Dr. Just-Say-No
Last June, Keroack was a featured speaker at the 10th Annual International Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas City, where he provided his somewhat unorthodox insights into the role of hormones in relationship failure. Oxytocin is a hormone whose actions are associated with pregnancy, breastfeeding, and maternal-infant bonding -- and, according to Keroack, it's the tie that binds in marriage, as well. People don't fall in love, but into hormonal bondage. Therefore, the most important rationale for sexual abstinence isn't faith-based at all, but purely physiological. Unfaithful men and promiscuous women are created by misuse of the "emotional glue" of attraction, an abuse leading to a "perpetual cycle of misery."
In his presentation at the 10th Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas City earlier this month, Dr. Eric Keroack ... explained that oxytocin is released during positive social interaction, massage, hugs, "trust" encounters, and sexual intercourse. "It promotes bonding by reducing fear and anxiety in social settings, increasing trust and trustworthiness, reducing stress and pain, and decreasing social aggression," he said. Keroack's fitting title for that novel presentation [PowerPoint link] was "If I Only Had a Brain." In an unpublished article that has become an established text of the abstinence movement, he wrote, "People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual." Keroack's teaching on the role of "God's 'super-glue'" is accepted as irrefutable in an article titled Fornication and Oxytocin.
In women, a more positive relationship with her mate is associated with higher levels of oxytocin. This suggests that a woman's previous sexual relationships can alter the release of the biochemical "super-glue." If a woman's sexual history is sufficiently adverse, she will lose her ability to bond in the current relationship. The article speculates that "the science is still new, and more must be learned concerning the role of oxytocin in human bonding," but the inescapable conclusion is that keeping a woman abstinent until she walks down the aisle is the best way to keep her faithful after the honeymoon's over. [ image, left : from the June 30, 2006 newletter of the Loiusiana Governor's Program On Abstinence ]
Eric Keroack, medical director of A Woman's Concern Health Centers, a pro-life counseling organization, said sexual activity today is comparable to warfare. Knowing how Keroack feels about sex unsanctioned by marriage should have prepared us for his expert medical opinion of birth control. And he also has helped to pioneer the use of ultrasound as a high-tech weapon in the war on abortion. Focus on the Family applauds Keroack's use of ultrasound to influence women whom Keoack describes as "abortion vulnerable." As medical director of five Boston-area crisis pregnancy centers, Keroack oversees ultrasound scans that he says help to provide "informed consent" for abortion procedures, even though their admitted purpose is to prevent those procedures from ever taking place..
[T]he odds that an unborn child will be brought to term, rather than aborted, can be very nearly inverted by an ultrasound examination, according to a study undertaken by A Woman's Concern, a group of crisis-pregnancy centers in eastern Massachusetts. Before introducing routine ultrasound examinations for the women who visited their centers, A Woman's Concern (AWC) found that 61 percent of the women classified by counselors as "abortion-vulnerable" would opt for abortion prior to an ultrasound examination, while 33.7 percent would choose to carry the pregnancy to term. Once ultrasound examinations were provided, 63.5 percent of the same "abortion-vulnerable" women decided to continue their pregnancies, and only 24.5 percent chose abortion. As detailed in the article quoted above, the AWC centers directed by Keroack delay women's access to abortion care by suggesting to them that early miscarriages are common, that they could have an ectopic pregnancy or a blighted ovum, and that it would be best to wait a few weeks before making an appointment for an abortion: "For the CPC counselors, meanwhile, the extra 2-3 weeks provide another opportunity to persuade the woman that she should continue her pregnancy. And if the process calls for a follow-up ultrasound examination, there is one more opportunity for the mother to bond with her unborn child." Aside from emerging evidence of the damaging effects of repeated, prolonged and unnecessary ultrasound exposure upon a developing fetus, professional medical organizations have ethical concerns about nonmedical uses of ultrasound technology.
Professional organizations such as the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM), Society for Diagnostic Medical Sonography (SDMS), American College of Radiology (ACR) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have clarified statements on ultrasound's nonmedical use. "These statements support the use of sonography for medical diagnostic purposes," says Stephanie Ellingson, MS, RDMS, RDCS, RVT, RT(R), director of the diagnostic medical sonography program at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City. "That is very different from a nondiagnostic image created and shared specifically with the purpose of influencing a patient's decision." Not surprisingly, this same unpublished "study" by Keroack has been used to advance proposed legislation to purchase ultrasound machines for crisis pregnancy centers with federal funds -- bills such as the Pregnant Women Support Act inspired by the Trojan donkeys of Democrats for Life of America, whose legislative initiative boasts the full support of the Christian right. And why not, when its abortion-reducing initiatives consist of funding CPCs and imposing restrictive federal regulation upon doctors who provide abortion care, while excluding all support for access to contraception? Dr. Eric Keroack has compiled quite a record as the Christian right's man in Boston. He now seems set to become their man in Washington, DC -- and ours as well, whether we want him or not.
Dr. Just-Say-No | 111 comments (111 topical, 0 hidden)
Dr. Just-Say-No | 111 comments (111 topical, 0 hidden)
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