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.
Actually there isn't because with few exception proper research in the scienices and social sciences is published in copyrighted peer reviewed journals for which you or your organization have to pay a subscription fee - You do know that don't you?
Therefore, actual credible original source data is not generally available by Googling it. And that is what I mean by proof, not your self-referential pseudo science.
And yes, my dear Vlad, in any debate the onus is on you to back up your assertion with data.
You are a 99 sign up. When I joined people like you taught me that if you made a statement you'd better have a source. It's a shame that it is no longer an unspoken requirement to offer proof. How much grief could have been avoided? And I would have seen sooner that I misunderstood Vlads statement.
Your use of foul language is not welcome here in the Religion Forum.
Passing the buck?? Wagglebee posted the links! You’re too “smart” for your own good. I meant what I said, he meant what he said, (which you apparently ignored, about the paucity of non-biased studies about the harm of abortion), that’s the end of the story.
Courtesy ping to wagglebee since we’re discussing him.
Money makes good parents and being poor makes bad parents, what utter nonsense.
Now as for a few others on this thread, well, you are certainly right about that.
His argument is way too narrow; he is saying that good parenting depends solely on how much money they have. And then assumes that I want gov schools and so on. I want the fedgov to be pared back to its Constitutional responsibilities, which means 90% of of what it does should be stopped. That alone would leave people with a lot more money to use for child raising, charity, whatever they want.
He denies my argument that immorality and lack of family stability is the cause of the problems with parenting and children. Or even plays a part. Inability to acknowledge that falls under “moral blindness”.
And it is also immoral for the fedgov to be paying people to have illegitimate children, that destroys personal responsiblity in generations of people - we see it daily in news articles - and encrouages people to act like animals, by helping to further separate sex from marriage.
This thread is very interesting and eye opening in many ways.
“First, contraception is different than a morning after pill, but second, my war is on the absolutism of the absolutists around here. Tell me this, how do you abort a baby with a condom?”
First of all, I did not mention condoms.
Finally, yes Life is absolute and the right of life begins at the very moment of conception.
Therefore, life must be protected from the moment of conception.
At 505 respondents, the error bars are +/4.45 percent 19 times out of 20.
“That’s quite a source you cite there, why didn’t you include the whole thing?”
I did cite the whole thing. The link was in the post. I quoted only the summary because I believed those who wished to see the whole thing could go to the source.
“Please show me where I, or anyone else for that matter has advocated what you suggest.......”
In Post 279 you wrote, “Contraceptives that prevent conception are not abortions.”
However, you avoid the obvious fact that birth control pills do not only attempt to prevent pregnancy, but they also prevent implantation after conception.
Now, please explain the difference between the act of taking a pill that prevents implantation of a baby after conception and a partial birth abortion that takes place six months after conception.
“The main reason that people are not up to the task of raising all the children you would force them to have is that they cannot afford it, plain and simple.”
Couple things here.
1, no one is forcing anyone to have children. No one is forced to get married, and no one is forced to have sex. Last I checked, one had to consent in order to have sex, ergo no one has children forced upon them.
2, Do you believe the costs for children scale linearly? Or do they scale as the square root function? Larger families are more efficient per person than smaller ones. If a family were to homeschool, and society permitted them not to pay for the public school system, then much of the extra expense would be avoided. Would a one breadwinner family earn as much? No. But they would not spend or need nearly as much.
“Suppose for instance, my family decides to spit out kids as fast as we can make like rabbits. My twelve kids need educating.”
Well, let’s look at what people who have such families do? They keep their children at home and teach them there. There is no need to require public schooling, particularly for large families. Another option are parochial schools, where the children are taught either for free, or supported through the donations of the community. These still exist today.
“Barefoot and pregnant wifie will. And she is barefoot and pragnant with 12 kids because she didn’t get such a good education.”
No, she’ll be working looking after your children and raising them, and teaching them. I’m not sure why you are assuming she would have a poor education. Children who are homeschooled fare better then children in the public schools.
“Now on this marriage and procreation thing, is that an “or” between them or an “and.” Like if I have sex with my wife because I lover her, and already have all the kids I can afford, so we are not going to be doing any more procreating, is that evil in your book? We all just want to know.”
In my book? Yes. Because it says that the two will become one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one.
Are you REALLY that dense?
You have been arguing the opposite.
Now, please explain the difference between the act of taking a pill that prevents implantation of a baby after conception and a partial birth abortion that takes place six months after conception.
Get lost stupid troll, go hit the pipe again.
Hmmmm, that's pretty funny there troll. Earlier in this thread you said not having children between a married couple was a sin.
If you're going to troll, at least be constant.
You wrote:
“Actually there isn’t because with few exception proper research in the scienices and social sciences is published in copyrighted peer reviewed journals for which you or your organization have to pay a subscription fee - You do know that don’t you?”
Actually, it’s online. The fact that it was originally published in peer reviewed articles does not stop it from going online. It’s the 21st century. You do know that don’t you?
“Therefore, actual credible original source data is not generally available by Googling it.”
It’s online. Google.
“And that is what I mean by proof, not your self-referential pseudo science.”
It’s online. Google.
“And yes, my dear Vlad, in any debate the onus is on you to back up your assertion with data.”
There is no debate here. No amount of evidence would ever convince you. You refuse to even do the least bit of looking. No debate is possible. This was obvious from the start.
You wrote:
“You know what? Had he posted a link I would have seen that I totally misunderstood what he said. Most of this thread could have been avoided. But for some reason he chose not to post it. Hence the misunderstanding continued.”
So, you’re now saying you misunderstood all along?
“You are a 99 sign up. When I joined people like you taught me that if you made a statement you’d better have a source. It’s a shame that it is no longer an unspoken requirement to offer proof. How much grief could have been avoided? And I would have seen sooner that I misunderstood Vlads statement.”
You could have just gotten things right from the beginning. I did.
“Hmmmm, that’s pretty funny there troll. Earlier in this thread you said not having children between a married couple was a sin.”
Not what I said, is it?
I said that a man and a woman getting married should want to have children. Whether they succeed is up to the good Lord. Not them.
Again, no one is forcing anyone to have children. If you do not want children, do not get married. If you do want to have children, do get married.
Last I checked you could not get married without the consent of the other.
Sadly, you didn't. And refuse to be schooled even by a 99 sign up.
Goodnight.
I’m well aware of the problems. My sister-in-law that is 10 years older than me had lots of problems with it.
I had to do a lot of research about it, and I talked to my doctor about it.
It was kind of scary, but such a better option than having to have a hystorectomy.
You wrote:
“Sadly, you didn’t.”
Actually I did. I was right all along.
“And refuse to be schooled even by a 99 sign up.”
I don’t need to be schooled by anyone on this topic. You seem to have already admitted you were wrong all along.
In your small little dictatorial mind maybe...just wtf do you think you are?
From post #154:
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?
None of your freakin business, jackass.
I have no clue who the hell you think gave you such judgmental, dictatorial, powers but It certainly isn't God.
You're here to post such inane, ludicrous, invasive BS so dip shit sites like DU can copy them and post them to make real Conservatives look bad.
Get lost troll.
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