Nuns should take contraceptive pill to cut cancer risk

While writing in the Lancet medical journal two health experts have claimed nuns should take the contraceptive pill to reduce their risk of developing cancer.

It is commonly believed that women who do not go through pregnancy or breastfeed children are more at risk of developing breast, womb and ovarian cancer as they have more periods in their lifetime.

Studies of nuns have also found that cancer-related mortality rates are higher among nuns than other women.  

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According to the two Australian researchers, overall mortality rates are 12 percent lower in pill-takers and the risk of breast, ovarian and womb cancer is cut by approximately 50-60 percent if women take the pill.

However, nuns have been banned from taking any kind of contraception apart from abstinence.

Professor Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne, and Dr Kara Britt, from Melbourne’s Monash University, said in their Lancet opinion article that nuns “pay a terrible price for their chastity because they have a greatly increased risk of breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers.

They also said: “The Catholic church condemns all forms of contraception except abstinence, as outlined by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae in 1968.

“If the Catholic Church could make the contraceptive pill freely available to all its nuns, it would reduce the risk of those accursed pests, cancer of the ovary and uterus, and give nuns’ plight the recognition it deserves.”

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