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.
My wife has been on and off birth control pills for almost 20 years and we just welcomed our third child this past week. No problems with any of our planned pregnancies.
modern science is a good thing. I live in Boston and there’s no shortage of single moms in the housing projects. I wish they could get free birth control pills.
marxists; baby-killers;death trolls;suckers of "self-centered, sex-crazed men, lesbians, communists, like Betty Freidan, and just plain stupid jackasses;" victims of abuse; dupes of socialists "to get women out of the homes and make them into workers so they can then dilute the wages they give to men;" the moral equivalent of making men "tamed and neutered and put on a leash, domesticated, emasculated;" abortionists; feminazis;embrasors of a death culture;moral relativists;uninformed moral relativists; possessors of bad attitudes and poor intelligence;apologists for or dupes of ACORN and the SDS;dupes of the 45 step plan for the communist takeover of America;promoters of promiscuity.
And this is what you are calling your fellow conservatives. Wow. Just wow.
People who embrace a death culture are not conservatives, regardless of what they may call themselves.
I have no problem with the list you posted. So what’s your point?
Congrats on your new baby!!
Are you aware of the side effects of the Pill? Are you ok with your wife taking on those risks?
You have interfered with God's plan requiring you to have 12 children to make up for all of your fellow freepers who would have died long ago from some sort of disease that is only curable due to the satanic science that gave us birth control (Flemming, Salk, Reed, and that ilk were men possessed). Indeed, we should breed like rats until population is limited by disease, starvation and cannabalism. What are you doing interfering in the plan God had for this world?
And these folks dare to call us moral relativists.
Again I ask you, who has embraced a death culture?
By your acceptance of the use of rampant birth control, you have. I explained that to you in a post above. BCPs cause not only cancer & blood clots in women, but act as abortifacients.
I’d also say that condoms give a false sense of security, allowing people to expose themselves to disease & an ongoing risk of pregnancy.
The increase in birth control correlates with an increase in abortion.
So to answer your question: you.
Ignorant Talibani.
No, I didn't go through the links because they appeared to be links to postings, not direct to articles. If you can produce a link to a fair sized, solid, prospective study in a peer reviewed journal or authoritative scientific website, I'll be happy to look at it.
Are you aware that feminism/the abortion industry are extremely influential?
Scientific evidence is scientific evidence. Are you claiming all the scientific journals that have published studies are involved in a conspiracy?
This large scale retrospective Danish study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is pretty convincing, but there have been similar results with smaller prospective studies, such as this one.
It’s real simple.
Abortion in murder
Birth Control Pills directly cause abortions
Those who preform or have abortions are murderers.
Y’all break my heart with this meanness. It appears that we all agree that abortion is wrong.
Some of you are long time FRiends. Those of you who know me know that ethics is my avocation and that pro-life medical ethics are my passion.
As I’ve said before on these contraception threads and on the (un)Christian debate threads, what a shame to instigate this fight. I hate to see the immediate personal attacks and fail to understand why this happens over and over.
Yes, there is evidence that abortion is related to an increased risk of breast cancer. Delayed pregnancy and/or no pregnancy is also connected. Breast cancer was once referred to as the “nun’s disease.” (It has nothing to do with “pre-milk.”)
Yes, eugenicists and atheists have worked to devalue families and the helpless at either end of life, it is true.
However, contraception and/or childlessness whether due to infertility, abstinence or responsible contraception (including natural family planning) do not equal abortion or a lack of respect for human dignity.
My wife is a graduate of Johns Hopkins. She got a perfect score on her SAT test. She is WAY smarter than me.
But according to many enlightened folks that know what is best for us, she is dumb and or evil for taking the pill.
My 3 sons and myself respectfully disagree.
I disagree.
Natural Family Planning is really the only acceptable method of “birth control” that I can see. Oral contraceptives & IUDs are abortifacients. Unacceptable whether married or unmarried. Unacceptable.
wagglebee, I think annelizly was making a prolife statement, not a statement in favor of abortion.
You’re siding with that list, not me.
My attitude and intelligence is just fine.
People are afraid to vote for conservatives, because the opinions expressed here is way out to the very extreme.
I am willing to bet you that conservative icons such as - Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham all use birth control pills.
You wrote:
“Those of you who know me know that ethics is my avocation and that pro-life medical ethics are my passion.”
Your passion is lackluster if you support what is unethical and anti-life. Contraception is both.
The IUD is abortifacient.
Oral contraceptives are not abortifacients. The corpus luteum produces higher levels of hormones than the levels achieved from OCP’s.
Condoms, diaphragms and cervical caps, spermicides and sterilization are not abortifacients.
I have been married for 25 years. I am not going to say no to sex. I do not want to get pregnant, so I have decided that BCP is the correct choice for me.
There is no bad consequences to having sex if you are in a committed relationship, and use BCP.
Of course, zealots would like us to stay home and make babies.
You wrote:
“My attitude and intelligence is just fine.”
Nope.
“People are afraid to vote for conservatives, because the opinions expressed here is way out to the very extreme.”
The pro-life cause is never extreme. Only those who oppose it are extreme.
“I am willing to bet you that conservative icons such as - Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham all use birth control pills.”
They might. That doesn’t make the pro-life cause wrong. It just means some so-called conservatives aren’t entirely conservative.
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