I'm pretty sure abortion as a legally sanctioned alternative to contraceptives did not exist during the time of Martin Luther. And I'm going to leave the popes out of this, because the Catholic Church has always pushed this bizarre belief that it is somehow violates the will of God to use contraceptives. This is the belief that I have never understood, and I doubt anyone will ever be able to explain it in a way that it makes logical sense.
The logical part is this: contraceptives prevent pregnancy. A child cannot be killed if it never exists in the first place. Insisting that women not use contraceptives is equivalent to insisting that women constantly get pregnant. And women who constantly get pregnant are either having a lot of abortions, or a lot of babies.
Women do on average become more pro-abortion when they have so called unplanned pregnancies. Polling has shown that a so called unexpected pregnancy often switches antiabortion people into pro-abortion ones, at least for their own case.
Really? Is your opinion of women's intelligence and morality that low? Do you seriously believe that a woman who never would kill a baby suddenly finds baby-killing okay if she has an "unexpected" pregnancy? That we have no firm sense of morals? How utterly insulting and condescending.
Planned Parenthood has profited because it has encouraged people to have sex when they lack the means or will to raise a child. More contraception means more sex out of wedlock which means more unwanted children which means more abortions. Until someone invents a 100% effective 100% idiot proof form of contraception, contraception will create a market need for abortion
Planned Parenthood does everything it can to discourage the use of contraceptives. On the surface, it might look like they're selling contraceptives, but the clear message they give in the sales pitch is that contraceptives are horribly dangerous and don't work. Somewhere in an earlier post in this thread I described the sales pitch that was presented in my high school biology class, a sales pitch which is probably almost identical today. In fact, their message about contraceptives is almost identical to yours; the only difference is that you claim to be pro-life, but PP is openly pro-death.
The abstracts I saw on PubMed said NFP works well. Of course, there were six pages of hits. Maybe there is a doctor out there who can inform us on this subject but it appears to be as successful as artificial contraception.
Using the term "natural family planning efficacy", I found 116 pages of results spanning the years 1974 to 2013. That is a *very* low number of results. And a large proportion of those articles were not about "natural family planning" at all; they cover a range of related topics. Very few articles claim a high success rate with "natural family planning" methods. BTW, I guess you missed the fact that I *am* a doctor and know how to read and interpret medical articles?
Just about everyone could afford a large family if it were a priority. We live in the richest nation which ever existed. People whose great grandfathers never left their hometowns drive to the airport in a new SUV and jet halfway across the world for vacation. Heck, even our ghettos are lined with new model vehicles. There are very few people who actually can't afford three or four children.
How on earth do you come up with that? Using welfare queens as proof of how everyone can afford large families if they want--seriously? Do you realize that most people have almost no money when they are young and able to have kids, but have enough money to take the fancy vacations only when they're beyond having kids?