Posted on 02/06/2009 9:45:49 AM PST by Between the Lines
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--A chemist who led to the invention of the birth control pill says he regrets the demographic catastrophe that has resulted from people using the contraceptive device to separate reproduction from sexuality.
Carl Djerassi, the 85-year-old Austrian chemist who was one of three whose formulation of synthetic hormones paved the way for the pill, wrote an opinion piece in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard lamenting the way the pill has been used.
Austria's population now includes more people over age 65 than under 15, and Djerassi said the country soon will face an "impossible situation" as the working class becomes too small to support the needs of senior citizens. Each family in Austria needs to produce three children to maintain population levels, he said, but on average couples have 1.4 children.
The fall in the birth rate in European countries, he said, is an epidemic far worse than obesity, but it receives less attention.
In order to curb the population problem, Djerassi said in the column that Austrians would have to adopt quickly an immigration policy designed to counteract the effects of widespread contraception before the population commits "national suicide."
R. Albert Mohler Jr., in a 2006 New York Times Magazine article, called the birth control pill one of the most profound developments ever.
"I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill," Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said. "It became almost an assured form of contraception, something humans had never encountered before in history.
"Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation," Mohler added.
Mollie Ziegler, a Gannett newspaper reporter, noted on the blog GetReligion.org that Djerassi's comments, made in December, have failed to make mainstream headlines in the United States.
"U.S. media tend to be a bit American-centric ... but just because this story broke in Austria is no reason to ignore it here," she wrote. "And no matter where Djerassi dropped his bombshell allegation or where he lives, how many millions of women here in the United States have used oral contraceptives and might be interested in something their creator has to say about its unintended consequences? There's just no news justification for obscuring this story."
Mohler, writing in a May 2006 article on his website, said some versions of the birth control pill have abortifacient qualities.
"Not all birth control is contraception, for some technologies and methods do not prevent the sperm from fertilizing the egg, but instead prevent the fertilized egg from successfully implanting itself in the lining of the womb," he said. "Such methods involve nothing less than an early abortion. This is true of all IUDs and some hormonal technologies. A raging debate now surrounds the question of whether at least some forms of the Pill may also work through abortifacient effect, rather than preventing ovulation."
Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, folks, but, IIRC, the pill was invented to help regulate a women's cycle and it was only accidentally discovered to be a contracentive.
and Einstein intended E = mc^2 for other things than nukes.
So it’s conservative for everyone to have as many babies as possible and you aren’t conservative unless you multiply as much as possible and encourage others to do the same? I love children. We have two wonderful children. They are a gift.
I see nothing wrong though with birth control and not having more kids than you can support, whether we are talking about individual families or the world population as a whole. I think that is sensible, practical, and not at odds with conservative principles. It may be at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church, but I’m not Catholic. We shamelessly practice birth control at my house. I don’t see a darned thing wrong with it, and if you don’t like that you can kiss my....
Gregory Pincus with the help of financing from Margaret Sanger and others started his contraceptive research. Pincus found Djerassi who helped to create progestin an synthesis progesterone which did work as a contraceptive when taken orally.
Progestin was first approved by the FDA for for menstrual disorders. The drug company (Searle)quickly applied to have it's use extended to include contraceptive, which it was in 1960.
So to answer your question. Djerassi wasn't looking to find a contraceptive, but his financial backers wanted exactly that. Not exactly what I would call an accident.
I think that birth control has changed behavior of people.
Sex and marriage and children all used to be part of a package deal. Sex has now been separated from reproduction, reproduction has been separated from marriage, and overall, most people have smaller families than in the past.
Given the morality of the old days, the researchers may have thought that only married couples would use the pill to plan the timing or number of children they had. They might not have expected that tens of millions of single girls and women would take the pill. They probably didn’t expect that millions of both men and women would rely on the pill to prevent consequences of being sexually active singles, with no thought of marriage.
Not just “population decline”,
but the decline of the FAMILY as an institution.
And if we look at the bigger picture, if every couple has several kids, eventually there won't be room for anymore. There won't be enough food to feed everybody. Overcrowding will cause all sorts of problems. Pollution problems will be way worse than anything we've seen so far. Energy resources, building supplies and so one will be much harder to come by when so many must make do with what little we have. An area can become far too overcrowded. The world can become far too overcrowded. World population is greater than it has ever been and it keeps on growing. At one point there were thousands of us, then millions, and now there are billions of us. This planet certainly wouldn't support trillions. It won't support too many more billions of people. We cannot as a species continue to grow at the rate we have grown over the last several thousand years. The planet will not support that.
Knock yourself out though. You want to have ten kids, go for it. We're happy with two. I actually would have liked to have had three or four children but we started late and didn't want to risk having more. The risk of complications, of birth defects and so on go up as people get older. My wife had miscarriages. We had a pretty big scare from tests done on the baby during her last pregnancy. We just decided to quit and I didn't even get that son I'd like to have had. I certainly don't think it's wrong for people to have more kids. We just stopped at two. Don't hate on us for it.
At some point in our future though we are going to really have to start worrying about populations growing too large though. In some countries they already have to worry about that. Someday the whole world is going to have to be concerned about it. So if people want to start limiting the size of their families now, we shouldn't be upset about this. They're helping avert or at least postpone a future crisis of epic proportions. This planet is not going to be a very fun place to be when there is no way we can produce enough food to feed everybody. There will be famines, disease, and wars like we've never seen before. Forced abortions won't just be for China anymore. Things will get ugly.
She thought anyone who wasn’t an Aryan blonde hair blue eyed caucasian was an inferior race. That probably includes you.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
If those teenagers are anything like my daughter, they will purposely be celibate, just because I recommended the alternative.
Anyway, I'm not sure teenage single-motherhood is the kind of demographic phenomena they're really looking for.
Then your depriving your kids of something greater than an education, a comfortable home, and a financial inheritance--the lifelong joy of many siblings.We are not short on people.
Artificial contraception has led us unwittingly into the Culture of Death. Artificial contraception and abortion are the twin pillars of the culture.
Watch how fast it will change here once the Muslim population uses the gay marriage rights to bring marriage with 10 wives. You'll be outnumbered in no time.
So we should encourage teenage pregnancy and motherhood?
Let me give you a hint.
Hint: They can't get pregnant if they exercise some discipline and keep their pants on.
How is that possible? Stop sexualizing our children at the age of 13 and earlier by exposing them to perverted fashion mags, movies, entertainment and the like.
Lots of parents want to be like a cool friend with their kids instead of a parent. usually because they couldn't handle not being a part of the crowed when they were young.
An exercise in discipline usually leads to a high level of self respect and self control. A class act with high standards and morals.
There. I guess the only problem with this is to take the time, take the phone and video games away and actually talk to your teen.
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