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 irony is that those who espouse eugenics ALWAYS place themselves in the group that gets to live.
Sorry that I missed it was posted in news. I already apologized to wagglebee.
Nope. Rick Warren was invited to do the prayer breakfast this year with Obama and Warren accepted.
Liberal loons were livid. Should be around here somewhere.
http://www.contracept.org/risks.php
to dj: a link, are you kidding? you can't figure this out on your own? I'll help you, most Americans uses contraception, the average divorce rate in
America is 50%...If you need a link to figure this out and are afraid of using google try using this private search link http://www.ixquick.com/ and don't forget that if you believe that life begins at conception, most birth control measures kill your baby. Conception usually takes place before implantation..or before a drug or device prevents implantation.
we have the ability to mitigate famine, but we should not do that because, unfortunately, the real world intervenes and our plans go awry.
We should not plan an education because unfortunately, the real world intervenes and we won't finish.
We should not save because unfortunately the real world interevenes and whipes out our financial accounts.
This is the second dumbest line I have read yet. We survive as a species because we can foresee and choose among outcomes, and are right enough times that our lives are better off than wild animals.
The dumbest is your two inches of latex.
It is evil not at the individual level but rather at the moral level for what it induces, namely, as I said, a tendency to trivialize sex as just for pleasure which leads to "sex for fun", "marriage is just a formality" and "divorce at the lightest reason"
This concept is evil as I do believe it leads to the creation of the present day environment we are in, with free sex, easy divorce, gay marriage, shacking up, men who remain boys with sex drives and no fear of responsibility
This is an absurd comparison. Ask any design engineer whether a 1 or 2 percent or 10 percent failure system in a post crash safety device is acceptable. Compared to the consequences of certain death after a crash occurs, have a 90 or 99% survival rate is entirely preferable. Of course folks have a choice. They don't need to avail themselves of modern transportation systems. They can move to Amish country where they can safely convey themselves through equestrian power - unitl they have their first fall from a horse.
What you luddites want is to return to a simpler world, one where at sexual maturity folks were also ready to assume a full economic burden of keeping a family. Those days are long gone. The engineering student working on his PhD and shacked up with his wife not producing children is the guy whose algorithms post PhD, when he does have a job, are going to find real terrorists at the other end of UAV sensors. I suppose he should quit school get a job and raise a family and we will just do without the creation of advanced engineer skills that assist in finding terrorists.
Or he could just do the other unnatural act of doing without until he is 33 years old. Guess what. You can bound your bibles and papal bulls all you want and it is not going to change a thing. Meantime, as you said, the real world interevened and your views are chasing reasonable folks living in the real world over to liberals. However bad their world, they know they cannot live in or with your world.
“we have the ability to mitigate famine, but we should not do that because, unfortunately, the real world intervenes and our plans go awry.”
Famine and disaster relief plans according to the real world, not according to a lab ideal.
“We should not plan an education because unfortunately, the real world intervenes and we won’t finish.”
Again, educators assess effectiveness based on actual failure rates, not ideal rates.
“We should not save because unfortunately the real world interevenes and whipes out our financial accounts.”
Would you invest in a bank where every time you made a financial transaction, there was a 1 or 2 percent chance of wiping out your entire account?
“The dumbest is your two inches of latex.”
Well, that’s an exaggeration. Condoms aren’t that thick.
I live in DC, a town with 10 libs for every conservative. You know what? All of the libs that I know are responsible family people, working 60 hr work weeks [perhaps at jobs that should not be done, but we are where we are], raising families, speding weekends with their kids, taking more concern about getting them a good education that most folks on this forum show.
Yes there is an irresponsible and growingly large underclass who are eating us out of house and home literally. But most citizens are responsible and most folks will find your views repellant. You are preaching the wrong medicine to the wrong crowd and you want to punish those who can hear you rather than those who are the genuinely irresponsible.
In sum the notion that responsible people trivialize sex because they use contraceptives is so absurd you are not going to get a hearing from most people. And those who will give you a hearing will reach a judgment, namely that you are simply deluded or insane, repeatedly demanding an outcome no one wants, using methods that no one will submit to, for reasons that make no sense. No one will buy the snake oil you are selling.
We have a much greater evil, a budget that won't balance with all the social moral and political consequences, and most of the evils you write of are a direct result of that problem.
Firstly -- your case is the same as those arguing for abortion when the mother's life is at risk -- namely you give a good reason for doing something that is hard to argue against
however, I ask you, what is the % of those using contraception to stop having kids while having a conscientious marriage? And what is the % of those who use contraception to have free-for-all sex?
I have not seen these statistics, but I'm pretty sure the latter is much, much more than the former (on a divergent track, in Poland they do not allow abortions except if the mother is at risk, in case of a rape or in case the child is "irretrievably at risk" (vague) -- and in a nation of 38 million there are 500 abortions a year. In the US with about 10 times the population, in contrast there are 1 million abortions a year -- if you shrink that to Poland's size, that would mean 100K abortions if it was freely allowed. So, that means that 99.5% of abortions are really for "birth control")
I actually had a point with that example :) -- I meant to say that those who use contraception for the means you outline are, I'm sure (and I have no data on this, it's just my guess) far, far less than those who wish to use contraception to have a summer of 69 :)
To your specific example I would suggest Natural Family Planning -- a woman is fertile for a short period in a month, most women track their periods, it's not too difficult to abstain during those days. Of course one can cuddle and hug :), but restrain means that the love the partners share is thereby not restricted to just sex, but is a true love of which sex is but one component
As I said before, I and yes my fellow Catholics all believe that marriage is a sacramental union in which God is present. Hence we say that God has a right, a "say" in the marriage so to speak (hence also that divorce is morally wrong), hence using this artificial method to prevent God's act of creation and reducing the act of procreation (which is pleasurable!) to JUST pleasure is wrong.
one would by no means be "living in sin", but one would be hence be committing a sin
I don't think it is moralizing so much as talking about what we as a society consider moral and what we don't. I honestly do believe that morally accepting contraception has led to morally accepting all the other evils that we talk about
True. Contraception removes that need for self-control and abortion cements that removal
It reduces us men to being considered no better than animals. The man gets away scot-free, a life of utter irresponsibility, just sex with no consequences. The modern world is kinda good to an amoral guy...
“This is an absurd comparison.”
How so?
Say you have sex 100 times a year. That means even with ideal use you are looking at 1 or 2 pregnancies every year.
And that’s assuming you always use it correctly, and that stuff doesn’t break, leak, slip or fail in the process. That’s the risk you are taking that you feel is an acceptable risk.
In the real world, what happens is that stuff does intervene, and the person who has sex 100 times a year, will hit a pregnancy within 18 days (6 uses) on average. This is why there are so many abortions.
“What you luddites want is to return to a simpler world,”
I just want to stop killing babies. That’s all. I want a world where babies aren’t dumped in the trash, where abortuaries don’t exist.
“The engineering student working on his PhD and shacked up with his wife not producing children is the guy whose algorithms post PhD, when he does have a job, are going to find real terrorists at the other end of UAV sensors.”
Which is why no scientific innovation occurred before 1930?
“I suppose he should quit school get a job and raise a family and we will just do without the creation of advanced engineer skills that assist in finding terrorists.”
I don’t see why he can’t get married, get help from her family and his, take care of the kiddo, get through school, and then work, with his wife and now, beautiful 3 year old daughter in their flat.
It can be done. I have seen it done. I am here because that is the decision that my parents made.
“Or he could just do the other unnatural act of doing without until he is 33 years old.”
That is the option I have chosen. I’m not sure what’s unnatural about it, and I’m not really sure why doing what is natural is the right thing. As you said, we are not animals.
“You can bound your bibles and papal bulls all you want and it is not going to change a thing.”
The fact that we have bibles and papal bulls 2000 years later is evidence to the contrary. Yes, people can and do change. So did I. I was once on your side of the fence. I saw things exactly as you do.
But, I changed. I came to understand the cost to our society of condoms, and that I believed that the cost can no longer be mitigated. Read Steyn sometime.
“Meantime, as you said, the real world interevened and your views are chasing reasonable folks living in the real world over to liberals. However bad their world, they know they cannot live in or with your world.”
I was a liberal and I came over to the Church because I realized that they were right. Perhaps I am alone, but I know I’m not. The Church, irrespective of what the ‘conservatives’ who support birth control, will remain with her teachings of yesteryear.
First, let us be clear that we are talking about per annum failure rates and not per transaction failure rates. Moreover, before the invention of government backed insurance the possibility of a bank failure whiping out your assets was much higher than that, and if you think things are better nowdays, you have not been reading the news.
The cure to that problem is and always has been diversification, what is called portfolio insurance.
Second, are you equating a let us admit 5% chance per annum of having a child at an inconvenient time is the same as a financial whipeout. I am not. I am merely stating that it is incovenient, survivable at some sacrifice, which a whipe-out of one's life savings may not be.
Famine and disaster relief plans according to the real world, not according to a lab ideal.
What lab ideal are we talking about? "consistent and proper" is not a "lab ideal." It is a meaured achieved rate among those who used a method "consistently and properly." What we are actually talking about is personal irresponsibility. Not taking "consistent and proper" precautions when a lot is at stake and not caring about the consequences.
You see, I am agreed on one point - the presonal responsibility issue. It is a point that your side won't hang its hat on because you are so hung up on the idea that folks might be out enjoying sex.
And I disagree on a point, that those who are so out of control in the moment that they cannot use techniques "consistently and properly," can be relied upon to demonstrate the willpower to abstain all together, even in the heat of hte moment.
Again you are trying to punish those who are responsible for the acts of those who are irresponsible. I will here invoke Menken's law "If A injures B on behalf of X, then A is a scoundrel." Now usually A is a liberal but in this case A are the antedelluvians on this forum.
I will no longer berate you or argue with you, but rather pity you and feel sorry. You are not mentally competent.
That's kind of clueless.
When the government stops paying women to have babies on welfare, then they will stop having them and raising them in horrible home situations.
As long as the government dishes out money per baby, those women are not going to use contraceptives.
We used to live in a welfare town and I saw first hand how young teenage girls get themselves pregnant so that they can move out on welfare and get away from their own rotten home life situation. Only to perpetuate it for another generation because they are too immature to be good parents and they've had no decent example of what good parents should be.
You'd sort of think that having been raised in a miserable situation, they'd want better for their own children and try harder to not repeat their own mother's mistake (father is just a sperm donor and not in the picture) but it's not so.
So your argument fails miserably. Contraception does not prevent children from being raised in horrible home situations.
I never, ever said that family instability and communism are the fault of condoms.
I will repeat my comment above to you, and will not bother responding to someone who is angry, rude and lies about what I have said.
And you did state clearly that lack of money was the basic cause of ill-raised children; therefore the sane assumption from your several statesments in that regard, is that wealth causes stable families with well reared children.
I would debate with you if you had not been so rude and nasty to me.
So, since in my “real” life I avoid people who have cursed at me and been nasty, I do the same on FR when the situation warrants it.
I just don’t feel like subjecting myself to any more nastiness. So, I end my part of the debate here.
that is not correct kaila. Your premise reduces us to animals who can't control our urges. freely available contraception occured at the same time as the welfare state giving welfare to unwed mothers. And now we have the boom in the latter. There is a connection -- contraception removes the responsibility from a man and puts it on the woman
A man can now have sex with a woman and contraception is her problem. If the condom fails, then abortion. If that ain't happening, then the welfare state takes care of the kid
Freedom for guys! But a bum rap for women
Agreed. I do not advocate govt sticking it's dirty nose in. What is more critical is the MORAL aspect
Morally we've come to accept contraception, abotion, free divorce, "shacking up" and now gay marriage
that is moral decay
So in other words, rather then continue to pursue the debate you want to withdraw with a parting shot?
Heat -> Kitchen.
I looked that up. No. It's not. Now you can look it up.
And There are certain factors that figure into the likelihood of divorce. Failure of birth control wasn't one of them. You can look that up too.
And find this: The following statement about the divorce rates in America reveals all the details about distribution. According to enrichment journal on the divorce rates in America, the divorce rate in America for first marriage is 41%; the divorce rate in America for second marriage is 60%; the divorce rate in America for third marriage is 73%. According to discovery channel, couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce than childless couples. Sociologists believe that childlessness is also a common cause of divorce. The absence of children leads to loneliness and weariness and even in the United States; at least 66 per cent of all divorced couples are childless.
Have a wonderful day!!!
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