How Birth Control Changed America for the Worst

Inside Catholic ^ | February 2009 | Kathryn Jean Lopez

[annalex]

A ban on contraception similar to the ban on recreational drugs will probably have the same effect as the ban on drugs: reduce the use, create another massive law enforcement boondoggle and be viewed as another step toward a police state.

However, the present state of affairs is intolerable, when contraception is promoted on television, sold alongside milk and eggs in supermarkets, or offered like medicine by “doctors”. What is needed is a campaign similar to one against tobacco, when advertising is countered and regulated, sales restricted, and promotional activities of the pharmaceutical companies probed.

I don’t think any of that will be possible until the economic crisis is compounded by a demographic crisis. Hopefully by the time that one strikes there will be enough of America left.

[annalex]

Should extramarital sex be illegal?

Adultery is a tort. The deceived spouse, or the children should be able to bring a case in civil court, seek damages from the other party, and should a divorce result, make the adulterer suffer in the financial settlement and in custody decisions.

Extramarital activity of unmarried adults is their own business.

[Antoninus]

If that reconstitution does occur, it will be partly because individual couples across the country will decide to opt out of the contraceptive revolution and to recover that linked triad of sex, marriage, and childbearing that is the essence of the sacred nature of human reproductive and family life....That would entail a radical shift in the attitudes toward sex, fertility, and childbearing, a counterrevolution.

Bring it on! The contraceptive mentality has been utterly rejected in our home. Life is beautiful. When you reject life, you are rejecting beauty.

[Borges]

Extramarital activity of unmarried adults is their own business.

That's what I meant actually. Adultery can be defined as any sex outside of marriage by anyone.

[Pyro7480]

[Antoninus]

But just banning something isn't the answer. You have to change hearts and minds to destroy the demand.

That's it. Eventually, demand for self-sterilization products will dry up because the majority of people alive will have been raised in families who rejected them. This may seem a long way off, given that the "Me" generation is currently in power, but I'll bet that society will have a much different view of this subject 30-40 years from now.

[annalex]

“Adultery” is an affair in which a married person is involved.

“Extramarital sex” is an affair between poeple not married to each other. If neither is married to anyone else either, we have extramarital sex but not adultery.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

Extramarital sex occurs when a married person engages in sexual activity with someone other than their marriage partner.

[annalex]

Eventually, demand for self-sterilization products will dry up because the majority of people alive will have been raised in families who rejected them

It doesn't have to be a majority. Reliigous conservatives should form communities that practice healthy and fecund family lives. That will produce children who have seen a positive lifestyle, and serve as an example for others. Those who choose contraceptive lifestyle will become a minority by simple attrition.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

When abortion is made illegal, we need to make artificial means of birth control illegal too.

[annalex]

What do you call an affair between two unmarried adults?

[KeepingFaith]

Great post Owl_Eagle.

Wasn’t the argument that unrestricted access to contraceptives would eliminate the need for abortion? UGH...

Ironic that the generation that ranted for sexual ‘liberation’ via abortion and contraception may very well be the first generation to see legalized euthanasia.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

Premarital sex / Fornication

[marshmallow]

Nearly all of these social and even medical consequences of the contraceptive revolution were foreseen with astonishing accuracy by Pope Paul VI in his anti–birth control encylical Humanae Vitae, issued in 1968, as the revolution was just beginning. Paul wrote that widespread use of contraceptives would lead to "conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality," and that many a man would lose respect for the woman in his life and "no longer [care] for her physical and psychological equilibrium" to the point that he would consider her "as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion." Paul also prophesied that mass acceptance of birth control would place a "dangerous weapon...in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies." And it would mislead people into thinking that they had total control over their bodies. Hardly any of these predictions -- from promiscuity, to avoidance of male reproductive responsibilities, to the destruction of human embryos as women who delay childbearing too long try desperately to get pregnant -- have failed to come true.

Correct.

Allow me to add one other thing.

Contraception was put forward as a means to reduce abortions by those who promoted it. Fewer "unwanted babies", the argument went, would result in fewer abortions.

No, said Paul VI. That is incorrect. Artificial contraception will result in the spread of fornication, immorality and adultery and cause an increased demand for abortion. Counter intuitive for the contraceptive crowd.

So who was correct?

Well, five years after Humanae Vitae was published and 3 years after the swinging contraceptive sixties ended, Roe v Wade became law and we have had it ever since.

You decide.

[diamond6]

bttt

[annalex]

OK, so long as we understand one another.

My point is that adultery can be prosecuted legally, because there is an innocent victim, the deceived spouse, who should be able to press charges. When it is just two willing adults, it is not in the character of English and American justice system to prosecute.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

My point is that adultery can be prosecuted legally, because there is an innocent victim, the deceived spouse, who should be able to press charges.

How would you accomodate swingers, wifeswappers, threesomes, orgies and all other perversions?

[annalex]

There has to be someone who has been wronged. If it is private activity and no committments are broken, it is a sin but not a tort.

If it is advertised in some way, or generally gives scandal, then that is the wrong, but not if it is totally private.

I would not mind statutes again any immorality, but I don’t think this one will fly, even with a conservative legislature.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Did she really meant “worst”? Once again, bad English in a publication that’s supposed to edit and know better.