People You Don't Want to Hear From

Babette Francis - ONLINE Opinion, 25 July 2014

Yes, I know one should not end a sentence or even a phrase with a preposition, but the above heading to this opinion piece reflects how I feel. As convener of the Melbourne Regional Event of the World Congress of Families on the 30th August, I have been pleasantly overwhelmed with the response - the available seats are nearly all booked, and we are five weeks off the Event which is titled "Life, Family and Freedom".

Not so nice, but entertaining in a negative sort of way, has been the response from our political opponents. An email circulated from what looked like an atheists boot camp recommended that their supporters send fake requests for registrations for our WCF Event and not turn up, thus wasting precious seating. Wasn't there some philosopher who said that without a belief in God people find it difficult to behave ethically? How ethical is it to book seats at a Congress with the intention of not turning up and thus depriving those who do want to hear the speakers? Is this the best form of "intellectual debate" this atheist group can manage?

And then there were the pro-abortion journalists. I know The Age is so desperately short of funds that it has to outsource much of its work and dispense with sub-editors, but their news item on our WCF Event headed "Attorney-General to speak at hardline pro-life event" (16/7/14) looked as if even the reporting was outsourced to hapless non-English-speaking correspondents in some desperately poor Third World country. They apparently could not afford to phone me for a comment even though I am listed on the flyer as the Convener of the Event.

This article was accompanied by unflattering pictures of Victorian-Attorney General Robert Clark, the Hon. Bernie Finn, MLC, the Hon. Kevin Andrews, Federal Minister for Social Services, and a picture of Dr. Larry Jacobs, Managing Director of the World Congress of Families, looking like a preacher. A photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin was relatively flattering - I am not quite sure how he got into the display because he is not a speaker at our Event, and my own anti-KGB credentials are impeccable. The somewhat remote connection apparently is that the World Congress of Families had planned to hold a major international World Congress of Families VIII in Moscow in September in conjunction with Russian pro-family organistaions. WCF suspended this Congress when Putin annexed Crimea, nevertheless Putin's picture appeared in the The Age article about our Melbourne Event, and I assure my devoted anti-KGB following that I definitely did not invite him.

To do justice to the reporters from The Age, they did include a picture of an unborn baby at 8 weeks gestation, so they at least know what the word "Life" in the title of our Event means.

So what is a "hardline" pro-life event? An event can be pro-life or pro-abortion. Ours is pro-life. Our Event is also described as "anti-gay" even though homosexuality is not listed as a topic. Anyone who opposes homosexual marriage is automatically defined as "anti-gay" and guilty of hate speech. This would include most of the known universe (including any intelligent life on Alpha Centauri) and the leaders of the main monotheistic religions, Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, Orthodox Judaism and Islam. Why doesn't The Age confront these leaders instead of picking on my little pro-family Event?

But what seems to have most roused the ire of the reporters, including WendyTuohy from the HeraldSun.com.au/Opinion, 22nd July 2014, is the listed talk at our Event by Dr. Angela Lanfranchi on the increased risk of breast cancer caused by induced abortion. The reporters are criticising politicians for attending our Event and giving credibility to what they imply is a discredited theory. Angela Lanfranchi, MD FACS, is a breast cancer surgeon practicing in New Jersey since 1984. She is a clinical assistant professor of surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and certified by the American Board of Surgery. She is surgical co-director of the sanofi-aventis Breast Care Center at the Steeplechase Cancer Center in Somerville, New Jersey. Dr. Lanfranchi is co-founder and president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, a non-profit charitable corporation that has as its mission to educate lay and professional communities on risk reduction and prevention of breast cancer through research, publications and lectures. Lanfranchi has been named a 2012 Castle Connelly Medical Ltd. New Jersey "Top Doc" for Women's Health in Breast Surgery.

Dr. Lanfranchi is the author of articles on the physiology and epidemiology of abortion breast cancer risk. In her work with the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, over the past ten years she has traveled nationally and internationally to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe, China, Korea, India and South Africa speaking at medical schools, hospitals, universities, cancer organizations, local and national governmental bodies and the United Nations about breast cancer risks, including its association with induced abortion and hormonal contraceptives. Dr. Lanfranchi will be meeting with the CEO of the Cancer Council of Australia in Sydney.

The link between induced abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer is hardly discredited. In the last couple of years several major studies (adding to the myriad prior studies dating from the 1957 Japanese study) have emerged from China and India, countries which had a low incidence of breast cancer, clearly showing the increased risk of this disease among women who have induced abortions. Both China and India have liberal abortion laws, so the researchers have no vested interest in publicising the connection to breast cancer. What these researchers are free from is the domination by feminists of the National Cancer Institute (US) and other cancer organisations in the West to ensure that abortion is protected as a sacred rite and nothing is allowed to imperil its status as being "good" for women.

In western countries, as in India and China, there has been a dramatic increase in the incidence of breast cancer since the advent of the contraceptive pill and the liberalisation of laws against abortion. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization, has declared the combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives (OCs) as carcinogenic, in the same Class 1 category as Asbestos and Tobacco, another fact about which our journalists seem unaware. In Victoria the incidence of breast cancr increased 40%between 1987 and 1997 following the de facto legalisation of abortion by the Menhennitt ruling in 1969.

I was recently emailed by a pro-abortion obstetrician/gynaecologist who assumed I was some kind of religious nutter. I sent him some data on the Abortion-Breast Cancer link and offered to debate him publicly before a jury of his peers. He did not accept the challenge, but I hereby extend the challenge to Josh Gordon and Heath Aston (The Age), Wendy Tuohy (Herald Sun) and Maxine Morand from the Breast Cancer Network. Needless to say, The Age did not publish my "Letter to the Editor" and my comment on Wendy Tuohy's blog vanished within a few minutes, so guys and gals, let's debate the Abortion-Breast Cancer link publicly, and you can bring along your own cancer experts. And don't forget to tell them that the only Australian study by Rohan et al in South Australia, showed that induced abortion was the highest risk factor for breast cancer, higher even than a family history of the disease.