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.
The links wagglebee posted were to articles posted on FR. They were not to individual comments by people on FR. As you know, due to lawsuits and copyright issues FR can rarely post entire articles. So, if you click the links wagglebee posted on comment 62, you will find entire articles with one additional click.
Is that too difficult for you?
Scientific evidence is scientific evidence. Are you claiming all the scientific journals that have published studies are involved in a conspiracy?
Are you saying that political correctness i.e. the abortion industry and feminism have no influence on scientific research, or what various journals and outlets publicize or bury?
I knew a lot of that stuff but some was new. They put everything together very clearly. Tax-chick’s tagline is true.
People need to watch that. It won’t change the minds of the brain dead leftists, but it will help people who aren’t completely entrhalled by evil.
Oh, so you think I am selfish?
Really?
I paid $8000 in property taxes last year so your children ( or someone elses) could attend school ( not mine).
My federal taxes have gone into SSD for disabled children ( not mine), low cost student loans ( not mine).
My state sales tax ( which I pay a lot of because I am upper income)- -a part of which goes to upper education to educate your children ( not mine)
I can only claim a standard deduction, unlike you who can claim your children ( not mine).
In the future,your children will revolt , and not pay Social Security, after all the money I have paid into the system.
At least, not having children has saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars for my retirement, as I will probably not get Social Security.
And you call me selfish?
I have paid and paid to support your children.
You have gone so far past being "pro-life" that I think you must be a Reid plant to ensure conservativism is repulsive to all reasoning people.
There have been some very entlightening threads on FR lately. People who have chosen evil over good, right here on our very own FR. The strange thing is they seem to think that they are conservatives. And yet they hate human beings, the natural family, and procreation.
You poor delusional soul. The side effects of the pill have been known to anyone who cared to find out about it all my adult life, and no thinking considerate male would demand that a woman talk a drug she did not want to take after fully informed of the risks. But barrier methods are also decried as evil by your crowd of Luddite fellow travelers. Perhaps you should eschew penicillin and tetracycline as well. Then you can die of a common infection like at age 5 like God meant. Or did he? I am so confused by what I am supposed to believe God meant for us after listening to those of you who are so Christian and know so much better than the rest of us.
Evil to choose to not have children?
Evil is murder, rape, incest, child abuse.
Get your priorities straight.
Personally, I think 50% of families in this country should not procreate.
Having sex and popping out a baby is easy, raising a child is not.
I would say 50% of people in this country are not up to the task.
For how to put a bike together? Good grief you folks are insane.
Who put you in charge to say that condoms are evil right here on your very own FR? Who? I want to know? Does God speak to you in voices? Did he give you a sign that you are among the annnoited to tell the rest of us that we are living in sin?
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.
If you don't know that some oral contraceptives are abortifacient, then your "passion" is very superficial.
Where did this "some" appear. Your fellow travellers are speaking in God-given absolutes. We [They I mean] mean all, including not just pharmaceuticals but barriers as well. Oh and they cause communism too. You need to get with the program.
Yes we all know that "some" are abortifacient. No one on this side of the table is quite as stupid as those on your side of the table are making us out to be.
No need for the sarcasm. When I post information, I try to make it easy for people to find the original scientific information. If you don't want to extend the same courtesy, don't expect people to do extra work to find buried information.
For instance, the first link goes to an article on the LifeNews site, which is not a scientific research article. It then has a link that says "four epidemiologic studies," that turns out to be a link to another LifeNews article - again not a scientific research paper. Clicking links in that article took me to an analysis, again not the original research. At that point, I gave up. If you read my original comment on this (#110) you'll see that I thought I had seen there was recent research supporting the link, but I can't now find it. When I looked today, I find several studies showing no link. If you have a link to a good quality (reasonable size, preferably prospective) study, please post it and I'll be glad to see it. Otherwise, don't waste my time asking me to comb through multiple links from nonscientific sources.
Oh, they know we didn’t want twins. I cried when I found out. I knew it was dangerous, plus I didn’t know how we were going to afford it.
We laugh about it now, but it was hard. They got sick and almost died. One of them has a brain injury.
They are sweethearts. We’ve been blessed!
Oh, they know we didn’t want twins. I cried when I found out. I knew it was dangerous, plus I didn’t know how we were going to afford it.
We laugh about it now, but it was hard. They got sick and almost died. One of them has a brain injury.
They are sweethearts. We’ve been blessed!
How many more trillions do the liberals get to add to the [annual budget] deficit because of these ridiculous arguments? Instead of stopping it here, it seems we are going to go for broke in pursuit of the absurd.
Wow. This is exactly the same run around you get from that other crowd of FR fraudsters - the cold fusionistas.
You did see my tagline, did you not?
The good news is that subsequent pregnancies can mitigate this effect in some women.
Not if they keep getting an abortion.
The immature cells that become abnormal and may continue to divide, until some of them become abnormal enough to be cancer.
Left over hormones or cell changes.... the result is the same.
I am tired, I have to say goodnight.
I agree with what you have said on this thread.
I really, really, want Obama gone next election.
However, when you have people on FR who state that oral contraception is evil, the MSM ( who probably reads these threads)will portray that all conservatives are in agreement with this line of thought. Like it or not, the MSM still has a lot of power.
The people in the middle, who determine the outcome of elections, will think Republicans and conservatives all feel that way. They will vote Democrat.
We will have another 4 years of Obama.
Our country cannot survive another 4 years of Democratic rule.
When I see zealotry to the Taliban level, which runs counter to most reasoned opinion among conservatives, I will fight against it.
To the MSM, not all conservatives feel this way.
Only ultra,ultra, right wing conservatives feel this way.
They are in the minority.
It may not. But something does. What causes the cells to die in large volumes, which is what the word 'cancer' denotes? And why specifically in the breast?
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