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.
If I listened to the Pope, I would have 17 children like a relative of mine did.
No way, no how.
The use of the pill is not the root cause of promiscuity. Much like guns are not the root cause of violent crimes. Sexual promiscuity predates the pill by millenia. It has, at its core, the human condition of lack of self-regulation. Self-control, or more precise, the lack of self-control reveals itself in myriad forms. Sexual promiscuity is only one form.
Whethor or not it is a conspiratorial film, I know that ultimately, Marxism is not the root cause for what ails this nation. Nor is the rejection of Marxism the solution. Rejection of Marxism will be a natural result of identifying and eradicating the root cause.
Estrogen and progesterones can be carcinogenic, whether endogenous or not.
However, the effect of OCP’s on breast cancer is not proven. We know that OCP’s decrease risk of ovarian cancer.
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/oral-contraceptives
“Oral contraceptives are not abortifacients. The corpus luteum produces higher levels of hormones than the levels achieved from OCP’s.”
I believe you are incorrect here. The zygote cannot implant because the Pill renders the endometrium unfavorable to implantation. Therefore, the early baby is aborted.
Well vladimir-
Since you have a name that sounds like a man, I can assume you are one.
Please, go find a woman out there who has your opinion regarding BCPs.
You are going to be looking for a long time, the majority of women are glad that BCPs were invented, it made us more in control of our future.
I also laugh at the concern you all express about the negative health effects that a very small minority of women have from contraceptive pills.
Where are you on the pro smoking threads?
If you are all so concerned about the health of others, you should be all be against smoking.
How come I do not see you expressing an opinion about that?
Do you think we should also ban cigarettes?
Thanks for pinging me to dagogo’s good observations here. More comments mo’ later...
I am a woman who shares that view of BCPs.
I resent that the truth about the Pill has ben supressed & that millions of women have been duped into taking something very unhealthy for themselves, and that the exogenous, synthetic hormones secreted in their urine have contaminated the public drinking water supply for the rest of us. And, no I do not believe the Pill has empowered women. It has allowed them to become objects of convenience for men. If you can’t see that or connect the dots there, then you don’t want to. It dosen’t take a rocket scientist to see the obvious.
As for your comment about Laura Ingram & Michelle Malkin, I wouldn’t have a clue what their birth control practices are, but they are devout & practicing Catholics, so in order to remain faithful to the teachings of the Church, the shouldn’t be using BC.
Narcotic compounds have been found in the water systems, from pain medication.
Actually, quite a few medicines have been found in the drinking water.
Should we ban all medication?
Would you be happy if the side effects of the pill was listed on the insert? That way, woman would not be duped?
Guess what? It is already listed in great detail in the insert package.
You wrote:
“Please, go find a woman out there who has your opinion regarding BCPs.”
I have already found many. Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of having dinner with easy 60 or 70 young women who oppose birth control.
“You are going to be looking for a long time, the majority of women are glad that BCPs were invented, it made us more in control of our future.”
Actually I wouldn’t be looking very long at all. All I have to do is contact anyone of dozens of friends I have. No one at my parish uses birth control, for instance.
“I also laugh at the concern you all express about the negative health effects that a very small minority of women have from contraceptive pills.”
And patches. I remember this shortly after the patch came out (at least 17 dead in 12 months) http://www.howardnations.com/causation/ortho_evra/failure.html
But those who want to rut rather than actually completely give themselves to their spouses don’t really care if women or children die.
“Where are you on the pro smoking threads?”
Smoking in itself is not a moral vice.
“If you are all so concerned about the health of others, you should be all be against smoking.”
I think smoking is stupid, but it is not a moral vice. No moral law is violated by a moral agent smoking a cigarette.
“How come I do not see you expressing an opinion about that?”
You just did.
“Do you think we should also ban cigarettes?”
No. Again, smoking is not a moral vice.
This is how GK Chesterton (the great early 20th century Protestant convert to the Catholic faith) explained it:
The Red Indian is said to have tried and condemned a tomahawk for committing a murder. In this case he was certainly the prototype of the white man who curses a bottle because too much of it goes into a man. Prohibition is sometimes praised for its simplicity; on these lines it may be equally condemned for its savagery. But I myself do not say anything so absurd as that Americans are savages; nor do I think it would matter much if they were descended from savages. It is culture that counts and not ethnology; and the culture that is concerned here derives indirectly rather from New England than from Old America. Whatever it derives from, however, this is the thing to be noted about it: that it really does not seem to understand what is meant by a standard of right and wrong. It is a vague sentimental notion that certain habits were not suitable to the old log cabin or the old hometown. It has a vague utilitarian notion that certain habits are not directly useful in the new amalgamated stores or the new financial gambling-hell. If his aged mother or his economic master dislikes to see a young man hanging about with a pipe in his mouth, the action becomes a sin; or the nearest that such a moral philosophy can come to the idea of a sin. A man does not chop wood for the log hut by smoking; and a man does not make dividends for the Big Boss by smoking; and therefore smoking has a smell as of something sinful. Of what the great theologians and moral philosophers have meant by a sin, these people have no more idea than a child drinking milk has of a great toxicologist analyzing poisons. It may be a credit of their virtue to be thus vague about vice. The man who is silly enough to say, when offered a cigarette, “I have no vices,” may not always deserve the rapier-thrust of the reply given by the Italian Cardinal, “It is not a vice, or doubtless you would have it.” But at least the Cardinal knows it is not a vice; which assists the clarity of his mind. But the lack of clear standards among those who vaguely think of it as a vice may yet be the beginning of much peril and oppression. My two American journalists, between them, may yet succeed in adding the sinfulness of cigars to the other curious things now part of the American Constitution.
http://www.fisheaters.com/onamericanmorals.html
“I certainly hope that every man on this site that is against birth control and abortion and are making their opinions on womens reproduction are being VERY VERY careful never to have sex unless its to produce a child. Sex isn’t recreation you know.”
Fallacy of the ends against the middle.
Nothing wrong with having sex for pleasure if you are married. The key is being open to children. It is not in my control whether pregnancy will occur.
“If I listened to the Pope, I would have 17 children like a relative of mine did.”
And you feel this is advantageous to you?
No, this is a very old idea that’s not supported any longer.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists have reviewed this worry:
The uterine lining is affected much more by the hormones produced by the corpus luteum after ovulation. (probably influenced by what ever caused the breakthrough ovulation)
There is an increased risk of ectopic pregnancies if using the “mini pill.”
perhaps we should sterilize them and reduce the excess population?
“I have been married for 25 years. I am not going to say no to sex.”
Where have I said that you should ever say no to sex with your husband?
“I do not want to get pregnant, so I have decided that BCP is the correct choice for me.”
If you feel your husband has a right to your body by your marriage, does he also not have a say in whether or not to have children? What is his opinion on the matter?
“There is no bad consequences to having sex if you are in a committed relationship, and use BCP.”
Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are a variety of negative consequences to the long term use of the birth control pill.
“Of course, zealots would like us to stay home and make babies.”
What do you believe is the purpose of marriage? We did not make you get married, you made that decision yourself.
Why do you not wish to have children with your husband? I am curious as to why. If you did not wish to have children, you did not have to marry. If you did not wish to love your husband, you would not have married him, nor would you be staying with him.
So you clearly love your husband. Why do you not wish to have a child with him?
Hear, hear! I completely agree, the issue is self control. Like any medication or human invention, contraceptives of any sort can be misused. Or they can be lifesaving (a woman with severe congenital heart disease, who is at high risk of death from pregnancy.)
That is the difference between you and me.
I do not want to get pregnant, and I can control that. It is not up to you to have a say in the matter.Especially if you are a man.
How about you push to make this a campaign issue?
Outlaw contraceptives. See how far that would get you.
We would suffer for another 4 years of Obama as a result.This is a very, very fringe attitude.
You may have met 60 or so YOUNG women ( what, age 14? Wait until they are 18 )who oppose BCP. But let me tell you, they are in the minority of women out there.
“However, contraception and/or childlessness whether due to infertility, abstinence or responsible contraception (including natural family planning) do not equal abortion or a lack of respect for human dignity.”
Let me ask you something. When you put a bike together, do you believe that it is important to follow the instructions listed, or would you prefer to simply figure things out on your own and do the best you can?
Do you believe that there is a moral jusitification for choosing one approach over the other?
Not everyone agrees.......
“I do not want to get pregnant”
I understand this. I am curious as to why.
“I can control that.”
Of course, but it’s not through contraception that you have control. That is my point. You can always choose to say no. You can choose not to get married, but you chose to get married. That was a decision that you made, that no one else did for you.
“It is not up to you to have a say in the matter.”
Did I say that it was my decision to make? No. I am simply curious as to why you have made the decisions that you have chosen.
“Especially if you are a man.”
Do you believe that your husband has a say as to whether you do or do not use contraception?
“How about you push to make this a campaign issue?”
Did you mean that I should make it a campaign issue as to whether you are using contraception?
Or whether contraception as a whole should be permitted? I agree that contraception should be permitted. I have no issue with it being legal. I do, however, have an issue with it’s use in that I believe it is harmful to those who engage in contraception, and harmful to society as a whole.
“Outlaw contraceptives. See how far that would get you.”
I am not sure how the discussion as to why you choose to use contraception has any bearing on the discussion as to whether or not contraception ought to be legal.
“You may have met 60 or so YOUNG women ( what, age 14? Wait until they are 18 )who oppose BCP. But let me tell you, they are in the minority of women out there.”
I am not Vladimir. My mother was a volunteer for planned parenthood. I am simply curious as to why you choose not to get pregnant and why you choose to use contraception despite a long and happy marriage. That is all.
What is the benefit that you derive from it?
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