivation for the Susan G. Komen Foundation to ignore the many studies that show this link, but I have to suspect that ignoring the link was less controversial for them and thus better for fundraising. It’s a sad fact that many organizations take positions based on their perceived effect on fundraising than on the facts themselves. The fact is that there are many in the medical community who believe this link exists and there are many studies that back them up.
I have a PhD minor in statistics. As such, I don’t see myself as an expert at all, but I can tell you that the way statistics are genrerally done and reported, it is difficult to show a “statistically significant” difference between populations. To be a statistically significant difference, you have show that you are 90 or 95% confident that the difference is real and not due to random deviation. If you are only 85% confident, the difference between the populations is not considered to be statistically significant. Even though the two populations are likely different—you are 85% confident that they are—you report that the differences were “not statistically significant.” Researchers try to overcome this problem by collecting data from a larger sample size. The statistical problem for detecting differences in breast cancer rates is even greater, because the differences, although very real, are on the order of 30-40%. In other words, having an abortion increases your chances of getting breast cancer from about 10% to about 13-14%. It’s easy to see how some studies might fail to detect that kind of difference. But even though the difference might be too small for some studies to detect, many studies have detected the difference. The increase may not seem like much, but it translates to hundreds of thousands of women having contracted breast cancer because of abortion, and an estimated 300,000 deaths (www.lifenews.com/2011/01/17/abortion-has-caused-300k-breast-cancer-deaths-since-roe/). I hope somebody who knows more about statistics will correct me if I’m wrong. At any rate, you should check it out for yourself at http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com.
You really do women a disservice when you report only the information that supports your own preconceived notions. Regardless of whose word you want to blindly accept, you should at least report that there are many in the scientific community that disagree. You owe women that much.
For more on the absence of a link between abortion and breast cancer go to http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/05/04/AiWL.pdf
(specifically page 23)
“In February 2003, the U.S. National Cancer Institute convened
a workshop of more than 100 of the world’s leading
experts to consider the issue. The following month, a joint
meeting of the institute’s boards of scientific advisors and
counselors unanimously approved the workshop’s conclusion
that “induced abortion is not associated with an
increase in breast cancer risk,” saying that the evidence
for that conclusion was “well established,” the agency’s
highest standard. Another exhaustive literature review
and analysis published in 2004 by a panel convened by
the British government came to the same conclusion.”
I have an MD and have studied epidemiology, though I do not claim to be an expert.
I don’t know of any other physicians that believe in a link. Who are the “many in the medical community” that you refer to Mr. Armstrong? I’m sure you could find a few, but I’m guessing its a small minority…