In light of the saddening news that Giuliana Rancic has breast cancer, a quick Google search was in order to discover the growing internet literature on the link between IVF, HRT and most-shockingly - birth control pills - and ovarian, breast and uterine cancers.
I am not a scientist, a medical student or researcher. I know communications and economics, public relations and management theory. But I have profound beliefs about reproductive and sexual health. My beliefs affect every aspect of my life, down to the most important thing in my world, my two year old daughter. I know that what I have to say might be controversial. But I cannot stand back and let the madness continue.
Girls my age, in their 20's, 30's, risk their health and their sanity to pump themselves full of drugs, habitually swallowing hormones every day of their lives, because they have been told, brainwashed, that that is the only way to prevent pregnancy. It is what sensible girls do, they have been told, and genuinely believe that pregnancy would ruin their lives. They waste their fertile years wondering what direction their lives will take, being promiscuous with undeserving irresponsible "men", constantly thinking that magically at 30 they will meet the "one" and have their children then. Then you have old woman of 40 again pumping themselves with more hormones than a battery hen, trying to yank into life a reproductive system that was never allowed to be. Grandfather-fathers who can barely keep up with their children in the park, let alone be there all their lives to guide them, encourage them, make their children the best they can be. Children of 10, 11, orphaned by their aging parents, left with an inheritance and little else.
But don't worry, these are the sensible ones, who have got life all figured out.
This is the beginning of change. The beginning of an uprising of young women tired of being lied to, force-fed pharmaceutical giants' greed, tired of no longer being responsible for our own reproductive health.
