THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION

Janet E. Smith is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, Texas. She has edited Why Humane Vitae Was Right: A Reader and authored Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later, and numerous articles on abortion, contraception, virtue, and Plato. This article was edited and reprinted with permission.

Many in the pro-life movement are reluctant to make a connection between contraception and abortion. They insist that these are two very different acts - that there is all the difference in the world between contraception, which prevents a life from coming to be, and abortion, which takes a life that has already begun.

With some contraceptives, there is not only a link with abortion, there is an identity. Some contraceptives are abortifacients; they work by causing early term abortions. The IUD seems to prevent a fertilized egg - a new little human being - from implanting in the uterine wall. The pill does not always stop ovulation, but sometimes prevents implantation of the growing embryo. And of course, the new RU 486 pill works altogether by aborting a new fetus, a new baby. Although some in the pro-life movement occasionally speak out against the contraceptives that are abortifacients, most generally steer clear of the issue of contraception.

This seems to me to be a mistake. I think that we will not make good progress in creating a society where all new life can be safe, where we truly display a respect for life, where abortion is a terrible memory rather than a terrible reality, until we see that there are many significant links between contraception and abortion, and that we bravely speak this truth. We need to realize that a society in which contraceptives are widely used is going to have a very difficult time keeping free of abortions since the lifestyles and attitudes that contraception fosters, create an alleged “need” for abortion.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the US Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade [U.S. decision to permit abortions] stated “in some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail”.

The Supreme Court decision has made completely unnecessary, any efforts to “expose” what is really behind the attachment of the modern age to abortion. As the Supreme Court candidly states, we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles. It is not because contraceptives are ineffective that a million and a half women a year seek abortions as back-ups to failed contraceptives. The “intimate relationships” facilitated by contraceptives are what make abortions “necessary”. “Intimate” here is a euphemism and a misleading one at that. Here the word “intimate” means “sexual”; it does not mean “loving and close”. Abortion is most often the result of sexual relationships in which there is no room for a baby, the natural consequence of sexual intercourse.

To support the argument that more responsible use of contraceptives would reduce the number of abortions, some note that most abortions are performed for “contraceptive purposes”. That is, few abortions are had because a woman has been a victim of rape or incest or because a pregnancy would endanger her life, or because she expects to have a handicapped or deformed newborn. Rather, most abortions are had because men and women who do not want a baby are having sexual intercourse and facing pregnancies they did not plan for and do not want. Because their contraceptive failed, or because they failed to use a contraceptive, they then resort to abortion as a back up. Many believe that if we could convince men and women to use contraceptives responsibly, we would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and thus the number of abortions. Thirty years ago this position might have had some plausibility, but not now. We have lived for about thirty years with a culture permeated with contraceptive use and abortion; no longer can we think that greater access to contraception will reduce the number of abortions. Rather, wherever contraception is more readily available, the number of unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions increase greatly.

The connection between contraception and abortion is primarily this: contraception facilitates the kind of relationships and even the kind of attitudes and moral characters that are likely to lead to abortion. The contraceptive mentality treats sexual relationship as a burden. The sexual revolution has no fondness - no room for - the connection between sexual intercourse and babies. The sexual revolution simply was not possibly until fairly reliable contraceptives were available.

Far from being a check to the sexual revolution, contraception is the fuel that facilitated the beginning of the sexual revolution and enables it to continue to rage. In the past, many men and women refrained from illicit sexual unions simply because they were not prepared for the responsibilities of parenthood. But once a fairly reliable contraceptive appeared on the scene, this barrier to sex outside the confines of marriage fell. The connection between sex and love also fell quickly; ever since contraception became widely used, there has been much talk of, acceptance of, and practice of casual sex and recreational sex. The deep meaning that is inherent in sexual intercourse has been lost sight of; the willingness to engage in sexual intercourse with another is no longer a result of a deep commitment to another. It no longer bespeaks a willingness to have a child with another and to have all the consequent entanglements with another that babies bring. Contraception helps reduce one’s sexual partner to just a sexual object since it renders sexual intercourse to be without any real commitments.

Much of this data suggests that there is something deep in our natures that finds the severing of sexual intercourse from love and commitment and babies to be unsatisfactory. As we have seen, women are careless in their use of contraceptives for a variety of reasons, but one reason for their careless use of contraceptives is precisely their desire to engage in meaningful sexual activity rather than in meaningless sexual activity. They want their sexual acts to be more meaningful than a handshake or a meal shared. They are profoundly uncomfortable with using contraceptives for what they do to their bodies and for what they do to their relationships. Often, they desire to have a more committed relationship with the male with whom they are involved; they get pregnant to test this love and commitment. But since the relationship has not been made permanent, since no vows have been taken, they are profoundly ambivalent about any pregnancy that might occur.

By the late sixties and early seventies, the view of the human person as an animal, whose passions should govern, became firmly entrenched in the attitudes of those who were promoting the sexual revolution. One of the greatest agents and promoters of the sexual revolution has been Planned Parenthood. In the sixties and seventies, many of the spokesmen and women for Planned Parenthood unashamedly advocated sex outside of marriage and even promoted promiscuity. Young people were told to abandon the repressive morals of their parents and to engage in free love. They were told that active sexual lives with a number of partners would be psychologically healthy, perfectly normal, and perfectly moral. Now, largely because of the spread of AIDS and the devastation of teenage pregnancy, even Planned Parenthood puts a value on abstinence. Yet they have no confidence that young people can and will abstain from sexual intercourse, so they advocate “safe” sex, “responsible” sex, whereby they mean sexual intercourse wherein a contraceptive is used. Sex educators assume that young people will be engaging in sexual activity outside of marriage.

Young people do not need sex education of the Planned Parenthood type; they need to learn that sexual intercourse can be engaged in responsibly and safely only within marriage. Rather than filling young people’s heads with false notions about freedom, and filling their wallets with condoms, we need to help them see the true meaning of human sexuality. We need to help them learn self-control and self-mastery so that they are not enslaved to their sexual passions. They need to learn that sexual intercourse belongs within marriage, and that with the commitment to marriage comes true freedom; the freedom to give of one’s self completely to another, the freedom to meet one’s responsibilities to one’s children.
There are two cornerstones on which education for sexual responsibility should be built - cornerstones that are both corroded by contraceptive sex. One cornerstone is that sexual intercourse is meant to be the expression of a deep love for another individual, a deep love that leads one to want to give of oneself totally to another. Most individuals hope one day to be in a faithful marriage, to be in a marital relationship with someone one loves deeply and by whom one is loved deeply. One of the major components of that deep love is a promise of faithfulness, that one will give oneself sexually only to one’s spouse.

The other cornerstone for a sex education program should be the refrain that ‘if you are not ready for babies, you are not ready for sexual intercourse, and you are not ready for babies until you are married’. Most people want to be good parents; they want to provide for their children and give them good upbringings. Contraception attempts to sever the connection between sexual intercourse and babies; it makes us feel responsible about our sexuality while enabling us to be irresponsible. Individuals born out of wedlock have a much harder start in life; have a much harder time gaining the discipline and strength they need to be responsible adults. Single mothers have very hard lives as they struggle to meet the needs of their children and their own emotional needs as well. Those who abort their babies are often left with devastating psychological scars. The price of out of wedlock pregnancy is high.

Indeed, even within marriage, contraception is destructive; it reduces the meaning of the sexual act; again it takes out the great commitment that is written into the sexual act, the commitment that is inherent in the openness to have children with one’s beloved.
Those who are unmarried do face a disaster, and abortion seems like a necessity since no permanent commitment has been made between the sexual partners. Those who are married have often planned a life that is not receptive to children and are tempted to abort to sustain the child-free life they have designed. I am not, of course, saying that all those who contracept are likely to abort; I am saying that many more of those who contracept do abort than those who practice natural family planning.

Contraception takes the baby-making element out of sexual intercourse. It makes pregnancy seem like an accident of sexual intercourse rather than the natural consequence that responsible individuals ought to be prepared for. Abortion, then, becomes thinkable as the solution to an unwanted pregnancy. Contraception enables those who are not prepared to care for babies to engage in sexual intercourse; when they become pregnant, they resent the unborn child for intruding itself upon their lives, and they turn to the solution of abortion. It should be no surprise that countries that are permeated by contraceptive sex, fight harder for access to abortion than they do to ensure that all babies can survive both in the womb and out. It is foolish for pro-lifers to think that they can avoid the issues of contraception and sexual irresponsibility and be successful in the fight against abortion. For, as the Supreme Court of the US has stated, abortion is “necessary” for those whose intimate relationships are based upon contraceptive sex.

For verification of the claims here made about Planned Parenthood, see George Grant, Grand Illusions: the Legacy of Planned Parenthood (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth and Hyatt Publishers, Inc., 1988), and Robert Marshall and Charles Donovan, Blessed are the Barren (San Francisco, CA; Ignatius Press, 1991).

Portions of this article are printed as portions of chapters in “Abortion and Moral Character”, in Catholicism and Abortion, ed. By Stephen J. Heaney to be published by the Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research Centre and “Abortion and Moral Character”, in Doing and Being: Introductory Reading in Moral Philosophy, ed by Jordan Graf Haber, to be published by Macmillan.

Permission given for reprinting portions from ‘The Connection between contraception and Abortion’, by Dr. Janet E. smith, published by Homiletic & Pastoral Review, April 1993, distributed by One More Soul.

"The Connection between Contraception and Abortion" by Janet E. Smith is available from One More Soul.

To say that something which might become a baby is a baby is disingenuous.

To say that something which is ALREADY a baby, is not, that is a lie, and a grave one. Birth, is nothing more than a "change of address." It was a baby before birth, it is a baby after birth.

Likewise, from the moment of conception, it is a viable human life. Implantation is just a change of address.

It is human life at birth, before birth, at implantation, and at conception.

To hold forth otherwise is a lie and a deception, and IMHO, sinister to the point of demonically inspired.

Thanks for your response. If you will permit me just a couple of observations:

One of the primary difference between the life and choice sides is when you think a fetus is a baby. To me until there's at least a 50% chance of survival outside the womb (ie premature birth) it's not a baby because any miscarriage would terminate the pregnancy without a child.

It doesn't really matter what I think about what word to use to describe or refer to certain human beings because the actual nature of a living, existent, human being-in-fact does not change based upon how we refer to that human being.

I guess that can be considered degrees of death. But we are a society that believes strongly in degrees of death (hence why we have 4 classifications of murder plus the civil court oriented "wrongful death").

In law there are degrees of culpability for causing the death of another human being, but there are not degrees of death as far as the victim is concerned.

So insofar as abortion (in the sense we are using the term here) is the deliberate killing of a live human being, the issue is not whether whether we use a latin word, fetus or English words such as "baby" or "child" to describe him. The issue is whether or not there exist some human beings who do not have human rights and some human beings who are "less equal" in terms of intrinsic human dignity than other human beings, and who can therefore be manipulated and killed with impunity by others more powerful than they.

The answer is no. Every human being has the same human nature that you and I do. Human beings do not derive their inherent worth from how other people value them or how other people evaluate their survival possibilities, or any other extrinsic consideration. People have intrinsic human dignity simply by the fact of their human nature. That is what is meant by The Declaration's "all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...". Anything less as an ideal is a frightful prospect for all of us.

Cordially,

It's been my experience that a woman can only be used by a man if she chooses to let herself.

It has been my experience that everyone is in complete control of his/her own destiny - except when he/she isn't. Let's be real, shall we. In an ideal world what you say would be true. But the world is far from ideal. People make mistakes. People get down. And, of course, experienced people use inexperienced people before the inexperienced people realize what is going on.

I'm not suggesting we ban the pill. All I'm saying is that it is wrong to dis-associate conception from sexual behavior. And I'm also saying that the primary beneficiaries of such a dis-association are the men. The entire sexual dynamic changes when it's possible that the woman could get pregnant. And the normative case is for a woman to be far more interested in sex as part of an intimate, permanent relationship and the man to be far more interested in sex as a fun game with no long-term implications. Societies are more stable when the former approach is encouraged and the latter is discouraged.

As for the advent of the Pill, there are those of us out there who may need and use this for medical purposes. There are certain imbalances and conditions that can be controlled with the pill. Not every single woman who is out there and taking the pill is a promiscuous heathen.

Not even every single woman who is using The Pill for birth control reasons alone is a promiscuous heathen. But then, not every person using The Pill is a saint, either. There's no question that hormonal regulation can be a good thing. But every good thing can be abused. We should have established a better understanding of sex and sexuality before developing The Pill. The Pope tried to warn us. But, as has been the case since the beginning of man, we never want to listen to G-d's advice when the alternative seems more fun.

Shalom.

the actual nature of a living, existent, human being-in-fact does not change based upon how we refer to that human being.

Absolutely true when refering to the base essence of how things work. But we don't make decisions down there, we make decisions based on how we see things. And there's a very tight tie in between what we call something and how we see it, and that governs what we think should be done with it. For the prolife person everything that can become a baby is a baby (to put it crudely and not very well). While I understand the position I don't agree with the position. Maybe it's because of the large number of miscarriages in my family history (wombs in my family are not safe places, the good news is those of us that make it out are very tough, never get sick and live a long time). To me that causes a very obvious distinction between fetus and baby. My mom was pregnant 8 time for one kid, from where I sit it's very obvious that the 7 fetuses that never made it weren't babies, I can tell because I have no siblings.

It probably seems wierd to you that I focus so much on miscariages but that really is the source of my definitions. If a fetus can be "not born" with no interference from man I simply can't define it as a living human being, it makes no sense to me. While I can follow your logic I cannot accept your initial assumption. I can only hope I have presented my position well enough for you to be able to do the same.

I simply can't define it as a living human being, it makes no sense to me

Have you never attended the funeral for a miscarried baby???

Friends here suffered two miscarriages, a year apart. Each time the child was at about 4 months in the pregnancy.

The mother and father carried the casket into the church, a brilliant shining perfect little casket, the size of a shoe box.

The father, a burly tough man, sobbed uncontrollably. I have never attended such sorrowful funerals as those of a miscarried baby.

You apparently have never held a miscarried baby. My wife and I mourned our baby lost to miscarriage at three months. I can assure you, we did not mourn "a lump of tissue" we did not mourn "something which might become a baby," we mourned the death of one of our children, a gift from God that we only possessed for several months, but a gift from God and a baby none-the-less.

You insult the suffering of these parents by insisting that "a baby is not a baby." And you reveal your blindness to the very simplest of truths, and your refusal to see, even while men and women of good will try earnestly to help you open the eyes of your heart.

My mom was pregnant 8 time for one kid, from where I sit it's very obvious that the 7 fetuses that never made it weren't babies, I can tell because I have no siblings.

Bless your mother's heart. I am sorry for the trauma she experienced. Your 7 siblings are no longer alive, but they once were. Perhaps she may have expressed her grief to you over them, and her joy over you. Ontologically and scientifically speaking though, the only thing that does make coherent sense is the truth that they were living human beings (what else could your mom have been pregnant with?) who unfortunately died before birth, while you terminated your mom's pregnancy by being born.

I had a son who died suddenly at age 2, and he never made it to manhood. Does that mean that at one time he was not a living human being? Not at all. But be that as it may, let me tell you that I'm glad you made it out alive and have survived to tell the tale, and that we are both here to discuss it:-)

Cordially,

In order for good choices to become the norm, the human will has to tend toward the good in a deterministic fashion. History has shown (IMO, of course) that this is not the case.

My outlook is far more positive than yours. Human knowledge and progress build upon themselves and are cumulative. Free societies and free markets that encourage individual choice and initiative and independent thought and entrepreneurship have a decisive competitive edge in improving living conditions and the happiness of the people involved in them. Sure there may be wars and other setbacks, but progress does occur.

In the case of the United States (and more broadly "western civilization"), the past century has seen exponential gains in technology and medicine and standards of living and individual opportunities that have far eclipsed anything in all of previous human history. Alternate political systems such as Communism and Fascism have proven themselves comparative failures. Alternate ideological systems (such as militant Islam) that strike out at us in their frustration are in the process of getting their asses kicked because of our overwhelming superiority.

Our civilization is far from perfect. In this country we could be so much freer, politically and economically, than we presently are. There are bad trends intertwined with the good. But I would not care to have been born in any earlier period of history or in any other country. And I am even more hopeful about the future and the wondrous possibilities it promises than I am about the present.

So yes, it is my opinion that good choices tend to result in good outcomes and become self-reinforcing. And that this is indeed the lesson of history.

Have you never attended the funeral for a miscarried baby???

No. Don't know anyone that ever had a funeral for a miscarriage. My family is very into internalization, and it's possible that their internalization is what causes me to think differently about fetuses than babies. Of course the majority of the miscarriages in my family were before I was born, I was mom's last pregnancy, while my aunts (who both have two kids) have a 50% success rate one went through her pregnancies on the other side of the country and the other had become estranged from the rest of the family during that time period (she's back, her kids are spoiled rotten, we really need to bring spanking back the resulting kids of the nonspanking America are whiney idiots).

And diamond clearly your son (a terrible thing and I appreciate your candor in bringing it up and the feelings that must have brought forth) was a human being, he was born. Born baby = human being, no problem there. That's actually one of my basic problems with the partial birth abortion, we're to the point there that we're quibling about a couple inches, to me those are all born babies, just because they have been completely extracted yet doesn't mean they aren't born, most of the way out is good enough for me. But not born = not baby = not human being. Could have been a human being, all fetuses have that potential, but it frequently doesn't happen. If you track all the way down to the fertilized egg, most of the time it doesn't happen.

Most of these kind of "when" (when is a puppy a dog, when is a boy a man) questions have no meaning which is why they can be fun to discuss. Unfortunately they don't have 1 answer. I know you guys think it does but that's not the case. I know folks involved in the prolife movement that do not consider a fertilized egg that has not implanted on the uteran wall a fetus/ baby. Those that decry the pill as an abortificant (notice I actually got this all the way back to where it started) do. People like me don't consider a fetus a baby. People at Planned Parenthood don't consider anything that might reduce their donations. I'm sure there are people that think every egg fertilized or not is a baby. Everybody thinks there right and can point to tons and tons of "evidence" to it. But in the end it's a matter of faith, you believe what you believe, you really don't need evidence for the belief, you really won't pay attention to contrarian evidence, most of your evidence is probably circular (you see stuff as proof of your faith because it looks that way from your faith, those without it don't see it that way and never can), and that's just how it is.

That's why the life/ choice battle is so viscious. Very few people ever have or ever will change their mind. Your view on this comes from core beliefs not surface beliefs, it comes from the part of you that doesn't change very often in most people, that actually never changes at all in many. And the outward expression of the opinion is a no brainer based on the core belief. If you have the core belief that potential humans aren't humans prochoice is the only possible position. If you have the core belief that potental humans ARE humans anything other than prolife is diabolical.

My outlook is far more positive than yours. Human knowledge and progress build upon themselves and are cumulative.

Your outlook could be more positive, or your historic eyesight could just be shorter.

I am not of the opinion that our civilization is any better (in the sense of 'goodness') than the Roman civilization. Yet the dark ages came between then and now when all that goodness was lost. It was lost because of the 'yitzar harah' or 'evil inclination' of man. We forget the reasons we want to do good and start to behave in selfish, self-destructive ways. There have been other great civilizations in history before the Roman, yet all have come to the same end. Over time we tend toward the bad without some external influence.

The Roman civilization took over 500 years to fall. Western civilization has been at it for close to that long now. And IMO we are headed in the same direction. Of course, it doesn't look like that from many of the material metrics. But Rome didn't look like it was about to fall either - right up until the "moment" it did.

You are right about the wonderful technology we have today, but we have no ethics to help us deal with it. Do you remember the promise of TV when it was brand new? (I remember when TV was brand new.) How about the promise of electric appliances and the freedom they would bring. What about the utopia of the French Revolution? The Russian Revolution? The Chinese Revolution? All have failed to live up to their potential, and the pace at which new ideas lead to destruction has only increased as our technology has increased. How long did it take for the Great Society to create a permanently poor underclass by destroying the family?

I could go on, but the examples are not important. The concept at the base is important. Choice is a result of human will. Human will is not a random variable. And the human will tends toward destruction.

There is an answer. Technology is not it.

Shalom.

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