Pink Money

Eve's personal testimony is available online, from when she gave her deposition to the Alaska State Review Board that was deciding what information should be included on Alaska's new informed consent website. I'll quote just a small part, but I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing:

I discovered the 3 cm tumor beneath my breast while standing in the shower. As a medical research analyst, I carefully considered my options and chose to have a lumpectomy with grossly wide margins.

Three years later, early in 2001, I was re-diagnosed. My cancer had returned. I took the aggressive path and had a bilateral mastectomy, with reconstruction and saline implants.

One breast was taken prophylactically: I considered the decision with dread, but made my decision with firm convictions: My paternal first cousin Shirley, whom I loved (and a year younger than I), and our grandmother, both died of breast cancer. My own mother a nine-year survivor now, was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years before me. I wanted it OUT. I was in New York City at Sloane Kettering Cancer Care Center recovering, until September 10, 2001, the day before the World Trade Towers fell.

My strong family breast cancer history, according to Dr. Janet Daling's study of American Women (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington) raised my breast cancer risk by at least 270%. I have lost both breasts, my Grandmother and dear cousin to the disease, and walked through the disease with my mother, and twice alone.

In the process of breast reconstruction I learned to my distress that I was not a good candidate for nipple reconstruction. I was not expecting the level of personal sadness, which accompanied this news. I realized that it mattered to no one else, but it did matter to me at a very personal and intimate level: My sensuality, my sexual experience are forever altered.

There are flashing signs in the center of my soul which say:
Caution:
ONGOING RECONSTRUCTION OF SPIRITUAL AND MENTAL ATTITUDES:
SELF-WORTH IN MIRROR MAY BE WORSE THAN IT APPEARS

...

Women deserve to know the fact that there is a breast cancer link, a physiological pathway between abortion and breast cancer, that leads to an empty legacy for women with a history of breast cancer in their families. Latina women and African American women have much more aggressive cancers and higher mortality rates. Someone said that emotion should not be a factor in these proceedings. He is not a woman, holding her first grandchild to her empty, salt-filled breast.

In the name of autonomy and equality with men, women potentially: risk their lives, sacrifice their breasts, destroy their fertility, and damage their ability to bond with children.

Abortion doesn't make women equal with men. Men would never, ever tolerate it for ourselves. However, all too many of us are willing to pressure women into doing it for us....

(H/T: Tim @ ProLifeBlogs ... ironic, huh?)
(cross-posted to Naaman the Ex-Leper)