Posted on 08/20/2011 1:53:21 PM PDT by wagglebee
I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been asked what my stance is on contraception. It’s not breaking news that many oral contraceptives and some invasive barrier methods (IUD) have been proven to cause abortion, including the highly controversial ella and Plan B drugs, and I stand firmly against the use of anything that destroys a life created at conception. But what about contraception that prevents conception from taking place?
I’m not the only one who has gotten this question; people want to know how the pro-life movement as a whole feels about this.
In fact, the medical students we reach out to face this question on a daily basis.
This question is a hard one to answer, which is why many avoid it: What is the pro-life movement’s stance on contraception, including methods that prevent conception?
As a physician, what is the right decision to make when a woman asks for birth control? What if she is living below the poverty line, has 3 or 4 children, hasn’t obtained a high-school diploma, and is co-habiting with a man who needs to support her financially? Presumably, she’s aware of the possibility of pregnancy and could be afraid of how she will feed and clothe another child.
What do you say? What’s the pragmatic response here?
Here’s how I think that conversation should be started:
1) Birth Control, no matter what form, doesn’t prevent abortions. In fact, it provides a false sense of security.
The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s own research arm, released study showing that condoms fail 14% of the time. That’s enough to provide some concern, especially when coupled with the Guttmacher’s own numbers showing that over half of all abortions are on women who were using some method of birth control. This is a cry in the face of pro-abortion propaganda claiming that if women had better access to birth control, abortions would become unnecessary.
Well, clearly not.
Contraception gives women a false sense of security, and condoms and birth control clearly can’t be relied on as a fail-proof method of stopping a pregnancy from occurring.
2) Birth control comes with it’s own complications and risks. It some cases, it’s deadly for both the child and mother.
Aside from condoms, oral and invasive methods of birth control come with their own complications. In addition to blood clots and strokes, chemical contraceptives have been proven to end the life of a preborn human mere hours or days after conception by thinning the uterine lining and making implantation more difficult for the developing person. Invasive methods that are implanted into your upper arm or uterus come with the same set of risks to both the mother and child. The most common form of hormonal contraception, the pill, has been categorized by the World Health Organization as a Group I carcinogen. That’s the highest possible ranking; cigarettes are also Group I.
One only has to read the inserts that come with chemical contraception, listen to commercials for hormonal birth control that spew out a long list of side effects, or glance at Facebook ads calling for women who took Yaz birth control pills to contact a law firm to join the lawsuit (google Yaz and lawsuit!) to grasp the unbelievable amount of life-altering consequences of imbibing hormonal birth control.
3) Condoms and birth control are everywhere. You can obtain them for free, yet the abortion and STD rate hasn’t fallen.
Planned Parenthood and county health departments have been giving out free condoms and birth control for years. Yet, the unplanned pregnancy, abortion, and STD rate in America has failed to fall and, in the case of STDs, has significantly increased. Despite this evidence, the Obama Administration just issued a new ruling forcing all health insurance plans to cover birth control with no deductible.
What’s even more scary is that Planned Parenthood knows this. They actually rely on the failure of the contraception they provide to increase their abortion profits.
4) Finally, and most importantly, birth control – in any form – is a Band-Aid.
It seems like the best way to answer the question regarding the pro-life stance on contraception is to emphasize helping women as a whole instead of handing out a temporary “fix”.
Dolling out free condoms isn’t social justice. Handing over a pack of pills to an uneducated mother living in poverty with a man who doesn’t respect her enough to marry her isn’t restoring proper relationships in her life. At the end of the day, what have you accomplished? You’ve just acknowledged her tragic situation by implying, “I don’t know how to help you”, or, “I don’t have time to help you, but here, use these and hope for the best.”
Protecting women from the scarring trauma of abortion and repairing broken relationships in her life seem to be the best way the pro-life movement can restore true social justice – Christian justice – to this woman’s life.
These are my thoughts on how we can make a real impact, but the pro-life movement needs to come together and agree on one answer to this question. Unity will only help us protect more women and the pre-born from the injustice of abortion.
I think "we" have taken a march a couple of klicks beyond the anti-abortion agenda, in a way that invites ridicule, which is my point.
You wrote:
“I took it most of my life, and it has not hurt me at all.”
Well, your attitude and intelligence could use some work.
Birth control does not equal abortion.
You and I have had this conversation before, wagglebee. These only result in hurt feelings, division and bashing of various religious groups.
Millions of us grew up in a culture (Protestant, evangelical) where sex is only licit within marriage and elective abortion is never an option, while responsible contraception is acceptable. If a pregnancy occurs on birth control, we would never have an abortion.
Contraception does function to space children and to prevent pregnancy. The key is whether or not the couple believe that every child is human from fertilization. This is where we should work to change minds (and laws). I like my line about “If you break the egg of a bird on the Endangered Species list, it won’t matter that the bird was an embryo or couldn’t live outside the egg. You’ve still broken Federal law.)
Barrier methods like the condom and diaphragm, as well as sterilization can never harm a child.
True contraception does not interfere with the implantation or development of an embryo. The corpus luteum, the tissue left behind at the ovary after ovulation, produces hormones in higher numbers than those resulting from oral or injectables.
I have tons of original articles concerning Plan B and daily oral contraceptives that I’ll email to anyone requesting - send me a FReepmail with your email address.
You don't get it, do you? You don't get a 14% pregnancy rate per try from randomly timed acts of unprotected sex. The use of patently absurd statistics just invites the kind of ridicule I have attempted to deliver, but to which you seem immune, sadly since the guffawing from those not quite so firmly entrenched in conservative principles will do the conservative cause no good.
Breast milk never causes cancer.
Please considered this added to the list I assembled in post #63.
Do you know where the idea for Acorn came from? SDS? The movie explains it. You are only looking to fight and ridicule. I’m truly sorry that you are not looking for info to beat the “Progressives”. Honest. With people like you, we will lose.
You wrote:
“Millions of us grew up in a culture (Protestant, evangelical) where sex is only licit within marriage and elective abortion is never an option, while responsible contraception is acceptable.”
Yep, culture. Culture of death.
Protestant who excuses anti-Christian activity like birth control please meet Protestants Against Birth Control: http://www.missionariestopreborn.com/birth_control.html
Woefully uninformed & relativistic
The more recent articles I came across in this search call that into question. I refer you to this study, in Archives of Internal Medicine, and the ACOG committee statement here , and the National Cancer Institute statement. There are similar statements from Cancer.org, etc. I thought I had read something more recent that did affirm the link, but I can't find anything like that now. Given that, I must regard it as unproven and questionable.
That post was terribly inaccurate. The breast cancer abortion connection is not due to left over hormones or breast milk. It’s most likely due to cell changes toward breast milk production. The process is not carried to the end unless there’s a full term pregnancy.
The immature cells that become abnormal and may continue to divide, until some of them become abnormal enough to be cancer.
The good news is that subsequent pregnancies can mitigate this effect in some women.
However, women with a family history of breast cancer need to know that abortion can increase their risk.
Patently absurd stats? YOU are the one who seems immune to facts & truth.
You, sir, are a moral relativist. And people like you, who embrace a death culture will never restore the nation to what it once was.
Nah, I’ll stick with the list in 62 instead.
"Burn a condom and kill a progressive." Needs a bit of work, but it could catch on.
Do your realize how ridiculous you are being?
There was definitely an article in the British Medical Journal about it, which I think (don’t quote me) got picked up by either Nature or Sci American.
Went through this years issues of the BMJ, not there, will dig through 07 to 10 in the morning. Tis long past my bed time here!
It’s not just abortion that increases breast cancer, but the Pill, which was listed by the WHO as a Class 1 carcinogen. What do you have to say about that since you see no issue with birth control in your marriage?
What man would want to put his wife at risk like that for his own pleasure? Sheesh.
Who is embracing a death culture?
You are using something that I never said to deflect having to discuss a documentary. How pathetic is that?
Did you see wagglebee’s links in comment 62?
Are you aware that feminism/the abortion industry are extremely influential?
Maybe you think single-motherhood and a career as a state-subsidized extended-stay hooker is something other than abuse?
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