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.
Although most abortions are performed for birth control, they are by no means contraceptive. Abortion involves ending the life of a developing human being by a number of surgical and medical techniques.
Using abortion as birth control means that abortion is being used as a back-up method to ineffective or improperly used contraception, or no contraception is being used at all.
I could not agree more. But none of this is the result of the employment of contraception in a responsible marriage, which is where I jumped into all of this.
Now, if you want to go back to free-spending liberals, and their willingness to use our money to fund the agenda of the NEA, and all of that go for it. No one watching what just happened in Wisconsin can have any use for teachers unions anyway.
You see how much argument can be ended by an effort to be clear and accurate and intellectually forthright especially on such an emotionally fraught issue.
Yes. It does. It gives a false sense of security. I posted statistics with links in post 466.
The Guttmacher report shows “54 percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method *usually condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant.” These figures are similar to those of a report in Spain showing abortions doubling despite increased family planning promotion.
Who's having abortions (marital status)?
64.4% of all abortions are performed on never-married women;Married women account for 18.4% of all abortions and divorced women obtain 9.4%.
They believe that they are "safe" because they use contraceptives. They aren't.
There is almost no aspect of child rearing that I have missed out on except the unalloyed joy have having twice as many as I could possibly provide for.
Statistics show that less than 20% of marrieds have abortions. It's the singles that are the problem. I remember going to a doctor as a young married and he asked if I was married. Otherwise I wasn't getting a contraceptive. That should have never changed. Young people have replaced bowling with sex.
Now now! You said you were never happy about a diaper. And I told you of my joyous occasion. There have been a few times that I wanted to celebrate!
So ignorance about contraception, and the unwillingness to live with the "consequences" causes abortion. We are back to that personal responsibility thing again, along with the vicious mis-information spread by the NEA.
While I have become awfully skeptical of the "statics show" arguments on this thread, this is one that I can accept, although I would be interested to know all the qualifications on the "less than 20%" number and what the real number is.
Nevertheless, we are beginning to get somewhere in attacking the real issues, wanton sex by young folks further encouraged by misinformation about the consequences of pregnancy, the effectiveness and proper use of contraception, and the easy resort to abortion as a "cleanup" measure.
Yes. Most young people believe that failure rates are something that happens to someone else. Many women buy the liberal line that they can have sex "like a man"...consequence free. The answer is "not really".
For years women have been told that they can live consequence free and it's not true. They also believe it is their right. They have never heard about personal responsibility. It is a foreign concept.
I went to look something up regarding this squabble, and stumbled on this Time Magazine article from 1968 discussing Humanae Vitae: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,902263,00.html
Perhaps the bias will be sufficient to sicken even birth control proponents.
That said, this encyclical makes clear that those of you who support birth control don’t even understand the issue.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Nevertheless, we are beginning to get somewhere in attacking the real issues, wanton sex by young folks further encouraged by misinformation about the consequences of pregnancy, the effectiveness and proper use of contraception, and the easy resort to abortion as a "cleanup" measure.
That's it in a nutshell.
But [anticipating an argument with some of the other followers of this thread] this is not the immorality of inanimate objects and chemicals. It is the immorality, immaturity and irresponsibility of human beings acting within their free will, adults, who know better, as well as children.
Let me just state that you might try a slighly more persuasive and diplomatic tack to encourage those fundamentally disposed to disagree on this point. Saying that they/we cannot even understand will not help open ears to listen.
Second, I would find a different way of making your point than this article which makes it abundantly clear that a strong majority of the priesthood and of practicing Catholics could not understand the point either and that it created great dissention in the Church itself.
Do they? I'm 61. My adult children do not remember a time when there wasn't abortion on demand and readily available contraception. One night stands and shacking up have always been on TV (they think). Cosmopolitan magazine has always told single women "How to please a man". They know nothing else. Their parents MAY have taught them differently but pop culture told them their parents were antiques and not "progressive". Movies books and music taught them they don't have to respect their parents. Or believe them.
And you berate me for intemperate language. My! My!
I will concede the point. They don't!
30, 40 years ago I didn’t see what was happening. My kids (all adults lol) are conservative. But so many have been fooled.
“this article which makes it abundantly clear that a strong majority of the priesthood and of practicing Catholics could not understand the point either”
Good grief. That’s what you took away from that article?
That’s why I don’t bother to try persuasion. The reason you don’t understand is not that you’re stupid, nor even that you’re bigoted. If that were the case, something might be done.
You don’t understand because you refuse to understand, and I have no patience with that.
That’s why I don’t bother to try persuasion. The reason you don’t understand is not that you’re stupid, nor even that you’re bigoted. If that were the case, something might be done.
You don’t understand because you refuse to understand, and I have no patience with that.
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I think you give him too much credit.
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