[NYer]

---

Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor of National Review Online and associate editor of National Review. This article originally appeared in the March 2001 issue of crisis Magazine.

[NYer]

A very powerful message and witness to the consequences of artificial birth control.

[End Times Sentinel]

This is a fairly one sided article.

What about all the good things that have come along with contraception?

• Increased fatherless households.
• Increased out of wedlock births.
• The rise in Venereal Diseases.
• The rise in Abortions.
• Increased divorces.
• Infertility.
• Women choosing to peruse a career and neglecting their children.
• And folks suffering from damaged relationships.

I can hardly wait to see the fruit that the next liberal broad social experiment will bear!

[GOP Poet]

This article is spot on. If birth control did not exist the structure of our entire society would not have been usurped. My generation was one of the first to be impacted by this and man I could see (as did my family) a huge change in who I was and who I grew up to be versus my older sisters and brothers. Birth control absolutely altered the trajectory of my life and in the end left me without children. It is very sad indeed.

Nearly all of these social and even medical consequences of the contraceptive revolution were foreseen with astonishing accuracy by Pope Paul VI in his anti–birth control encylical Humanae Vitae, issued in 1968, as the revolution was just beginning. Paul wrote that widespread use of contraceptives would lead to "conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality," and that many a man would lose respect for the woman in his life and "no longer [care] for her physical and psychological equilibrium" to the point that he would consider her "as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion." Paul also prophesied that mass acceptance of birth control would place a "dangerous weapon...in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies." And it would mislead people into thinking that they had total control over their bodies. Hardly any of these predictions -- from promiscuity, to avoidance of male reproductive responsibilities, to the destruction of human embryos as women who delay childbearing too long try desperately to get pregnant -- have failed to come true.

People knew he was right then and know this is right now. What can you do? Our world will never go back. It is way beyond the sins of repressing procreation. Way beyond. When they started killing babies legitimately our world forever usurped the commands of the Lord and lives blinded in evil. Birth control was just the first step. Abortion second.

[FFranco]

When abortion is made illegal, we need to make artificial means of birth control illegal too. It is time America returned to its traditional Judeo-Christian values.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.

[little jeremiah]

Bookmark.

[netmilsmom]

Part of the problem is the “given” that teens will have sex.

If you teach them correctly, there is a good chance they won’t. Before finding our “One and Only”, my mother didn’t, I didn’t, many Christians don’t (including my own 20 year old Goddaughter) and with many prayers, my daughters won’t.

Start teaching these girls that respecting themselves is more important and saving sex for a husband is a fine gift. Teresa Tomeo has a new set of books for Catholic Girls. I got them for mine for Christmas.

http://www.runwaytoreality.org/

[MahatmaGandu]

I so agree with this.

Curiously, I'm noting with the younger (18-30) women whom I know that they're more interested in families than careers. I think that's a good thing, really.

[Antoninus]

If that reconstitution does occur, it will be partly because individual couples across the country will decide to opt out of the contraceptive revolution and to recover that linked triad of sex, marriage, and childbearing that is the essence of the sacred nature of human reproductive and family life....That would entail a radical shift in the attitudes toward sex, fertility, and childbearing, a counterrevolution.

Bring it on! The contraceptive mentality has been utterly rejected in our home. Life is beautiful. When you reject life, you are rejecting beauty.

[Pyro7480]

[marshmallow]

Nearly all of these social and even medical consequences of the contraceptive revolution were foreseen with astonishing accuracy by Pope Paul VI in his anti–birth control encylical Humanae Vitae, issued in 1968, as the revolution was just beginning. Paul wrote that widespread use of contraceptives would lead to "conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality," and that many a man would lose respect for the woman in his life and "no longer [care] for her physical and psychological equilibrium" to the point that he would consider her "as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion." Paul also prophesied that mass acceptance of birth control would place a "dangerous weapon...in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies." And it would mislead people into thinking that they had total control over their bodies. Hardly any of these predictions -- from promiscuity, to avoidance of male reproductive responsibilities, to the destruction of human embryos as women who delay childbearing too long try desperately to get pregnant -- have failed to come true.

Correct.

Allow me to add one other thing.

Contraception was put forward as a means to reduce abortions by those who promoted it. Fewer "unwanted babies", the argument went, would result in fewer abortions.

No, said Paul VI. That is incorrect. Artificial contraception will result in the spread of fornication, immorality and adultery and cause an increased demand for abortion. Counter intuitive for the contraceptive crowd.

So who was correct?

Well, five years after Humanae Vitae was published and 3 years after the swinging contraceptive sixties ended, Roe v Wade became law and we have had it ever since.

You decide.

[diamond6]

bttt

[the OlLine Rebel]

Did she really meant “worst”? Once again, bad English in a publication that’s supposed to edit and know better.

[the OlLine Rebel]

As a woman nearing 40, thank God my mother was a Child of the ‘50s when people were still “repressed”. I didn’t have a mother telling me sex was free and “easy”. I dodged the Hippie bullet by a decade I guess.

[the OlLine Rebel]

“No one should be able to tell a woman what to do with her body.”

Right. So don’t listen to all those men who tell you it would mean so much, and you’ll do it if you love me, and you’re uncool if you don’t.

[the OlLine Rebel]

“Amanda, born in 1970”

Oops, this is old. If she is 30, this is 9 years old already. I’m ‘69 and I’ll be 40.

Once again, I was not a product of the Hippie generation, although some might think that with the ‘69 date.

[the OlLine Rebel]

“to the point that one out of every two marriages ended in dissolution.”

While I have no doubt there are too many divorces, we need to stop throwing around this ancient canard. It’s false.

No-one ever looked at marriages over 30 years, etc, to see if they fail. They simply counted up marriages vs. divorces 1 year, and found there were half as many divorces as marriages.

That is NOT the same as “every other marriage ends in divorce”.

[Grunthor]

“How Birth Control Changed America for the Worst”

Without birth control, how many more abortions would have been performed? Too many to be counted imo.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

bump

[Dajjal]

Pro-Life bump