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.
“First, let us be clear that we are talking about per annum failure rates and not per transaction failure rates.”
You might be, I’m talking about per transaction. Yes or no.
You cannot incur risk wrt pregnancy without having sex, so your objection has no merit.
“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.”
Yes, that’s what I’m equating it to.
“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.”
So let’s be clear here. For a convenience that is survivible, warrants the death of a child through abortion?
“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.”
Which is one of the points that people have been trying to drive through to you. Personal irresponsibility in other areas of life applies also to condoms.
“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.”
I’m happy with enjoying sex. It’s like arguing that those who are against drunk driving are teetotallers. We believe that sex as well as drinking should be enjoyed responsibly. Where we disagree is what constitutes responsible use of sex. You believe that condom use is sufficient, and I’m arguing that it’s not because so many resort to abortion after condom failure.
“Again you are trying to punish those who are responsible for the acts of those who are irresponsible.”
Isn’t this what abortion does? The unborn dies so that the mother and father can evade responsibility for their action.
The logical content and misconstruals possible in this statement are very interesting and instructive.
First you are making a claim for "this" side of the table, that we on this side do not claim, namely that contraception has somehow ended all resort to the act of abortion. Abortion has a long history as does contraception, both going back to ancient times, and so I would not want to argue which predated which.
The problem on "your" side of the table is the continual resort to this kind of absolute, all or nothing, because at the same time a lot of abortions have not happened because the pregnancy that might give rise to an abortion did not occur because contraception was properly and effectively employed.
Kaila is not "sitting and pretending" anything much. She has narrated the exerience of herself and her relative. We do ourselves no harm to take her experience at face value and argue the ethics from that point.
Let us be clear. Abortion is caused by those who engage in the act of abortion and by no other actor or agent. No one I know has engaged in such acts, and it is wrong of you to indict all for for the acts of the specifically identifiable several.
This all gets back to the point of personal responsibility, a point that your side, in its haste to deride condoms, will not make and stand upon. It is your winning argument, not this condoms cause communism malarky or even the line that condoms are a communist conspiracy.
Suppose one already determined to raise the child as a loved member of the family. People do that you know. Lots of families have unplanned children and do that.
Again it gets back to this personal responsibility thing, again, the winning argument and the one your side therefore won't stick to.
Please go back and re read my post that you responded to.
I think I made myself perfectly clear.
You would, as you stated, banned all use of all birth control. My premise, which you keep ignoring, is that the decision is to take the risk of having a child at an inconvenient time, and giving the child a loving home if it happens anyway.
It is you who draw the arrow from inconvenience to abortion, not me. From the standpoint of "convenience" all children are to some extent "inconvenient." They do offer other compensations that offset that. I cannot remember a single time that I thought changing a diaper was a joyous act.
“my Bishop sexually molested my male classmate”
So, you let Satan’s attacks on the Church drive you to spiritual suicide.
I hate it when he wins another soul.
Actually the statistics can say nothing about this whatsoever, because the statistics pertain to the world wherein we reside, the reality that pokes through, and we do not have the luxury of a counterfactual world where we can see what would happen in our modern world without birth control. Well, we sort of can - India - except fertility rates are collapsing as they move from 3rd world to modern.
Indeed, India and China demonstrate that the modern world is inconceivable without some method to control fertility. Folks today can produce 12 offspring just like they did 200 years ago, or last week in some squalid hole where we are fighting terrorism. But this was to offset the fact that most children never survived to adulthood. Now, with good nutrition, public health, and anti-biotics, life expectancy is approaching 90. A doubling of the population of any populous country in the world would outrun its food supply. No one visiting LA or DC or NYC could possibly suggest that what this world really needs is to increase population.
The question is what to do about it. Disease, war and starvation are another. Abortion is another. Or, we can resort to birth control and hope the others are kept at bay. It matters not a wit what I think of your abstention arguments. You have to sell it to those who are breading like rabbits, not me. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn.
“You would, as you stated, banned all use of all birth control.”
Where have I said so? My premise is that I believe that contraception to be sinful. That’s not the same as saying that I believe all forms ought to be banned.
“My premise, which you keep ignoring, is that the decision is to take the risk of having a child at an inconvenient time, and giving the child a loving home if it happens anyway.”
Plenty of homes wanting to adopt. Especially for an unplanned pregnancy.
“I cannot remember a single time that I thought changing a diaper was a joyous act.”
And I doubt I will change one in my life and I wish I could. Not everyone sees things as you do.
Abortion IS a form of contraception.
The problem on "your" side of the table is the continual resort to this kind of absolute, all or nothing, because at the same time a lot of abortions have not happened because the pregnancy that might give rise to an abortion did not occur because contraception was properly and effectively employed.
Yes, for the pro-life "side" (which I notice you exclude yourself from), it IS all or nothing. 53 MILLION babies have died and we want it to end.
Kaila is not "sitting and pretending" anything much. She has narrated the exerience of herself and her relative. We do ourselves no harm to take her experience at face value and argue the ethics from that point.
Kaila has a long history of opposing the pro-life movement. I don't give a damn what she thinks.
Let us be clear. Abortion is caused by those who engage in the act of abortion and by no other actor or agent.
So, your contention is that it hasn't been pushed on society at all?
This all gets back to the point of personal responsibility, a point that your side, in its haste to deride condoms, will not make and stand upon. It is your winning argument, not this condoms cause communism malarky or even the line that condoms are a communist conspiracy.
NOBODY on this thread has suggested banning condoms or the Pill. This thread is about the FACT that contraception has not prevented 4000 babies a day from being killed. THAT is the topic of this thread, a topic which you are unwilling to discuss. YOU have bought into the lie that condoms prevent abortion, it is brought to you by the same people who came up with the lie that welfare ended poverty.
This is a pro-life forum, if your answer to ending abortions is more condoms and birth control pills you are very much mistaken.
You are a liar. Now, go back to my exact words, quote me exactly, and we can debate the issue.
Just to get the debate moving, though it is obvious that lots of things lead to ill-raised children. I would point out that there is blindingly obvious correlation between juvenile deliquancy and inner city squalor. The kids in my neighborhood of working professionals get little enough personal attention from their parents who are busy enough just trying to earn the money to pay their mortgage. But as a consequence they do live in some level of stability, with some example of working and being law abiding, they will get first rate professional educations and they have not become gang-bangers. That they will be liberals with too much dependency on a bloated state is a problem, and one of my favorite issues, but it does not belong on a birth control thread.
I would point out that raising children requires resources, which, unless you live in a rural environment where you can put everyone to work helping out and thereby increasing the take from the farm means having enough money to provide food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical care and education. In any city in the US that is an astonishing amount of money, even excluding the taxpayer burden for the education, probably $6000-$12,000 per year per kid, and possibly a lot more than that if you are in NY, SF or Washington DC. One more kid than you can afford and you are sunk with little prospect of recovering.
When you slip below the break-even level, in a city, because of too many children, your only fall back is the welfare system, food stamps, public housing located in places with really poor schools.
So a more accurately stated thesis might be that forcing, through banning birth control, families to have more children than they can afford to raise will contribute to welfarism. Whether or not increasing dependence on welfare will lead to ill-raised children I will not debate, but leave you to form your own conclusions.
I never, ever said that family instability and communism are the fault of condoms.
Plenty of others have.
Your post 507 rats you out as a population control sicko. This is a pro-life forum. Your sick rants like this are better suited for DU. Obama has a czar position for you right along side Cass Sunstein
You’re a death troll. .
You continue to make that charge, but have failed to show evidence of it.
*ahem* Then you have never changed one after a night of listening to screaming because a baby was constipated. Boy have YOU missed out!!! I stopped short of running to show an exhausted Hubby.
And let me say that you are also the first person to come accross as having a sense of heartfelt Christian charity. I don't know whether you are Polish or merely quote Polish. It would be helpful to know because it might help to explain some of what is going on here.
I will try to continue the dialog later when I have some time.
Did someone suggest that?
The problem for our country is that a number sitting on the opposite side of the table from me just want to get their hands on the levers or power to legislate morality. It's a flaw in our national makeup going back to the founding of our republic. Sticking noses in other people's business, and moralizing about it, is national business. It's why we detest the walls and high fences with which Europeans surround their properties, urban and rural. We need to be able to see in. It is our right. We need to see if you are committing some act that demonstrates you are not among the Calvinistic chosen people. Don't ask me. I did not invent this nonsense. It is why so many on this forum have more trouble with the right of privacy than liberals do.
The usual meaning of the word contraception is to prevent conception, and abortion is what you do after conception has occurred. But you are now engaged is a semantic argument and a falascious generalization. Abortion is a form of contraception, contraception is therefore a form of abortion and since abortion is evil contraception is evil.
No sale.
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Another unsupported statement. How many is that now?
You keep saying that but I haven't seen anyone make such a statement.
You know what I want? I want the MSM to tell the truth about the "sexual revolution" and the damage that it's done. I want them to give truthful statistics instead of propaganda. I don't want teachers in public school telling kids that it's their RIGHT to have sex. And then help them get abortions when they are believed. I want advertisements to quit selling sex to our kids. And TV shows.
The liberals in government and the press need to leave our kids alone and STOP LYING.
First, I am opposed to abortion. Let us bring about its end as soon as we can. But contraception does not cause abortion. Irresponsible people do. And welfare breeds irresponsible people. And free spending liberals expand welfare. So free spending liberals cause abortion. So, can we get back to that budget thingee.
Now, all of that is just a little bit glib, and the whole situation is a lot more complex than that, which I admit, but you won't.
But one thing is certain is that contraception did not cause all of that. Lack of individual responsiblity caused all of that, and I just won't buy the argument that using contraception is a sign of individual irresponsibility. I really just won't buy it.
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