We presume you have noticed that on the face at least, today’s The Robesonian looks different. The pink has a purpose: It is to make our readers pause and consider for the moment the realities of breast cancer, and to provoke action that might save the life of a loved one.

Mike DeCinti, the marketing director for Lumberton Radiological Associates, approached The Robesonian with the idea of publishing a pink newspaper during October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as a way to promote awareness — and we were glad to carry this worthy torch.

Cynics might suggest that because the medical practice is the only one in Robeson County that offers mammograms to women, that its motivations might be in part pecuniary.

We aren’t so jaded.

But regardless, the message is worth hearing — and the real motivation should rest with our readers. Staff writer Sara Hottman has written 100 inches of copy that can be found on Page 1A today about breast cancer, so we will steer you there for most of the details about the No. 1 killer of women, the technical advances that have enhanced early detection, and the likelihood for successful treatment if the disease is not allowed to silently advance too far.

But of all the statistics that Hottman provides in her two stories, the one we found the most distressing is this: In Robeson County, a full 63 percent of women who should be getting mammograms as a matter of routine, don’t. There are a lot of factors that drive that percentage unacceptably upward — with ours being a poor county that is home to too many people who don’t have health insurance, topping the list — so educating people about the need for a mammogram is critical to reducing that percentage. There are local funds to assist qualifying women with the cost of a mammogram.

The message is hopeful: Early detection gives physicians an upperhand in the battle. Only a few decades ago, breast cancer was tantamount to a death sentence; now it kills only one out of 35 American women who are diagnosed with it. Additionally, medicine has advanced so that treatment no longer leaves the physical scars that women fear, which is one reason so many have historically skipped on the mammogram, preferring not knowing to knowing.

So we hope that today’s newspaper had colored some of our readers’ thinking about breast cancer. There really aren’t any good reasons for women 40 years old and older not to have regular mammograms. In this instance, knowledge truly is power.

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Before we end this, we thought that today’s pink edition might serve a dual purpose. For reasons that don’t matter, National Prostrate Awareness Month, which was September, doesn’t garner the same attention as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

As part of the media, we are not blameless. So now we play catch-up.

Just understand this: The percentage of men affected by prostate cancer is higher than the percentage of women affected by breast cancer, and the diseases kill roughly equal numbers. They share something else: Early detection is the best defense.

We don’t feel a need to say more; you know what to do.