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.
You wrote:
“Yes. It was a lie. You made a statement that you claimed was a statistical fact.’
That is not a citation, liar. A citation would be a reference to book with stats in this case. Where did I do that. Again, here is the DEFINITION of citation: “2 a: an act of quoting; especially: the citing of a previously settled case at law”. Now, granted, again, this is not about law. Still, did I EVER refernce a publication of stats? NOPE. You’re so desperate that you’re outright lying.
“You said: Actually the failure rate is relatively high and the bad effects on marriage are common.”
Yep. And notice, I posted NO CITATION WHATSOEVER.
“That is statistical statement.”
It’s not a citation in any case, lib.
“You refused to back it up with a link.”
I posted no stat. I posted no citation. I posted no link. You’re the one lying, not me.
“That’s right. You made a statistical statement and refused to back it up.”
I made no statistical statement. A statistical statement would have to include a statistic of some sort. I made no such statement. I mentioned not a single stat. What percentage number did I mention? Please post the exact number your claiming I must have posted. Can you do that? No, you can’t. Again, you’re just outright making things.
“That’s correct. You made a statistical statement and refused to back it up with a link .”
I never made a statistical statement in this thread. Ever. Show me the stat you claim I posted. You will fail, of course, because I never made any such statement. How desperate you must be.
“I asked repeatedly. You refused.”
I gave you nothing. And you’ll continue to get nothing.
“And AndyJackson posted your refusals.”
He posted clear expressions of me giving you and him NOTHING. I made no statistical statement, gave no stats at all, ever. Make up another lie.
Post221 : Post statistics backing your assertion with a link.
Post 225 : You made the statement. It is up to you to back it up.
Post 237 :Cop out. And the mud slinging is typical too. I have better things to do than exchange barbs with a poster that refuses to prove their assertions.
:POst 319 It’s up to you to prove what you said is true and not other posters. Otherwise you’re just blowing smoke. I ain’t your Momma. YOU provide a link. YOU prove what you stated was true.
You made a statement and refused to post a link. You even claimed you had one but refused to post it. Post 232 I just looked up the figures and, of course, I was right. I just think libs like you need to start doing actual research rather than constantly depending on others to help you.
Then in Post 557 you lied with this; First, I refused to post stats, not a link.
You refused to post a link.
You are now lying. Walk away.
Goodnight.
I believe government action in reducing marriage to just a contract, to being cradle to grave welfare etc. has had a number of consequences.
I'm against divorce, but it's not govt's job to legislate "no divorce", as I recognise some cases where it unfortunately, despite my moral misgivings, seems like the right case
however, I would like to see us go back to a time when it was not morally acceptable to "divorce first, talk later"
For contraception and abortion -- for the first, let it be available, it's not govt's business to get involved in this (of course one could then argue the same for marijuana etc.), but more important to ME is that we morally accept it and then, being human society, use this to bed-hop
On abortion, I'm sorry, but I see that as just black and white -- it is baby killing. The only case where I stay silent is where the birth would harm the physical health of the mother. And I KNOW (going by the statistics on abortion in the US and Poland in comparison) that less than 0.5% of the abortions are due to this. On that matter unfortunately I am morally absolute and I find that I cannot in good conscience budge from that position.
What happens if a politician I would like to vote for is fantastic on the budget but is pro-abortion, and I mean pro-abortion rather than "I abstain from saying anything" or "ok, ok, I'll let the status quo be" --> that politician I would not vote for, I'm sorry
If the politican is a coward on the topic (abstains), I don't like it, but would vote for that person
If the politician is weakling on that matter (just goes along with the majority or does not do anything to change that legislation), if I have no better choice I would reluctantly vote for that person or abstain from voting (unless they were standing against an Obambot, then they get my vote!)
I've had this discussion with wagglebee before on a similar topic "vote for Romney or not" where I said I would only vote for Romney if it was him against Obama. Yet wagg and others pointed out to me that a vote for such a RINO would lead to a moral decay in the overall GOP and would be just a temporary victory -- in fact not really a victory at all.
You were asked for a link. You refused. You later stated that you weren't asked for a link. You were. Repeatedly. And everyone knows you're blowing smoke.
Hope your evening gets better.
Night.
I would rather have Romney than Obama.
To sit out an election , especially this one, is the height of stupidity.
Elections come every 4 years. you can vote the RINO out then. Obama can do a lot of damage to this country in 4 years.
I am leaning toward Perry.
The moral decay has not been only due to the welfare state but by society's acceptance of the destruction of our moral underpinnings. hence i point out that contraception is one step to this destruction
You wrote:
“Post221 : Post statistics backing your assertion with a link.”
And I happily gave you NOTHING.
“Post 225 : You made the statement. It is up to you to back it up.”
And I happily gave you NOTHING.
“Post 237 :Cop out. And the mud slinging is typical too. I have better things to do than exchange barbs with a poster that refuses to prove their assertions.”
And I STILL happily gave you NOTHING.
“:POst 319 It’s up to you to prove what you said is true and not other posters. Otherwise you’re just blowing smoke. I ain’t your Momma. YOU provide a link. YOU prove what you stated was true.”
And I STILL happily gave you NOTHING, and it bothers you so much that you can’t stop posting me about it. Get a life, lib.
“You made a statement and refused to post a link.”
I refused to post a stat. I also refused to post a link in support of a stat I never provided and made no statement about. And that’s the way it will stay.
“You even claimed you had one but refused to post it. Post 232 I just looked up the figures and, of course, I was right. I just think libs like you need to start doing actual research rather than constantly depending on others to help you.”
No, I never claimed to have a link. I claimed - correctly - that the info (figures, for instance) are freely available in the internet. You apparently were too lazy to search for yourself. I gave you NOTHING you asked for and will continue to do so.
“Then in Post 557 you lied with this; First, I refused to post stats, not a link.”
Nope. There was no lie there. I gave you NOTHING you asked for and you asked FIRST FOR STATS. How many did I give you? Right, NONE. Links? None. I gave you NOTHING you asked for and that will never, EVER, change in this thread.
“You refused to post a link.”
I posted no stat. I posted no link you asked for in support of the stat I never posted. I posted no statistical statement. I just let you stew.
“You are now lying. Walk away.”
No, I am not lying. If I were lying then you would be able to show me SOMETHING that I posted that you asked for. What did you get from me that you asked for? NOTHING.
“Goodnight.”
You get NOTHING yet again. Tomorrow? NOTHING again. The day after that? NOTHING. You’ll get NOTHING.
You wrote:
“Your whole post is called redirection and is a common trait when someone has been caught being less than truthful.”
You asked for something. You got NOTHING. There’s no lie there. If there was then you would be able to post a stat or link from me to you. Where is it, lib? Oh, that’s right. It doesn’t exist.
“Other posters get it you know.”
What they get is completely unimportant to me. All you’ll get is NOTHING.
“You were asked for a link. You refused. You later stated that you weren’t asked for a link. You were. Repeatedly. And everyone knows you’re blowing smoke.”
False. I was asked for a stat and a link in SUPPORT OF THE STAT. I gave you nothing on all counts and will continue to do so.
“Hope your evening gets better.”
Mine has been wonderful actually. Your’s however, not so much.
“Night.”
I doubt it. You said goodnight in the last post. You’re still up. And you’re still getting NOTHING. Make up another lie, lib. For you the night is still young.
Goodnight. And notice, I really will call it a night unlike you, lib. Thanks for all the laughs. And all I had to do to get them is give you NOTHING.
Me:Post statistics backing your assertion with a link.
You:Nope. Since I have already shown all of this in the past I need not lift a finger now.
miss marmelstein:Vlad has said - quite clearly - that he has posted his stats in past threads
You lied again. And your friend proved it.
You have nothing that I want. You may keep your deceit.
If you want a clue, you might want to pay some heed to the fact that you have made yourself rather a laughing stock around here.
Oh just give us all a break and go cry boo hoo to your Admin Monitor again.
Vlad I want to make sure that I understand you correctly. Are you saying you will give NOTHING. You hear NOTHING. You see NOTHING. You know NOTHING. Are we clear on this? NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING.
At least Sgt Schultz was trying to be a clown. You are a lying moralizing self-aggrandizing clown from birth (oh go ahead. It's ok. You can give that abuse button another push. You will feel better for it. Now that we all know where your hands have been I don't think Admin Moderator really wants to hear from you, though, but you will feel better.)
Surely you see that this leads us to the situation we are in now where there are women in their twenties who have children from different men just for the welfare? Where men no longer think of their responsibilities? Where marriage is just a piece of paper to be torn up when needed and redefined to be a contract between two men or two women or 3 men and 2 women or whatever?
Your case may be very purely in the bounds of marriage but we talk of the general moral acceptability and where this has led us as a society.
When you want to talk about loss of personal responsibility, or the tragedy of a society that has become dependent on and accepting of abortion, all decent people are of course with you.
The place where this thread ran into problems is the attempt to stick the guilty rap on a bunch of folks who are responsible, monogamous, good parents etc. because some folks here cannot get at the root causes of the problem. It also ran into problems when this condemnation became absolute, and absurd. A lot of hot air has been wasted on the "condoms cause communism" line or worse "communism causes condoms."
To use the language of the WODs, that other conservative hangup that this country must get past in order to survive, contraception is not a "starter drug" on the road to an addiction to abortions. One is quite capable of being used properly and effectively by those who are personally responsible and living within stable marriages, and the other ills are the fixes for those who lack any sense of personal responsibility.
This line is political suicide, and I also think it is moral suicide, an easy dodge, so that we don't have to face the really hard problems of how to ween ourselves off of abortion and welfare dependency (wall street, GM and crack whores).
Many of us have successfully raised children who are productive, conservative, and take care of themselves. And we managed to do it while sometimes using contraceptives.
As others have stated we are in the late stage collapse of an imperial empire. Our citizens live for bread and circuses, all provided and paid for by the reaches of our empire. Since WWII we have been printing money in ever increasing quantities and getting valuable goods and services from overseas in return. Now the world is on to us, and we are not going to get a free ride in return for pieces of paper. It is not going to be pretty. I am amazed "we" managed to pull it off for so long. But the crack whores are not doing anything that Greenspan and Bernanke and the liquidity whores of wall street have not been doing. It is an astonishing mess. It has been going on my entire adult life, and as good a ride as it has been, I detest it because I detest living in a world that makes no sense.
If you eliminate condoms tomorrow, the world will not make more sense. In fact, it will make a lot less sense. End the right to universal life-long welfare, end the NEA domination of education, end the EPA rules that are about to shut down the electric power industry, end paying for all of this with a cycle of debt creation of stupefying magnitude and with each of these the world will make a bit more sense, we as a country will become a bit more self-sufficient, and maybe just maybe the social breakdown will start to reverse itself.
But you have to identify the right causes, not the wrong causes, and not simplistic causes.
Had this debate been about that it would have been fine. But when the argument is Vlad and his friends claiming that my household is a communistic death dealing amoral abortofactant hell-hold - in some alternate drug induced universe of their imagination - we have a fight on our hands. There was nowhere that that kind of absolutist argument could end except ridicule.
It is a nihilistic argument that can go nowhere and can fix nothing. I would not care except that it is conservatives committing political Hari-Kari before the alter of the source of all of this moral decay. We need to fight a cause we have to win, not one you will surely lose, and one that simply does not really matter on the grand scheme.
“It was a Bishop.Not Satan”
Where there is sodomy, where there is abuse of children, there also is Satan. But for Satan’s attacks on the Church, such a man would never have become a priest.
“although maybe the priesthood is infested with people who are influenced by Satan.”
Check your numbers. The priesthood is and has been less “infested” than either the ranks of school teachers or protestant ministers. Of course, one is too many, but Satan is much smarter than we are, and he never sleeps.
“We certainly have seen the news reports about pedophile priests.”
And you believed them? They are known God-haters and proven liars, but on this subject you believed them?
“This Bishop even visited with my family at my house.”
Satan has no shame.
“He got rewarded for his actions by going to work at the Vatican. The Pope called him back.”
Perhaps to keep an eye on him.
When I see what has happened to the Episcopal Church, with their lesbian bishops and schisms, I think I understand a bit better the reluctance of the last few Popes to come to America and start cracking heads.
The lavender mafia—you know, Satan’s catamites—would have liked nothing better than to lead American Catholics into schism and declare the establishment of the American Catholic Church, which would have owed no allegiance to the Holy Father.
This placed the various Popes in a very difficult position. They had at the same time to defend the faith and to hold the allegiance of enough American Catholics that the American Bishops would be unable to create an official schism.
Reading Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the 1907 encyclical by Pope Saint Pius X, helps to bring a lot of this into focus. Also of interest, if one actually believes in God the Father Omnipotent and Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, is the story of the Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. The book, “Good Bye, Good Men,” should be read by anyone interested in this subject.
Even the Soviet Union got their licks in, spending enormous sums of money, time, and manpower to infiltrate their agents into seminaries. This should not be surprising, since they considered the Church to be one of their greatest enemies.
It sounds as though you blame the Catholic Church for transgressions it abhors, perpetrated by men in violation of Church doctrine, and inspired by Satan. That doesn’t seem equitable.
“Well, let me quote the article. It states:”
See? There is absolutely no point in trying to use reason or persuasion. It is futile.
This is a 1968 article from Time Magazine. That alone should have clued you in that skullduggery was afoot—if you are a conservative, and therefore more interested in finding the truth than winning an argument or supporting a prejudice.
This article cited, by my count, seven (7) sources supporting the encyclical and thirty-nine (39) sources trashing the encyclical. Needless to say, the seven supporting sources received short shrift, while the thirty-nine opposing sources were treated with respect and given a lot more ink.
Two long paragraphs were begun in the “they said this” and “he said that” style, but in their last two sentences left that behind and finished with two declarative sentences attributed to no one. This technique is used to insert into the half-consciousness of the unwary that the declarative sentences are not anyone’s opinion, but simply the objective truth of the matter.
These sentences were:
“A complete natural-law theory of intercourse should include its total significance for man within marriage. To most modern couples, it is more important as an expression of love than as a method of procreating children.”
and
“On a question of marital morality like birth control, the conscience of the church should be formed by those who face the question in their daily lives—the married laymen. In any case, no real authority can be exercised without effective dialogue involving all the people of the church.”
This was not objective reporting, nor even biased reporting. It was pure propaganda, shameless enough to bring a blush to the cheeks of the editors of Pravda. It serves to demonstrate that you can indeed fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time. It is illustrative of how the Church got where it is today.
If you are not intellectually honest enough—or intelligent enough—to see that for yourself, you really have no business wasting bandwidth and the time of the sincere.
“No, I recognize hypocrisy when I see it.”
No, actually, you don’t. Not at all. I don’t think you even understand the concept.
Hypocrisy is holding others to a standard one flouts (present tense) one’s self. One must *be*practicing*at*the time* whatever it is for which one is criticizing others.
If a man says, “Yes, I used to exploit women, but I have come to see the evil in that and repent of my actions. With the help of God’s grace I will never do that again,” then he is *not* a hypocrite to say, “Exploiting women is bad, and men shouldn’t do that.”
Having once done a bad thing, or having practiced it for a period of time, does not deprive one forever of recognizing that it was a bad thing to do, nor does it deprive one of standing to say, “I did a bad thing. If you do it, you will be doing a bad thing too.”
You wrote:
“You lied again. And your friend proved it.”
1) Miss Marmelstein is not my friend. I don’t know her. She’s not my enemy either by the way. I don’t know her.
2) I didn’t lie, liar. I posted Nothing you wanted in this thread. What I have posted in other threads is imaterial to that point, liar.
3) Clearly you’re desperate, liar.
“You have nothing that I want. You may keep your deceit.”
1) No deceit, you liar. Keep making up lies.
You wrote:
“If you want a clue, you might want to pay some heed to the fact that you have made yourself rather a laughing stock around here.”
Not according to the emails I am getting, and I wouldn’t care even if that was the case. Are you so puny of character that you care what other people think of you on the internet? Figures.
You wrote:
“Oh just give us all a break and go cry boo hoo to your Admin Monitor again.”
Oh just give all the babies a break and stop supporting contraception which leads to abortion.
You wrote:
“Vlad I want to make sure that I understand you correctly. Are you saying you will give NOTHING.”
In the regard at issue, yes.
“You hear NOTHING.”
False.
“You see NOTHING.”
False.
“You know NOTHING.”
False.
“Are we clear on this? NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING.”
No, you’re not clear.
“At least Sgt Schultz was trying to be a clown.”
No, you don’t even know about TV, huh?
“You are a lying moralizing self-aggrandizing clown from birth (oh go ahead.”
Nope. I am neither lying, nor moralizing, nor self-aggrandizing, nor a clown. It’s clear you don’t know what at leats two of those words mean.
“It’s ok. You can give that abuse button another push. You will feel better for it. Now that we all know where your hands have been I don’t think Admin Moderator really wants to hear from you, though, but you will feel better.)”
I used the abuse button twice I think. Maybe three times. I was not the only one. At least one other person did so according to the emails I received. Since you’re so worried about what people think about you, think about that.
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