Diocese of Austin • Winter 2013
A Foolish Inconsistency on Contraception
Newsletter of the Office of Pro-Life Activities and Chaste Living 2 • From the Director Giving Teens the Capacity to Love
4 • Around the Diocese
Our Names Are Tomás and Juana Bonilla 5 • Texas and the Death Penalty
6 • National News
After the Election: Life, Marriage and Freedom 7 • The Church: A Source of Hope and Freedom 16 • Calendar of Events
Léanos en español a partir de la página 9
by Susan E. Wills, Esq.
H
ere’s a riddle for readers. There are drugs so safe, so effective and so essential to women’s well-being that they are recommended for continual use by all healthy women 15–45 (or thereabouts) for 30 years or more, and that almost every employee health plan will soon have to provide them “for free” under the Preventive Services mandate of the Affordable Care Act. But these same drugs have twice been determined, by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force), to be too dangerous for doctors to prescribe long-term to healthy women above age 45 or so. In middle-aged and older women, they are to be used only for the shortest possible time, at the lowest possible dose. What could these Jekyll-and-Hyde drugs be? OK, it was a trick question. The synthetic hormones estrogen and progestin — used as combined oral contraceptives (COCs) by most fertile The U.S. Department of women and in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) by menopausal/post-menopausal women — are Health and Human Services only promoted as being safe and benign. In reality, whether used in COCs or in HRT, they’re more like should be warning women about the sinister Mr. Hyde. the risks of combined estrogen/ After reviewing the latest research on the risks and benefits of pills containing estrogen and progestin, progestin in contraceptives, as in the Task Force offered a sobering recommendation: hormone replacement therapy, “Do not prescribe combined estrogen and progestin for the prevention of chronic conditions” (emphasis not forcing almost every woman in the original Clinical Summary). in America to pay for it in her Yet in its 2011 contraceptive mandate, the Institute of Medicine treated fertility like a health coverage. “chronic condition” that had to be managed with synthetic hormones (to prevent pregnancy) for upwards of 30 years! Now the Task Force concludes that when taken as HRT, these hormones significantly increase the risk of serious adverse events in healthy women, compared to matched controls who received placebos. The increased risks for women using HRT (compared to matched controls) are 26 percent for invasive breast cancer, 41 percent for stroke, 61 percent for gallbladder disease, 205 percent for probable dementia, 207 percent for deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and 213 percent for pulmonary embolism (PE). Is there any medical reason for these inconsistent recommendations and warnings? Are younger women immune to the adverse effects simply because of their age? No. Research has shown that, at any age, whether in COCs or HRT, progestin is associated with increased risk of DVT, PE, heart attacks, strokes and problems of the liver and eyes. The main difference is that it’s easier to measure the onset and progression of these diseases and conditions in older women because they are more prevalent with age.
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