Sex: Lower the cost, raise the risks
If you lower the cost of things, people will buy more of it….
[I]f you lower the cost of uncommitted sexual encounters, you completely dissociate sex from pregnancy and birth and a lifetime of child care.
People will engage in more uncommitted sexual encounters.
~ George Mason University law professor Helen Alvare, explaining the idea of “risk compensation” – and why she believes more contraception hasn’t led to fewer unintended pregnancies, as quoted by NPR, September 7
[Photo via yourlife.usatoday.com]
Sep.08, 2011 6:00 am |
Abstinence, Contraception |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
If you build it, they will come.
Exactly.
It’s good to see that NPR quoted this.
Now if only they could find a cure for the disease that prevents liberals from being able to understand this concept.
The same applies in committed relationships. Birth control = disassociating sex and babies.
It’s not okay just because you’re married – there is a domino effect.
Katharine, I would not normally notice a comment like yours, but recently I learned of a couple who agreed during pre-marital counseling to NFP and no artificial birth control; but then ~5 years later and with two kids, the woman’s college friends told her she was a fool to think that way. Unfortunately then she left her husband and tore the family apart because she thought she was being oppressed; but now those friends have gone their own way and the woman regrets leaving.
Oh good grief Eric and Katharine. I don’t think every couple who contracepts is divorcing sex from children… or divorcing.
My husband and I used the pill (did not know it could cause an abortion at the time) and I got pregnant with my son. We NEVER considered abortion. Then we used condoms for years. I was upset because I really wanted another child but how would NFP have changed that? I could have lied about my fertile times I guess, I could have just as easily poked holes in the condoms. The point is I made my case and prayed and God answered and I am now 11 weeks pregnant with a very much wanted child. Again, obviously, abortion never entered the equation. I believe non-hormonal contraception is not immoral in a loving, MARRIED relationship. When you’re pro-life you accept children whether they come planned, unplanned or through an NFP slip-up or a condom slip-up. To suggest all couples who use contraceptives are divorcing is absurd.
Good grief, who said anything about NFP? Though, I’m pretty austere when it comes to even that. My point is that contraception does divorce sex from its natural outcome, period.
The most open to life, committed married couple endorsing its use makes it implicitly okay for anyone else, which has led us to this diabolical mess we find ourselves in.
Katherine, all those who judge using contraception always tout NFP as the solution. Now don’t get me wrong, I LIKE NFP and wish my husband would consent to practicing it. Its natural and works with the woman’s body. I don’t particularly like condoms. BUT to suggest as Eric did that women who contracept suddenly become whores who cheat on their husbands is just wrong. I am living proof that is not the case. There is nothing wrong with contraception in a marriage as long as that contraception does not destroy newly conceived life.
Sex in a committed married couples relationship serves more than one purpose. A very important function of it is also a bonding reaffirming of the “one flesh” part of marriage. Sex supports the emotional relationship as well as the physical.
I understand it is not being implied here that sex is ONLY for procreation in a married relationship, I just thought some liberal minds might need that clarification.
Sorry Katherine I should have read the rest of your comment. I don’t think an open to life married couple using non-hormonal contraception is endorsing it for others. You could argue the same about sex. What I do in my MARRIAGE in no way endorses it for unmarried folks who have no business having sex in the first place.
People use NFP to prevent conception. Is that divorcing sex from procreation? I see it as just the same as using condoms. NFP is great in that it is natural but it also denies a woman (who doesn’t want to conceive) sex during the very time of the month she is most orgasmic and craves sex most. Yes sex creates children but sex is also for pleasure and bonding between married couples. The Song of Solomon is explicit about a lot of sex acts between husband and wife that are not procreative. There is nothing wrong with that.
Although I’m sympathetic to anti-contraception ideas from an aggregate standpoint sociologically, the individual argument that it demeans sex to not always be “open to life” seems specious.
That’s like saying I demean a car when I make a specific kind of errand without regard for the possibility of making all kinds of errands a car can serve, at once. “Cars are for getting groceries AND picking the kids up from school! If you’re not at least willing to pick up the kids from school every time you go to the grocer, you’re demeaning cars!”
Yes. but the kids aren’t in school on weekends. And cars serve other fun purposes as well. ;-)
Congratulations Sydney!!! I had been praying for you and your husband to agree to have a baby. So glad to hear the news. I am very excited for you.
I agree that God created sex not just for procreation but also for pleasure between husband and wife and that the Song of Solomon backs it up, some of it makes me blush. That’s why I love it when Christian married people celebrate their “smoking, hot wife” or “smoking hot husband”. God knew what he created and why he created it with a boundary around it because true “marriage” is the union of 1 man to 1 woman who fit together perfectly anatomically, physiologically, hormonally, emotionally, mentally and most of all spiritually. They truly become “one flesh” in every sense. True “married love-making” will blow your mind. It is called intimacy and =s “into me you see”. Everything else is a counterfeit of what God created. May not be PC but it is the unadulterated truth.
BTW, anyone here heard Peter Kreeft on “Sex in Heaven”?
http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/24_sex-in-heaven.htm
No, not a Mormon-style treatment. ;-)
rasqual,
“At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” Matt 22:30