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The Pill Is Not Good for Women
National Review Online ^ | February 21, 2012 | Erika Bachiochi & Catherine R. Pakaluk

Posted on 02/23/2012 8:27:49 PM PST by neverdem

The recent Health and Human Services mandate and the ensuing debate appear to have pitted religious-liberty claims against women’s health. But because religious leaders (rightly) focused on the need for a religious exemption, it may appear to some observers that they are unable to articulate a reasoned and weighty response to the administration’s claim that contraceptives are essential to women’s health and well-being.

The Obama administration is wrong on this score as well, and the substantive case needs to be made: The contraceptive revolution has failed to be the unmitigated boon to women or to society that it was hyped up to be.

For the past 50 years, the Pill has demonstrably assisted women — especially college-educated, career-minded women — in the timing of pregnancies and the delay of marriage. But the Pill also ushered in an era of unprecedented (and, as things turned out, unwarranted) confidence that sex could be pursued without risk — most notably, outside of long-term committed relationships.

The Pill, together with abortion as backup, appeared to provide full insurance against pregnancy risks. But as economists well know, full insurance tends to induce greater risk-taking: As people perceive sex to be safer, they pursue more of it. This applies especially to people who would otherwise be most vulnerable to the risks of unwanted pregnancy: the young, the unmarried, and those unable to care for a child. While a tight causal argument is difficult to make, correlations alone do not augur in favor of the Pill: The rapidly increasing sexual activity of the Pill era correlates with a staggering increase in non-marital births — less than 5 percent of births in 1960 were to unmarried mothers, compared with roughly 40 percent today. A counterintuitive result, perhaps, but a fairly human one nonetheless.

And this points to an unresolved difficulty with the contraceptive revolution, which was supposed to serve women above all: Women on the whole disproportionately bear the burden of the new sexual regime. They are expected to dose themselves with a Group 1 carcinogen for approximately two-thirds of their fertile years. They sustain greater emotional costs from casual sex. They are at greater risk of contracting STDs and disproportionately suffer from their long-term consequences, such as cervical cancer and fertility loss.And even after 50 years with the Pill, as many as half of all pregnancies are still unintended. Women, not men, must make the heart-wrenching choice between abortion, reckoned a tragic outcome even by its supporters, and bearing a child with little to no paternal support. After all, since children were negotiated out of the bargain by the availability of contraception and abortion, men have secured a strong rationale to simply ignore or reject pregnancies that result from uncommitted sexual relations. Nobel-laureate economist George Akerlof predicted nearly two decades ago that this would lead directly to the feminization of poverty, as it ruefully has.

These traumas take their toll. A stunning paper by leading labor economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers documented recently that women’s self-reported happiness has declined both overall, and relative to that of men, since the early 1970s. Where women used to report higher happiness than men, they now report less. Stevenson and Wolfers ask, “Did men garner a disproportionate share of the benefits of the women’s movement?” Good question indeed. One may well wonder if the bargain advocated by the feminist elites has made much sense in the end: Were gains for elite women purchased with the currency of a new sexual ethic that has damaged women more generally?

Contrary to a popular misconception, the alternative to the contraceptive revolution is not to roll back the clock on women’s advancement, and certainly not to promote a physically and emotionally taxing outcome in which women have as many children as biologically possible. Rather, the alternative to contraception is to respect biological asymmetry, heal the wound between the sexes, and expect more from men.

Authentic sexual equality requires that men understand with their bodies (as women do) the procreative potential of the sexual act. And this is exactly what natural methods of family planning do. By frequenting sex only during infertile times when a child is unwanted, men learn to coordinate their desires for intimacy with the natural rhythms of the female body. Feminist scholar and theologian Angela Franks notes that “[this] is unheard of in a society in which male desire appears to set the guidelines — especially in the ‘hook-up’ culture. Indeed, such a reorientation ofdesire is more revolutionary than any secular feminist project.” Those who practice this approach to family planning report that its use tends to make husbands more sensitive to the sexual and emotional needs of their wives — a sensitivity that many women have long found wanting.

And while the Catholic Church is a leading promoter of natural family planning, this isn’t just good for Catholic women. Non-Catholics are increasingly discovering the advantages of a more organic, pharmaceutical-free method of family planning, as evidenced by the success of Toni Weschler’s Taking Charge of Your Fertility.Not only are natural methods becoming easier to use with the help of fertility monitors, online tools, and even apps, such methods help properly trained physicians to successfully detect and treat PMS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, infertility, and other medical conditions. Practiced faithfully — a caveat that applies to all methods of family planning — natural methods are just as effective as the Pill. As advocates often remark, this isn’t your grandmother’s rhythm method.

The feminist movement asked men for very little. We should ask them for much more. Though religious leaders can (and should) win the conscience-exemption argument on its own terms, we ought not hesitate to confront the administration’s spurious public-health claim. The suffering borne by women and children in the wake of the contraceptive revolution should make us impatient to articulate that Catholic teaching is not against reason, modernity, or women. It’s prophetic, pro-woman — and about time.

Erika Bachiochi is an author whose most recent publications include Women, Sex & the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching (2010). Catherine R. Pakaluk is an economist at the Stein Center for Social Research at Ave Maria University.

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TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: birthcontrolpills; obamacare; oralcontraceptives; womenshealthcare
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1 posted on 02/23/2012 8:27:53 PM PST by neverdem
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To: neverdem; lilycicero; MaryLou1; glock rocks; JPG; VinceASA; Monkey Face; RIghtwardHo; ...
+

Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:

Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.


2 posted on 02/23/2012 8:31:05 PM PST by narses
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To: neverdem

My sister,who is 17,takes them because her periods wee very painful,so they can be beneficial.

I might take them for the same reason,as my periods are heavy and are affecting my iron levels.


3 posted on 02/23/2012 8:31:13 PM PST by POWERSBOOTHEFAN (Future Meteorologist.)
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To: POWERSBOOTHEFAN

That’s ‘were’,not ‘wee’.


4 posted on 02/23/2012 8:32:11 PM PST by POWERSBOOTHEFAN (Future Meteorologist.)
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To: neverdem

IIRC, though, there are other medical applications for the Pill— I know it’s been used to treat severe gastronomical disorders, for example.


5 posted on 02/23/2012 8:34:22 PM PST by sthguard (The DNC theme song: "All You Need is Guv")
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To: narses

Hillarious and demonstrative of the problem we have with Gov!

6 posted on 02/23/2012 8:35:11 PM PST by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)
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To: mylife

:)


7 posted on 02/23/2012 8:37:51 PM PST by narses
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To: neverdem

Bottom line is what is preventing a doctor from writing a prescription and the patient going to the pharmacy and paying a copay for the drug?


8 posted on 02/23/2012 8:46:44 PM PST by Bronzy (Send a NEWTron to Obama!)
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To: All

This is discriminatory to those of were born of the wrong gender, who need to ingest hormones to develop traits of the opposite gender. WHY CAN’T I HAVE FREE HORMONES???? It’s wasis! /sarc


9 posted on 02/23/2012 8:56:38 PM PST by Klemper
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To: POWERSBOOTHEFAN

While those uses could be considered ethical even by the Catholic Standard of double effect. You might want to investigate the concept of naprotechnology and health care providers that might be able to provide treatment options that could be far less toxic than the pill.

The website is easy to find http://naprotechnology.com/


10 posted on 02/23/2012 8:57:59 PM PST by rwilson99 (Please tell me how the words "shall not perish and have everlasting life" would NOT apply to Mary.)
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To: Bronzy

Nothing... since at least 98% of the population uses already.


11 posted on 02/23/2012 8:59:03 PM PST by rwilson99 (Please tell me how the words "shall not perish and have everlasting life" would NOT apply to Mary.)
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To: rwilson99

/forgotten sarcasm tag.


12 posted on 02/23/2012 8:59:26 PM PST by rwilson99 (Please tell me how the words "shall not perish and have everlasting life" would NOT apply to Mary.)
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To: neverdem
The high rate of unmarried pregnancy is not a result of the pill. It is a result of not using the pill and a government support system, welfare for unwed mothers, health care etc. that is provided by the government i.e. the taxpayer. If you subsidize a particular lifestyle your will have more of that lifestyle.

Morally I have absolutely no problem with the use of the pill. I have a hell of a problem with abortions of convenience. I also have a big problem with government deciding what a religious institution (the Catholic Church and their hospitals) must provide in the way of contreception and abortion for their employees.

This administration is the one that has crossed the boundary between church and state. That worked out real good for Henry the VIII in England. They are still fighting that battle today in Northern Ireland.

13 posted on 02/23/2012 9:05:36 PM PST by cpdiii (Deckhand, Roughneck, Mud Man, Geologist, Pilot, Pharmacist. THE CONSTITUTION IS WORTH DYING FOR!)
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To: cpdiii
Morally I have absolutely no problem with the use of the pill. I have a hell of a problem with abortions of convenience.

Even the abortions that are caused by the pill? If not you contradict yourself.

14 posted on 02/23/2012 9:11:54 PM PST by A.A. Cunningham (Barry Soetoro is a Kenyan communist)
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To: neverdem

They keep learning strange new things about The Pill.
Messing with the hormones over a long period of time can’t be a good thing.

Here is one article about how it changes the chemistry of attraction....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/pill-makes-women-less-responsive-720132.html

And the funny thing is....while women are being sold on the idea they need the pill in order to enjoy sex. The opposite is most likely true...that women who are not on the pill are the ones enjoying it the most.


15 posted on 02/23/2012 9:22:19 PM PST by Scotswife
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To: rwilson99

I probably should not take the Pill anyway because of my age. I’m 35 and I believe that’s the “cut-off” age.


16 posted on 02/23/2012 9:40:35 PM PST by POWERSBOOTHEFAN (Future Meteorologist.)
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To: POWERSBOOTHEFAN

I would actually be most concerned about your sister. The World Health Organization has identified the Pill as a Carcinogen and the younger someone starts, the higher the risk for breast cancer.

http://www.prlog.org/10922665-birth-control-pill-shown-to-be-carcinogen.html

She should know her options.


17 posted on 02/23/2012 9:45:15 PM PST by rwilson99 (Please tell me how the words "shall not perish and have everlasting life" would NOT apply to Mary.)
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To: POWERSBOOTHEFAN
Doesn't matter to most women, they still use it.

I find it hard to believe that a person could take high doses of a chemical hormone for decades and not have a serious increase in health problems.

18 posted on 02/23/2012 9:53:28 PM PST by Jim from C-Town (The government is rarely benevolent, often malevolent and never benign!)
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To: POWERSBOOTHEFAN
My sister,who is 17,takes them because her periods wee very painful,so they can be beneficial.

The pill is a class-1 carcinogen. One should always do a cost-benefit analysis before beginning any course of medical treatment. Are less painful periods worth the increased risk of breast cancer in your 50s?
19 posted on 02/23/2012 9:58:40 PM PST by Antoninus (Mitt Romney -- attempting to execute a hostile take-over of the Republican Party.)
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To: rwilson99

I’ll mention it to my mother because my sister will flip out and ask “Am I going to die”?

That is the last thing we need.


20 posted on 02/23/2012 10:06:20 PM PST by POWERSBOOTHEFAN (Future Meteorologist.)
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