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.

Now, for the first time in all of human history, the male half of the human race is free to use women as the sexual toys that they were intended to be without having to be concerned with stupid romantic entanglements or silly child support.

Hey, we men deserve some perks too, don't we?

Look, the freedom to make choices doesn't guarantee the choices made will be good ones, nor does it guarantee that people will even agree on what the definition of a "good choice" is. Some men will treat women as sex toys, and some women will accept that treatment (and some women will treat men as sex toys, plus all the other combinations and permutations). In other cases men and women will have much deeper and more meaningful romantic relationships because they don't feel trapped by unwanted babies or overwhelmed by the financial pressures of those children. It depends on the individuals involved, and what they want to do with their lives.

That's what a free society is all about.

"You laid out the party line verbatim. Are you a card carrying NOW member? No offense intended, honest, but they say we Catholics don't think for ourselves. You comment could be pulled right from a PP brochure or NOW literature."

I'm glad that you think for yourself and that you are happy with the choice you have made regarding natural birth control.

Never mind where dpwiener's statement came from. It's a valid point and it was expressed eloquently.

Not everyone is catholic, and given that fact, it is nice for those of us who are NOT catholic to have other options.

Look, the freedom to make choices doesn't guarantee the choices made will be good ones, nor does it guarantee that people will even agree on what the definition of a "good choice" is.

When all other things are equal, your analysis is a good one. All other things are not equal in sexual relationships. Women get pregnant. Men don't. Sometimes this puts the power advantage in the hands of a woman. In today's legal climate she can kill his preborn child and he can't do a thing about it. More often it gives the power to the man. In order to balance this, societies that care about their futures created the concept of family and created structures that protected women within the family and left them unprotected outside of the family.

However, with our fiddling with societal standards and mores, we have broken down that protection. Of course, as a society we are free to make that choice. But, as you pointed out, the freedom to make that choice doesn't guarantee it is a good one.

Dis-connecting the concept of reproduction from sexual activity has done more to harm women than to liberate them.

Shalom.

What I find most interesting about this is that it is EXACTLY the point of view that the pro-choice movement is fighting against. Nobody sane (notice how I cleverly exclude most of the people in charge of Planed Parenthood) wants abortions to happen. But the choice crowd is afraid that once abortions are outlawed contraception won't be far behind. That's when we start getting into major bedroom laws and other stuff that a free society shouldn't have. Regardless of what you think of the relative morality of supposedly commitmentless sex (and boy are you delusional if you think the only way there can be emotional commitment in sex is if there's the chance of pregnancy) what two (or more) consenting adults do in their own home is none of your business, and whether or not they wear condoms while doing whatever they're doing is even more none of your business. And until this subsection of the prolife movement goes away there can never be any kind of peace in this divisive issue.

Much as I hate to support him in many ways it does. Most of the historians that have studied the womens movement have shown a pretty strong corelation. The punchline being that women's empowerment in the way feminist movements define empowerment is not possible when the woman could become pregnant at any time and then lose time in the career. With contraception the woman can plan the absence from the "male game". Contraception, espcially convenient nonmessy contraception like the pill, is a major ingredient to being a feminist woman.

Dis-connecting the concept of reproduction from sexual activity has done more to harm women than to liberate them.

I understand your concerns, but I have to say I have a much more positive assessment of the long-term effects of contraception. I will admit that this is merely my viewpoint; it's too early to try to prove my case. As a society we are still sorting out the positive and negative impacts of contraception, which on the time-scale of human history has occurred in the blink of an eye. At the same time we are experiencing the continuous and accelerating impacts of still newer medical and technological developments involving sex and human reproduction.

My positive assessment is at least party fueled by my optimism about the evolutionary consequences of human freedom: Over time, bad choices tend to result in bad outcomes and therefore tend to weed themselves out, while good choices lead to good outcomes and become self-reinforcing.

Again, there are no guarantees in life. But liberty is worth the risk.

I do comprehend the message. You think you have the right to decide whether my wife and I have a child. You think that because my wife is on the pill our relationship lacks emotional commitment. And I think you need to wake up and join the modern world. We have medicines to control or at least alter every function of our body, I don't see you guys trying to outlaw antacid. Once again it's the classic example that some people are afraid others are having fun. The punch line is that if you'd get off your holy roll for 5 minutes and realized what your place in the world really is you realize that your position is silly. You and your spouse should decide what is right for you, if that means no contraception ever go ahead, don't bother me none. But it just bugs the crap out of you that my wife and I use contraception, who's really got the problem here? Who's peaking in other people's windows? Who's trying to make rules for everybody for no defensable reason?

But it just bugs the crap out of you that my wife and I use contraception, who's really got the problem here? Who's peaking in other people's windows? Who's trying to make rules for everybody for no defensable reason?

Personally, I don't care a wit what you or anybody does in your bedroom.

But when your contraceptives fail, as per SCOTUS, you (collectively, not you necessarily personally)demand abortion to clean up the failures.

That is when what you do in the bedroom does affect me, because the contraceptive mentality has necessitated legalization of abortion.

In other words, it affects me because a lifestyle choice has necessitated the underming of the US Constitution.

Abortion is not nor can it ever be Constitutional.

By making up this penumbra of a right to privacy out of thin air, SCOTUS undermined the Constitution.

Since the contraceptive mentality necessitated R v W, and R v W undermined my US Constitution, you better be damn sure I'm going to work to evangelize the culture, to turn back R v W.

Until this contraceptive mentality is replaced with the Christian mentality that held sway before it, abortion will never be defeated. I will not rest till abortion is defeated, for the blood of the innocents cries out to God for justice.

How many legions does the Pope have?

None.

The only power we have is the Truth. And I will not be silenced by your hysterical outcries. Contraception is mortal sin. Mortal sin permanently destroys one's relationship with God, when done with full knowledge and consent of the will, and therefore the punishment for mortal sin is eternal death.

Not as long as babies are killed in that place that should be a safe refuge, not as long as a blind culture blythely commits mortal sin with no herald to call them back, not as long as otherwise decent people make such foolish comments as yours, shall I remain silent.

First, I am not posting directly to anyone here. I haven't found a way yet to post a thought without replying to another. With that out of the way...

I don't see a problem with a married couple using birth control. We use it ourselves. I think the question here should be the form of birth control.

An IUD is nothing more than a device which causes spontaneous abortion after an egg is fertilized. In essence, what an IUD is is a built in abortion. It does nothing to prevent pregnancy. What it does is save the woman from the trip to the clinic. I've never figured out why it was wrong for a woman to go to a clinic for an abortion after the fact yet it's perfectly fine for a woman to have something inserted into her body which would also result in an abortion after the fact.

Also, pills and shots are mostly to prevent pregnancy, BUT should that fail, there is an abortificant in it to cause a miscarriage. What is the difference between that and the morning after pill??? It's a lower dose built in morning after pill. You take RU486 and you're suppose to loose your baby. You take birth control pills and hopefully they'll prevent pregnancy BUT if they don't you're suppose to loose your baby. Again, the only difference is in the woman who wants a morning after pill has to go to the clinic whereas the woman on the pill takes hers every morning.

Now if a married couple wants to use spermicides, condoms, diaphrams, female condoms, or any other form of birth control whose purpose is to prevent pregnancy but doesn't kill a baby if they fail, well, that's different.

My husband and I have five children and three miscarriages and use birth control to prevent pregnancy (all of our pregnancies were planned except one). We do not use birth control that would kill our child should we make one.

I find it difficult to swallow that the same people who are so opposed to open abortion have no problem with the IUD or the abortificant found in birth control pills.

I don't see how the contraceptive mentality leads to abortion. I think that's a huge leap that makes little if any sense. Of course one of the big reasons I think that is the women I know in my age group. I've known 5 that got pregnant, 3 were on the pill when it happened and kept the babies, the one that got an abortion didn't use any form of contraceptive (the 5th was no pill and kept baby). To me this boils down to thinking everybody thinks like you. Maybe how you approach it if you were to use contraceptives that would be such a far leap from your moral beliefs that abortion would be a given. For most folks it's not. A lot of the women I know that are on the pill use it more for regularity than to stop pregnancy (as well as it being nice to schedule pregnancies scheduling "that time of the month" has also proven very liberating to women); actually if you know what you're doing the pill can be a tool to help a woman get pregnant, because it forces ovulation to happen at a known time (roughly known anyway). Most of the arbotificient data on the pill is really old, the modern day of the pill uses MUCH less of the hormones than the older ones and the body is much more capable of routing around the pill.

BTW, even though I am basically pro-choice (I have to qualify that because the chearleaders of pro-choice are SO whacky that I can't support them, they take it WAY too far) I am in full agreement on RvW, hands down one of the worst decisions ever written by SCOTUS. The whole penumbra right concept is heinous, and worse doesn't make sense in relation to the issue (I'm not convinced that something involving two potential parents (I am with the crowd that says both should be involved in the descision) a doctor and at least one nurse is "private"; if these same people were discussing bank robery we'd call it "conspiracy"). I actually would like to see the decision overturned and let's start this over from scratch, even if my side loses in the end, anything is better than having penumbras in the constitution. But you'll never be able to touch contraception and you shouldn't.

I don't believe in gateway drugs (not even back when I was a doper) and I sure don't believe in gateway birthcontrol. And people like you and the author can rattle on all day if you wish but my position will continue to be that you're wrong. Your position is both nonsensicle and unprovable.

You can edit the To line to make a reply to All or to ping other people on to a thread, notice I added myself to the to line.

I'm not familiar with IUDs and frankly while we're discussing things in America there's no reason to mention them. Thanks to toxicshock syndrome in the first version of IUDs the AMA won't even consider model 2 so what's the point. As for the pill the aboritificant properties are grossly overblown from the old days. They never actually had anything in them that caused abortions, they had (emphasis on the past tense, almost none of the modern day ones have this and Dr.s will only prescribe the old style under very limited medical conditions) a hormone that caused the period. The modern ones don't, they have 21 days of stuff to prevent ovulation, then comes iron (and not all models have iron pills, there are 21 and 28 day versions). The infamous brown pills (the final 7 ni most 28 day prescriptions) are basically just placiboes with some iron suppliment thrown in, really all they do is keep the woman taking the pills every day (note I have no idea how the long term injections work, the only women I know that tried it got major rashes and had them removed).

The only real danger most birth control pills is if the pregnancy goes undetected for too long. The active pills are high in some vitamin (A I think, I'd have to look it up) that's very dangerous to fetuses in the 3rd and 4th months (OBs generally are thinking that most birth defects are caused by too much of this). But this is only really a problem if it goes undetected to the third month (which is pretty unlikely but can happen to women that have irregular ovulations) and the woman remains on the pill. BTW most of this is laid out in the warning packet that comes with the pill, it shouldn't be news to anybody.

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