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 two guys have been riding roughshod over some people who you disagree with. What pisses you guys off is that I believe in some forms of birth control but also support some ideas put forth by Vlad and certainly support and encourage his right to argue against birth control.
You two have indulged in insulting name-calling since practically the first posts. I’ve been called a Taliban co-religionist! What a stupid and ridiculous thing to say to a fellow freeper. You’ve insulted some of us long enough and I hope the mods take you out or close down this thread.
Andy was calling me names in the first part of the thread. He totally misunderstood what I was saying. We now see that we agree on a great many things.
As to vlad, he called me a "lib" because I asked him for a link. He has continued to do so. When I posted that I had apparently misunderstood his statement, he then rubbed my face in it. He is NOT a gracious poster.
I do not intend to spend today on this thread as that is an exercise in futility.
It never was, the "Feminist Mystique" is the true misogynists manifesto.
The new sexual revolution: Today's women are rejecting promiscuity for monogamy and motherhood
Famously, Jong (in the guise of her heroine, Isadora Wing) invented the idea of ‘the zipless f***’. This meant instant, irresponsible, no-guilt sex, when ‘zippers fell away like rose petals’ and ‘you never get to know the man very well’.
This trash has destroyed morality. But younger women are rejecting it.
Have you told the unwanted child yet?
I remember that thread. It was great.
Well Chicken Noodle vs Beef Vegetable can be quite divisive ya know ;-)
Apparently so is sea salt as a substitute. In soup. ;-)
Here it is.
This is a good starting point, a post to the troll by AJ himself.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1995720/posts?page=1252#1252
Mojave was the culprit and is still banned.
The School Crotch Inspector - Fighting the Advil menace, one strip search at a time
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1995720/posts
BTW, the issue was settled. (Source of article was the BBC. Go figure)
Strip-search of US girl illegal (SCOTUS 8-1 decision)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2279319/posts
This is something I fail to understand. If mechanical methods of contraception are wrong because they prevent conception, what makes timing a better option? It's still preventing conception.
good post wagglebee.
Clearly Kaila did not think things through before she jumped in here.
It’s understandable - she appears to be reacting out of hatred for everything catholic as well as a great sense of superiority.
Count the number of times she has used the phrase “barefoot and pregnant”
The same person who declared she would have made a great mother also wrote this sentence...
“I certainly did not want to invest years into a child, only to find out that I did not like my child as a person”
Kaila appears to think that mothers must sit home all day every day. Barefoot. We must not travel or pursue athletic endeavors. Not like her - she’s free.
Why did Kaila jump in here?
Oh yeah!!! She’s worried the MSM will read this and write about it.
Yes - that’s right. Pro-life faithful catholics must refrain from coming onto a pro-life conservative website and commenting on articles pertaining to their faith. They should refrain from supporting their leader and their church - because Kaila has declared it so, and she has dazzled us with her superiority.She has warned she will “fight” us whenever she see it, because we are just like the taliban - who murder their own daughters and sell women like cattle.
Kaila HAS been extremely consistent in one thing - expressing contempt and disdain for catholicism.
Dear Kaila - you are not the first arrogant anti-catholic bigot to show up on threads like this - you won’t be the last.
We already know the MSM doesn’t like us.
Good luck with this quest of yours - you’re going to need it.
The utilitarianism that underlies the birth control movement ignores/denies human nature. If there is any Christian dogma that is empirically verified, it is the teaching on original sin. I am reminded of the little kid character that Red Skelton used to play. What were the lines that the kid used do say? “ “If I dood it, I get a whipping. I’ll dood it!!!” The calculus of pain/pleasure do not work. Because we get pleasure from pain. If we do get away with it, we keep on doing it until we get caught.
Wow!
Birth control does lead to viewing abortion as “plan b”.
Not for all, but often enough. The issue is that many are using it, and have for years. When you are that close to something, it is hard to think about it.
Exactly. Kaila, I am not attacking you or your choices as:
1. both of us are just screen names, I don't know you, the real person behind the screen name, so how can I comment on your decisions?
2. Whatever one says on an internet forum can be misconstrued, that's the unfortunate nature of the medium
Basically it is the impact of the decision to contracept as plan A, abort as plan B and live off welfare as plan X etc
It was rather illuminating.
I already answered that question.
However, we tend to hang it over them when one is acting up. They are teenagers now.
I was the surprise kid in my family.
My mom cried when the doctor told her that I was going to be a boy. Then when I was actually a girl, she was very happy because she always wanted a girl.
I don’t think anyone should ever want multiples.
I had a friend who told me that she was on fertility drugs. She told me the chances of having twins was slim (25%). I told her the chances of me having twins was slim (less than 2%). I told her to be prepared, and she just laughed it off. Of course, she had twins.
Multiple births are dangerous. Too many things can go wrong for the babies and the mom. I was on bedrest for 10 weeks with the twins. Then they both got sick and almost died when they were 6 weeks old. One of them has a brain injury.
It’s not the life I would choose for my kids, but we’ve dealt with it. My daughter with the brain injury is inspiring!! She has handled her situation with much grace, courage, and hard work. She started high school at a top private school in our area. It’s a huge accomplishment because she was not talking at 5.
Her twin sister is amazing also, because she’s extremely gifted academically and musically. However, she is not as kind and humble as her twin. (Still a sweet girl, but just can be a little cocky.)
I’ve always been thankful for birth control. I don’t think we could have handled more children. First, twins are very expensive, but having one with special needs is extremely expensive. Insurance only covers a small portion of the therapies needed. Then there’s been tuturing for school. We put our kids in private school because the public school treated our special needs daughter terribly (plus other reasons).
There were times when I felt like my kids that didn’t have problems got very ignored. I spent so much time on doing thereapy homework and then school work with my one daughter.
I can’t say that I don’t understand the fear of childbirth, all of ours were difficult, one in particular scared us nearly to death, he was born dead as a door nail but was revived and spend weeks in nicu. He’s fine now. I took exception at your post because it seemed to express a frightening train of thought that sees children as burdens rather than blessings.
“I am not the fool here.”
That seems a little defensive.
“In this case you cited an article demanding that I read it.”
I demanded nothing of anyone.
“if it does one thing, it surely connotes the divisiveness of this issue among practicing Catholics, which is point enough.”
It surely does not.
It is a hit piece. Time gathered together quotations from the usual suspects—and if you knew anything of the subject, you’d know those names—combined this with their own bare assertions of what “most Catholics” or “millions of Catholics” were thinking, and used that threadbare “support” to make it seem that opposition to the encyclical was not only widespread, but was the only reasonable position.
And you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. That would be bad enough if it were still 1968, but in this year of Our Lord 2011 it is well-nigh incomprehensible. It is dismaying. It is astounding. It is sinister and ominous, that 44 years after these events a Time propaganda piece can still deceive.
“Then you accuse me for pointing out that that is what your article said and berate the article for being propaganda.”
Accused? Berated? Nonsense. I just pointed out that you didn’t get it.
“Next time you want to rely on a Papal Bull cite and quote principle points from the Bull and not some propaganda Time article that barely mentions the arguments of the Bull.”
My remarks were sufficient to allow a person of nimble intellect to open a window on the truth of the matter. You refused to do so.
By the way, none of this was for your benefit. I was merely demonstrating to third parties the truth of my earlier assertion that trying to reason with some people is futile.
Done now.
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