Feminist Peace Network

I suppose it was inevitable, but the family values crazies have come up with a great cure for breast cancer. Yes, you guessed it–get married and have babies! Dr. Miriam Grossman writes for Townhall, a “conservative web community,

“It’s another instance of ideology trumping science. Emphasizing the benefits of early motherhood could—gasp!—encourage some young women to give marriage more priority, and postpone their demanding career. They might decide it’s a diamond they most want now, not a PhD.”

While it is in fact true that the British medical journal The Lancet published a study in 2002 that confirmed  having more children sooner and breastfeeding them longer reduces your risk of breast cancer, it is only one of a number of ways in  which you can reduce your risk.  According to a CBS News report about The Lancet study,

“A century ago — before oral contraception, infant formula, improved infant survival and career opportunities for women - Western women used to have six or seven children and breast-feed each for about two years — a pattern still dominant in many parts of the developing world.

Today, women in the industrialized world have a 6.3 percent chance of getting breast cancer by age 70, compared with a 2.7 percent chance for their counterparts in poor countries.”

Yes but—no mention of the fact that hundreds of thousands of women die of such things as maternal complications, starvation and HIV/AIDs in poorer countries, that far fewer of them live to be 70 at all.  Also no mention about how greater exposure to toxins and chemicals in developed countries might play a role in breast cancer rates.
The notion that bagging a diamond ring and postponing your PhD’ is  going to save your life is all too typical of the ideological, very false fear-mongering tactics that the family values people continually use in their attacks  on women’s human rights . As women’s health care advocate Gloria Feldt, the  former CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, notes,

“(Dr Grossman) neglected to mention that there are substantial life-threatening risks from pregnancy and childbearing, especially too-frequent or closely spaced pregnancies and childbearing. Those risks would at least balance out any elevated risk of breast cancer incurred from delaying childbearing. Further, when you weigh in the risks to women and children associated with increased stress and poverty when families have more children than they can afford to care for, it’s a slam dunk that women are better off being able to plan and space their childbearing based on a number of health and social factors. Oh, and did Dr. Grossman forget to mention that using the birth control pill lowers risk of breast cancer?

The hubris of  saying “It’s another instance of ideology trumping science.” would be laughable were it not so outrageous. She’s borrowed the phrase others coined to describe the misuse of ideology over science that she is guilty of. The anti-choice, anti-women’s rights set have a long track record of setting science on its head to justify their ideology that would make women once more barefoot and pregnant.”

Capitalizing on the fear of breast cancer to further a political agenda is truly the epitome of the misogyny of so-called “family values.”

Filed under: Uncategorized, Atrocities