Here are the contents of this month’s Family Newsletter:

• Publication Update
• 1)   Be your own healthcare quarterback
• 2)   Can the birth control pill cause abortions?
• Events of the last month
• Upcoming Events

Publishing Update
1) Be your own healthcare quarterback
My most recent article in the Significant Living magazine was just published. The article, “Be Your Own Healthcare Quarterback: How to empower yourself to make great healthcare decision,” can be viewed here.
2) Can the birth control pill cause abortions?
My friend and co-author, Joe Stanford, MSPH, MD, of the University of Utah, published a seminal article, “Postfertilization Effects of Oral Contraceptives and Their Relationship to Informed Consent,” in an AMA journal back in 2000.
We were asked to write a Letter to the Editor of a major newspaper in the Phillipines on the topic (as it is being debated in their legislature). You can view the article here,  or you can read it below with hyperlinks:

What Guttmacher failed to point out in RH
Philippine Daily Inquirer
12:15 am | Thursday, July 28th, 2011
THIS REFERS to two letters, published in the Inquirer, that may be confusing to readers.
The first letter, from Raul Nidoy (“Breathtaking infatuation for RH bill,” Inquirer, 5/10/11), correctly referenced our systematic review, published in the Archives of Family Medicine, in which we concluded, “that good evidence exists to support the hypothesis that the effectiveness of oral contraceptives depends to some degree on postfertilization effects” on the lining of the uterus (endometrium).
This fact is now so well-established in medical literature that the United States Food and Drug Administration says of the pill: “Although the primary mechanism of action is inhibition of ovulation, other alterations include… changes in the endometrium which reduce the likelihood of implantation.”
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine also admits that the pill modifies “the endometrium, thus preventing implantation.”
If a woman on the pill has a breakthrough ovulation, the pill-caused changes in the endometrium will increase the chance of an unrecognized, pill-induced loss of a preborn human.
For those who believe that human life begins at fertilization, then any pill-caused post-fertilization loss of life would be, by definition, an abortifacient.
The second letter, from Guttmacher Institute (“RH research findings distorted,” Inquirer, 7/1/11), claims that the “pill only serves to prevent a pregnancy; it does not terminate a pregnancy. It is blatantly false and against all scientific evidence to claim that the pill is an abortifacient.”
This letter, purposefully we think, does not tell the readers that the Institute defines pregnancy as beginning at implantation, a full 5-7 days after fertilization, when the unborn human, now called a blastocyst (not a “fertilized egg”), is made up of roughly 100 or more cells.
Since the pill does not affect an unborn child after implantation and the Institute defines pregnancy as not beginning until implantation, then they can claim the pill is not an abortifacient, but only because they refuse to define pregnancy as beginning at fertilization.
The bottom line is this: if one believes human life begins at fertilization, then good scientific data exist to demonstrate that the pill works, at times, as an abortifacient.
Furthermore, given that there are highly effective, inexpensive, totally natural, and non-abortifacient methods of birth control (the methods of modern natural family planning), it appears that most arguments for using birth -control pills can be said to be advocating convenience for mothers and fathers at the potential expense of innocent and invaluable human life.
WALTER L. LARIMORE, MD, assistant clinical professor, Department of Community and Family Medicine, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO, USA;
JOSEPH B. STANFORD, MD, MSPH, CFCMC, professor, Division of Public Health, George D. and Esther S. Gross Chair, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Utah, 375 Chipeta Way, Suite A, Salt Lake City, UT 84108, USA

Events of the last month

• July 6, I taped a video interview with evangelist Sammy Tippit about the topics in my book, 10 Essentials of Happy, Healthy People: Becoming and staying highly healthy. He’s planning to use the recordings in a series for men: Heart, Health,& Home.
• July 11-15, I was blessed to once again serve as a visiting professor at the In His Image Family Medicine Residency program in Tulsa, OK.
• July 23-30, Barb and I were honored to support our military by teaching a “His Brain, Her Brain: How divinely designed differences can strengthen your marriage” Marriage Conference at the Spring Canyon Ranch for the Officers’ Christian Fellowship.

Upcoming Events

• Most of this month will be spent writing my second solo novel, “Sugar Fork,” the sequel to “Hazel Creek.” Hazel Creek is scheduled for release in March 2011.
• Aug 23 – Sep 7, we’ll be taking a family vacation at Pensacola Beach. Kate, Scott, Jennifer, and the grandchildren will join us at Barb’s parents’ beach home. We do this almost every year and are so looking forward to our family time together.

Past Issues

• July 2011
• June 2011
• May 2011

You can get more information on many of my upcoming events here.