[Pflienews] PharmFacts E-News Update: Abortifacient Pill polluting environment

Tue Jan 6 09:56:04 MST 2009

*PharmFacts E-News Update -- 6 Jan 2009 AD

*
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**http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090103/hl_afp/vaticanreligioncontraception_090103212901

*Abortifacient "contraceptive" pill [sic] is polluting environment: 
Vatican newspaper

*1/3/2009 7:00:00 PM -Yahoo News

VATICAN CITY (AFP) - The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment 
and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican 
newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said Saturday.

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment 
by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said 
Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International 
Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.

"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of 
male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by 
the pill," he said, without elaborating further.

"We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more 
explanation on the part of the manufacturers," added Castellvi.

The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations.

"Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no 
longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," 
said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research 
association, quoted by the ANSA news agency.

The hormones contained in the pill such as oestrogen "are present 
everywhere... in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," added 
Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology.

Pope Benedict XVI in October [once again] reaffirmed the Roman Catholic 
Church's [official] condemnation of artificial birth control.

Contraception "means negating the intimate truth of conjugal love, with 
which the divine gift (of life) is communicated," the leader of the 
world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics wrote on the 40th anniversary of a 
papal encyclical on the topic, [/Humanae Vitae]/.

An encyclical is a letter usually treating some aspect of Catholic 
doctrine and issued occasionally by the pope.

The landmark document, whose title in English is "On the Regulation of 
Birth", was published at a time when the development of the 
[abortifacient] Pill was giving new sexual freedom to women across the 
world.

Millions of Catholics distanced themselves from Rome as a result [an 
unscientific claim].
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http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/viewonsite.html?articleid=09010504
*Vatican Newspaper Publishes Article Detailing Birth Control Pill as 
Cause of Abortion and Cancer*

By Hilary White

ROME, January 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- The Vatican's official 
newspaper has caused a media storm in the European press with an article 
asserting the abortifacient and carcinogenic effects of hormonal 
contraceptives.

The Italian edition of L'Osservatore Romano carries an article this week 
on a report by the International Federation of Catholic Medical 
Associations (FIAMC) that was created to commemorate the fortieth 
anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, the document by Pope Paul 
VI that reiterated the Catholic Church's teaching on artificial birth 
control.

Pedro José María Simón Castellví, the president of FIAMC, wrote that 
"the means of contraception violate at least five important rights: the 
right to life, the right to health, the right to education, all right to 
information (their spread is at the expense of information on natural 
resources) and the right to equality between the sexes (the burden of 
contraception falls mostly on women)."

"Curiously", Castelvi wrote, this information on the abortifacient 
effect of the Pill "does not reach the general public," despite being 
well-known to researchers.

The hundred-page report, published in German, is an analysis of 
scientific data on the effects of the Pill and includes three hundred 
bibliographic citations, mostly from specialized medical journals.

The report "clearly demonstrates" that anovulant, low-dose hormonal 
birth control pills work not only by preventing ovulation but also by 
causing the death of an already existing child in the uterine wall. This 
embryonic person, Castellvi wrote, "even in its early days, is something 
other than an egg or female germ cell." From the embryonic stage, the 
child grows in a  coordinated way and this development, unless 
prevented, "ends with its exit from the womb in nine months, ready to 
devour a litre of milk."

The report also notes that the International Agency for Research of 
Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organization, reported in July 
2005 that the oral preparations of combined estrogen-progestogens common 
in birth control pills are classified in a group of carcinogenic agents.

"The sad thing in all this," Castelvi wrote, "is that if it is to 
regulate fertility, these are not the products required. The natural 
means of regulating fertility, 'NFP' or Natural Family Planning, are 
equally effective and also respect the person."

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