考研阅读精选：修女与避孕
Nuns and contraceptionPraying for the Pill
Dec 9th 2011, 14:48 by C.H. | NEW YORK
THE Catholic church condemns all forms of contraception, a policy thatPaul VI laid out in detail in Humanae Vitae in 1968. Over the subsequentdecades it has had various brawls with secular authorities over the useof birth control pills. Most recently, America’s bishops have fought tokeep Barack Obama’s health law from providing contraception free. Thechurch has already won an exemption for women who work for a church, butit also wants to keep coverage from women who work for any Catholicinstitution, even if the women in question are not Catholics and theinstitution has a secular purpose, such as a school, say, or hospital.Given all this, it would seem unlikely that the church would want togive the Pill to its nuns.
Yet that is precisely what a recent paperin the Lancet suggests. Its authors, Kara Britt and Roger Short, ofMonash University and the University of Melbourne, urge the Church toprovide oral contraception to the sisters. Nuns need the Pill not toprevent pregnancy, but to prevent cancer.
In 1713, theauthors write, an Italian doctor observed that nuns had a very high rateof that “accursed pest”, breast cancer. Modern studies have confirmedthat Catholic have a higher risk than most women of dying from breast,ovarian and uterine cancers. Women who bear children have fewermenstrual cycles, thanks to both pregnancy and lactation (whichsuppresses menstruation). Other studies have established a relationshipbetween menstrual cycles and the prevalence of cancer, with fewer cyclesmeaning a smaller risk. Nuns - who are required to be celibate -experience more cycles than the typical woman, and therefore run ahigher risk of developing cancer.
The Pill can help tocounteract this. The overall mortality in women who use, or have used,oral contraception, is 12% lower than among those who do not. The effecton ovarian and endometrial cancer is greater: the risk of such cancersplummets by about 50%. Drs Britt and Short make a compelling medicalcase. But it is unlikely to sway the Church.
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