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.
I love my husband, and we both came to the decision not to have children.
Marriage can be a commitment between two people, without children.
It is my choice about the long term consequences ( which is very, very, minimal for a low percentage of people), it is also my body. I do not believe in the nanny state determining what is “good” for me.
“I love my husband, and we both came to the decision not to have children.”
Before or after you chose to get married?
“Marriage can be a commitment between two people, without children.”
So you support gay marriage then?
“It is my choice about the long term consequences”
Did I say it was otherwise? It is always your choice to do as you wish in this life. It does not mean that the choices that you make are beneficial to you.
Do you believe that it has been advantageous to you not to have the life of your sister with 17 children?
Would you not agree that identifying the root cause of a problem is the most effective way of eradicating the problem? I posit that birth control is not the root cause of the division of the family. Neither is Marxism. Much like guns are not the root cause of violent crimes. Destruction of the family to conquer a society predates 20th century thought. By a large margin.
Indulge me for a brief moment. I suggest the lack of self-control on the individual level, and subsequently on the corporate level, is either the root cause, or very close to it, of our current downward spiral as a nation.
Take your man and wife example. If one or the other lacks self-control, will they not begin to experience dissatisfaction in their marriage? Indulging the self becomes a primary focus rather than contributing to the marriage. Much like the gun in the hands of a self-indulgent person becomes a tool to satisfy a selfish and criminal urge, so too the pill becomes not just useful for regulation but for self-indulgence. And the condom becomes more than useful for effective family planning and enters the realm of satisfying self-indulgent self-gratifying urges in destructive extra-marital relationships.
Marxism takes advantage of this fact of human condition. If we, as Americans, would not succumb to self-indulgence, be it sexually, materially, gluttonously(?), financially, emotionally etc, Marxism would never survive, regardless of how many twinkies, condoms, pills, bottles of whiskey, fast cars or loose women were brought to bear.
Moral decay is a tool used by the left.
America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. - Joseph Stalin
"Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society." Antonio Gramsci - Marxist - teacher of Saul Alinsky
You're watching it in action.
Goodnight.
Birth control and contraception put the conception of a child in jeopardy — thus not God’s will that is done, but rather the cople’s will or the woman’s will.
Not God’s will — and they will surely answer for it some day.
That’s what Natural Family Planning is for. Birth control kills a baby.
That’s what Natural Family Planning is for. Birth control kills a baby.
Hub and I just watched “Grinding America Down”. Really excellent. I have a couple of things I don’t totally see eye to eye with but they are minor (nuke power is one). Excellent. I highly recommend it for everyone. Home schooling families should show it to their older kids who can understand it.
and yet, many do
http://www.prolifephysicians.org/abortifacient.htm
Suddenly all the dots connect, don’t they.
It is not birth control or any sort of contraception that puts the child in jeopardy. It is the decision - or even the question - that some humans are not human enough to have the right not to be killed.
If a couple abstains during the most fertile part of their cycle, they are exercising their will.
The Lord made us with a will, with the ability to plan, and the ability to ask and discern His will for us. It’s better not to judge your brothers and sisters in Christ over a non-salvation matter.
If there’s no right or wrong, why would we argue?
http://wingright.org/2011/07/27/why-ethics-lifeethics-org/
We came to the decision to have children before marriage. It is unfair to the other person if you have a different opinion regarding children after marriage.
Gay marriage hs nothing to do with this-in which I do not support.
Do you think that people should be celibate, and not get married if they do not want children?
When you talk about choices that I made, do you think that having children is a beneficial choice?
Who are you to say what is good for me?
Are you Obama in disguise? He always likes to say what is good for us, and we should eat our peas.
I never was into raising children, the childbirth process, the diaper stage, the adolescent stage. Never something I wanted to do.
I wanted to travel, go out when I wanted to, pursue athletic endeavors.
I did not want to sit at home raising children.
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.
I have seen this happen many times with my friends.
If I want to interact with children, I have plenty of nieces and nephews. They go home at night.
I never said that the person with 17 children was my sister, but her life sucked because she believed what the Pope told her to do.
We Catholics have reflected on what we called the contraceptive mentality and its effects on a society. Those effects are, we believed, profoundly pessimistic. The society that ceases to treasure the future is doomed to die. Gibbons condemned the spread of monasticism in the late Roman empire, because it did not treasure civilization. But the monks.paradoxically, became the great missionaries not only of Christianity but of Roman civilization. I don’t see that German has a mission, except to enjoy and draw out their lives as long as possible,so long as it is in comfort.
I meant “ We came to the decision NOT to have children....
Modern science is good only when bounded by morality. Modern science has come up with some pretty horrific destructive things, too.
The abortion movement, the gay rights movement, the embrace of sexual promiscuity by the culture would not be possible without contraceptive mentality paving the way.
Once the procreative and unitive aspects of sex are fully and delberatly separated ther is no reason to restrict sex to within the marriage of one man and one woman.
People grow when they live for more than just self.
Goodnight.
Ignorant Talibani, and just like them you cannot be bombed into the stone age because you are there already.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.