A New Vision
Anything about different treatment options
For the last few years a new vision of woman has been unfolding - the evolving dream of Dr. Dominic Pedulla, the founding physician of The Edith Stein Foundation (ESF). Asked in 1994 to give a talk on heart disease for women, his preparatory research unexpectedly led to a foundational insight about women's health. Inspired by the deep psychological intuitions of the great feminist transcultural heroine and Saint, Edith Stein, Dr. Pedulla for the first time began to suspect contraception as the most important and overlooked factor in a host of medical and social conditions afflicting the modern woman.
Contraception and The Heart
For several years Dr. Pedulla observed that many young women often suffered from serious cardiac symptoms despite otherwise reassuring test results. These women were often profoundly distressed and suffered a great deal of anxiety. It was not until he began routinely asking about birth control practices that a causal connection began to be considered. Dr. Pedulla knows now from his own practice experience that all contraceptives - whether condoms, IUD's, pills, injections, or tubal ligation surgeries - are capable of causing this 'contraception syndrome.' Research now must be done to prove its existence, define its causal mechanisms, and determine how it is best healed.
The Difficult and Symptomatic Menopause
Similarly, women who suffered troubling hot flashes and postmenopausal mood problems most often were chronic contraceptors or were sterilized. They more often needed powerful synthetic hormones, even when not actually hormone deficient. Were contraception and sterilization deeply traumatic to a woman's self? This is the hypothetical problem Dr. Pedulla presented to 'The First World Congress on Women's Mental Health' in Berlin, Germany March of 2001 .
Depression and Menstrual Mood Disorders
It began to appear that while many women began contraceptives to avoid pregnancy, a substantial number ended up habitually needing them for control of moods and emotions. When women otherwise behaving rationally cannot stop their contraceptives even when heart symptoms result, would research point to a chronic contraceptive dependency?
The Hysterectomy Epidemic
Learning that up to 75% of hysterectomies in the U.S. and Europe are unjustified, and in view of the increased heart attack rate in these women, and since research already shows that contraceptives and tubal sterilizations make women hysterectomy-prone, a new question emerged. Could this phenomenon be the end-stage of a chronic and self-destructive 'contraceptive syndrome'; would contraceptive acts of intercourse prove to be a new form of repetitive self-trauma?
Autoimune Diseases
The increasing incidence of diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and their striking preference for afflicting females is noteworthy. Since early research in psychoneuroimmunology has shown the emotions capable of altering the immune system (particularly in the area of marital relationship), could chronic self-destructive or otherwise negative emotions (such as self-loathing, shame, hostility) condition the immune system in such a way that self attacks self? Would this explain how 'the pill' can cause self-destructive antibodies?
Breast and Reproductive Cancers
Seeing the link between breast cancer and a number of otherwise very different contraceptive modalities (even the condom!) Couldn't this reflect as well a chronic contraceptive effect on the immune system, even apart from purely hormonal mechanisms?
Failure to Adapt to Pregnancy / Pregnancy Unacceptedness
Pregnancy, for females, is a normal physiologic goal of freely-chosen intercourse. Yet strange expressions such as 'unintended pregnancy' have been used, distracting many from the abnormal failure to accept the pregnant condition. The ESF now feels strongly that chronic contraception conditions women in such a way that their response to pregnancy is impaired and pregnancy rejected - clearly a hypothesis deserving real study!
Divorce and Marital Unhappiness
If contraception involved a kind of covert hostility towards a woman, would that explain studies demonstrating higher divorce rates for women on the pill, as other studies suggest?
The Unifying Principle
Billions of dollars yearly are donated to separately battle coronary artery disease, breast cancer, lupus, depression, the menopause, 'unwanted pregnancy', infertility, suicides, and accidents in women, but how well are these funds spent? A very simple but 'radical' principle may lie at the root of all of these apparently unrelated ills: contraceptive acts are psychologically, spiritually, and physically traumatizing to women. Would modern, scientifically accurate, noncontraceptive methods of pregnancy avoidance be therapeutic?
What The Edith Stein Foundation Needs Now!
Work with us in this enormously exciting area of research! At a very minimum, it has the real capacity to rewrite the modern story of women's health. Join us in this mission today by giving generously, so together, we may bring about the long awaited hope of prosperous health for modern woman.
Mission Statement
The Edith Stein Foundation sees the family planning decision as a threshold 'moment of freedom' for the world's modern woman. Therefore the mission of The Foundation is to help woman cross that threshold by choosing methods that celebrate her fertility and make her fully conscious of its beauty and power. In the process we will promote genuine reproductive health, and expose the often hidden joy, vitality, freedom and power of life-giving love. The Edith Stein Foundation believes this change in the heart and mind of our culture will bring peace to future generations who, through us, dare to hope.
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