Bumper Sticker Bullies-Abortion Causes Breast Cancer….Seriously?

You would think that the myriad of random things occurring to me yesterday would have set me off.  It started out with an unprecedented weigh-in which only proved that my 6lbs in six weeks plan was going to take far longer than anticipated.  I got over that one….sort of.  It was followed by a 1 ½ hour gouging of my teeth at the dentists office.  I knew it was coming as I had neglectfully made my annual six month cleaning ten months later.  Then the dentist told me I had decay on my back tooth.  I told him there was no way he was replacing it with a gold tooth, like the one he gave my husband a few years back.  Yuck. 

I wasn’t mad, just numb at that point.  It even rolled off my back when I was in a parking lot and the woman in front of me decided to drop her passenger off in a “no drop off zone” and then had the audacity to have a leisurely conversation as she blocked the road. When I honked my horn, she gave me the finger, finished her conversation and then proceeded to take off like a shot, but not without calling me a very unladylike name that rhymes with witch!  Hmmmm.  Seriously?   I got over it, even though I fantasized just a little about ramming her car at the stoplight, but who wants to deal with insurance and a rental car?

I was stuck in traffic coming home from the doctor with my 7 year old, after the doctor told me his heinous cough was habitual and caused by anxiety.  Boy was I glad when he developed 102 fever that night, and a rash….whew!

So, even after I managed to take this all in stride, I found myself spewing at a bumper sticker.  I usually don’t pay much attention to bumper stickers, as I don’t care if your kid made honor roll, or that you send them to private school.  It doesn’t change my life to know that you love your car more than your wife; or that Democrats do it better, that you brake for animals or wear fur, are a vegetarian, or have a soft spot for Jesus fish, or any other permutation of that emblem…and yes,that includes the lox and bagel fish…don’t ask. 

Perhaps, the events earlier had tainted my disposition, or that the traffic was awful, but when I saw (along with a colorful montage of pro-life stickers) Abortion Causes Breast Cancer on a bumper sticker on the car ahead of me, I totally flipped.  I’m sorry did the Academy of Medicine reveal this latest jaw dropping research and I missed the memo? Are you kidding me? I seethed the whole way home; I texted my husband (at a long stoplight might I add) growing angrier by the minute.  I have always considered myself a fairly liberal person in many respects and while certain views may have changed over the years, I have always defended the right to free speech. Today, however, just felt like pure venom aimed right at the jugular. 

Now, being a writer, I needed to satisfy my curiosity before going off on a rant, so I researched the concept of abortion being a catalyst for breast cancer, and here are my findings. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage.  The literature indicates that while this topic has been a source of study over the last five decades, the results were flawed due to a variety of reasons.  The bottom line is that abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.

I guess it was a sensitive subject, as I know far too many women, young and old who developed breast cancer because of a bad spin of the genetic wheel .  Moreover, I know women who have had to make the incredibly difficult choice of abortion for a variety of devastating reasons.  We make decisions and have to live with them, and as a friend, a woman, and a member of the human race, I am in no position to judge what, why or where. 

Put that on a bumper sticker!