New Stanek poll: Do you view contraception as a pro-life issue?
I have a new poll question up:
Do you view contraception as a pro-life issue?
Vote on the lower right side of the home page.
On the previous poll a majority of you, 36.6%, thought the first thing that has to happen before stopping abortion is to change public opinion. Praying came 2nd, which is troublesome…
Click on the map to enlarge to find your own brightly colored flag….
As always, make comments to either the previous or current poll here, not on the Vizu website.
Jul.24, 2011 8:56 am |
Contraception, Polls |
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.
Not troublesome at all. Plenty of Christians might vote for “pray” but there are also plenty of pro-life atheists and agnostics who would sooner get to work than bend knee to a god they don’t believe exists. What would be troublesome is if the entire pro-life movement was made up only of Christians.
As for contraception. . .it’s an issue when it comes to the abortion pill. Beyond that, I’ve yet to see an argument against contraception that holds much water; just ploys to force religious beliefs into the debate. . .I despise that. The pro-life movement is not solely a religious one, and to use it to forward one’s own individual philosophies hurts more than helps.
Contraception – no.
Abortifacients – absolutely. People need to be aware of the fact that common birth control can cause a conceived child to die.
As for that poll, it saddens me that opening PRCs only got a 3.6% vote. I know it may not be seen as the thing that has to happen first, but I’d be more concerned about helping women in need than changing the image of the movement. I think that will follow if we prioritize helping those in need.
It is a prolife issue. When we contracept we aren’t trusting God with our whole heart soul and mind. We say I trust you totally God but not with my reproductive life when we contracept. If you trust God totally you don’t need to use any kind of contraception because you would trust that God would take care of you and all your children no matter how many you have.
The pill and any other hormonal contraceptives can cause abortions. It doesn’t necessarily do that every month but it still can cause them. If you don’t leave yourself open to life you are saying that you are in control and not God. You block God out of your life when you don’t trust him with every part of your being.
I think that any kind of abortifacient “contraception” is definitely a pro-life issue, for obvious reasons.
True contraception that actually prevents conception from occurring isn’t so much of an issue as far as the pro-life cause in and of itself is concerned. Those of us who are pro-life AND religious have differing opinions on the subject but it’s not as much of a ”pro-life issue” as it is a doctrinal one.
Contraception is vital to preventing abortion. Used responsibly and conscientiously, many contraception do in fact prevent the conception of pregnancies that would cause panic rather than joy. Many females who abort either were using to contraceptives or were using contraceptives that are less effective than the most effective, or were not using contraceptives conscientiously.
Most people simply aren’t going to adopt a “quiverfull” lifestyle of having as many pregnancies as God or fate or nature can provide. Neither are most people going to adopt celibacy.
Of course contraception and abortion are connected. They are fruits of the same rotten tree (to paraphrase JPII in Evangelium Vitae). Sanger founded Planned Parenthood as a contraception movement, not an abortion movement, but abortion is the natural outgrowth of that mentality. Abortion is the natural back up for contraceptive failure, and even the liberal Supreme Court in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision understood that, mentioning it specifically in the majority decision:
http://littlecatholicbubble.blogspot.com/2011/01/contraception-leads-to-abortion-come.html
Why can they see what so many pro-lifers cannot?
Wherever widespread contraception is accepted, abortion follows.
Even Guttmacher’s website says that 54% of women seeking abortions were using contraception when they conceived.
If 54% of women did anything else statistically that failed so badly, whatever drug or product they were using would be considered ineffective. But when it comes to birth control and abortion, suddenly abortion advocates’ brains stop working. The use of contraception changes the mentality of sex between a man and woman. The use of contraception sets them up to expect NOT to produce a child, and when they do they seem shocked and amazed that it could happen. The concept of “safe sex” is utterly ridiculous. It’s nothing more than a marketing ploy. Sex hasn’t been very “safe” for the millions of children that have died for the ‘crime’ of turning up alive in a womb where their parent’s actions led directly to their creation.
Amen, Leila. Abortion is the fruit of contraception.
Hi Tony 9:31am
You make some good points. Our opponents like nothing more than PL opposition to contraception to showcase our “extremism”. By saying we are “anti family planning” the PAs gain a lot of ammunition.
I agree that abortion, like slavery and civil rights, is a moral and ethical issue, not a religious one. It was turned into a religious issue by our opponents who singled out the RC church as a common enemy against which to rally their troops. Those who wail about the seperation of church and state forget that the civil rights movement in this country was led by an ordained minister and very religiously oriented.
Hi Jen 11:23am
I’m not so certain. Contraception, like abortion, is as old as the human race. When there wasn’t contraception, abortion was used instead. It wasn’t unsual for women to have several abortions. It was the only means of “family planning”.
The mother of the late performer Frank Sinatra was a midwife/abortionist whom doctors discreetly referred their patients to and police turned a blind eye to. One relative described having 3 abortions performed by Mrs.Sinatra, who apparently had a thriving business as well as a good track record of no abortion deaths.
I totally agree with Leila. We here in the developing world are being fed lies about “reproductive health” and “family planning”, yes, the very same lies told over and over about contraception in the developed world (and then some!) until pretty soon, legalizing abortion becomes a VERY IMPORTANT issue “for women’s health” so much so that it requires such and such funding and support from the government. So yes, it is very much a prolife issue.
We (prolifers in the developing world) NEED you to take a united stand against all abortifacients (no matter how small the possibility of contraception killing an innocent human being — imagine if every woman contracepting had one, even just one such “incident” in her whole lifetime!) so that these lies would stop and the mission of population control groups like UNFPA, Center for Reproductive Rights, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Engender Health, etc. to decriminalize abortion in our countries will finally grind to a halt. More prolife doctors and other health practitioners need to speak up. More Christian leaders need to speak up.
This will be a major prolife victory globally and put an end to Hillary Clinton’s dream of abortion for export through her Global Death Force.
Tony, great thoughts! Have you checked out SecularProLife.org?
Hilary, it may have to do with how the question was worded. There are thousands of pregnancy resource centers in the United States. We probably don’t need to build more of them, except in a few needy urban areas. Better to improve the funding and function of the ones that already exist.
“I’ve yet to see an argument against contraception that holds much water; just ploys to force religious beliefs into the debate. . .I despise that. The pro-life movement is not solely a religious one, and to use it to forward one’s own individual philosophies hurts more than helps.”
Exactly, Tony. It marginalizes the pro-choice movement and makes us look more like the “fruit and nut squad.”
I agree with all the points you made, Tony.
I believe the widespread use of contraception has effectively separated the act of sexual intercourse from the natural outcome of a baby, not only physically, but in the social fabric. Sex no longer equals a baby so there is no longer a reason to confine it within a marriage. So now sex is just another recreational activity, and any pregnancy resulting is an “oops.” I believe contraception has created the idea that pro-aborts push that stopping abortion=forced pregnancy. And also hormonal contraception is, at least partly, an abortifacient. Prolonged use increases the risk of breast cancer and stroke. I think the pro-life movement does need to focus on abstinence outside of marriage and NFP within marriage. to combat the culture of sex, which has produced the prolific demand for abortion.
“I’ve yet to see an argument against contraception that holds much water”
Have you read the product monographs of contraceptives, Tony? If you haven’t, please do.
Here’s one example:
“ The incidence of abortions was increased following administration of high doses of drospirenone (100 mg/kg/day) to pregnant rabbits, and a dose-dependent increase in abortions occurred following the administration of all doses to monkeys. Embryotoxicity and slight retardations of fetal development (eg, delayed ossification of feet bones, sternebrae, vertebrae; incomplete ossification of skull; slight increase in visceral abnormalities) were observed in the rat and rabbit at drospirenone doses of 15 mg/kg/day and 100 mg/kg/day, respectively.”
http://www.bayer.ca/files/YAZ-PM-ENG-03JUN2010-136910.pdf
That’s from a Bayer experiment. Increased doses of birth control pills cause abortions. “Emergency birth control pills are a strong dose of regular birth control pills.” http://ec.princeton.edu/questions/dose.html
Essentially, no need to buy an abortion pill, just increase your current dose of BCPs.
Anti-choicers who are opposed to contraception are unbelievably foolish.Contraceptives have PREVENTED countless abortions. To say that a pill can “cause” a “conceived” child” to “die” is
beyond ludicrous. A pill cannot cause an abortion. An abortion is the surgical removal of a partly formed and VISIBLE fetus. You cannot “murder” something which is microscopic, and a couple of cells are not a
“child”.
Anti-choicers and the Catholic church have spread all manner of ridiculous false rumors about how dangerous contraceptives supposedly are. While there may be SOME potential health risks, they have been wildly exaggerated by the anti-choice movement in a campaign of fear-mongering. There a many other pills which people routinely take for medical reasons which have far greater health risks. Yet the Catholic church and anti-choicers have absolutely no objection to these.
One reason why abortion is so common is not because of the use of contraceptives, but because too many people are foolish,thoughtless, and irresponsible and DON’T use them.
Using contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies is no more immoral than using insect repellents to avoid being bitten by insects. What is wrong and dangerous sexual promiscuity.
“I’ve yet to see an argument against contraception that holds much water; just ploys to force religious beliefs into the debate. . .I despise that. The pro-life movement is not solely a religious one, and to use it to forward one’s own individual philosophies hurts more than helps.”
Ack… Correction from above:
Exactly, Tony. It marginalizes the pro-life movement (not the pro-choice movement) and makes us look more like the “fruit and nut squad.”
I think birth control (avoiding a live birth) is part of the greater pro-life issue, but contraceptives (avoiding conception) isn’t. It may be (and I believe is) a portion of other moral or religious choices, beliefs, or feels that happen to overlap. But objecting to slaughtering children and objecting to not getting pregnant in the first place are two different things. Personally I have nothing against contraceptives, God gave us a brain and we live in a fallen world. If everyone was perfect then there would be no need for contraceptives, but everyone’s not perfect, there may be serious health considerations to take into account (among other things) we are fallen, sin-cursed humans, as many kids as possibly is not always possible, much less pragmatic or sensible. And *every* society has practiced some form of contraceptive or another. But, I think, because we know contraceptives sometimes fail, they should only be used in a situation where a pregnancy would be welcomed should something happen. There were *far less* abortions and unplanned pregnancies when contraceptives were only availible via script to married couples.
God bless you Jill Stanek for your heart and voice for the baby in the womb. I first learned of you in the book (The Case Against Barak Obama) God bless you for your heart to care and boldness to speak out. Contraception is an issue when it comes to the pill, but if regular forms such as a prophylactic is used in the intimacy of a husband and a wife, with the understanding that if a pregnancy occured they would keep the child, I think that is OK, I believe contraceptions have caused promiscuity to grow outside of a married home however, and don’t believe it should be used for the temporal and immoral pleasures of the flesh outside of wedlock, I don’t believe in premarital sex, however that was not the lifestyle of my carnal nature. and as a result have an aborted child in heaven, she got an abortion without my knowlege. God has placed a burden on my heart for the plight of the innocent babies in the womb. I have been a voice for them who as yet have no voice, the reallity of abortion, the procedures of, and its results are heart wrenching. I see a turning tide in the world in general in favor of pro-life, I belive this is a direct result of much prayer by many people, yet not one baby will; be safe untill there is an abolition of abortion, and for that I will stand firm. as for the post from the above atheist, thank God He gave you a conscience for the destitute yet in the womb who are awaiting a painful death sentence, May God have mercy on us all for even dwelling in the midst of this holocaust that is an aberration in the eyes of God.
Who have you read, Tony? What are some of the names that argue against contraception whose writings you have found lacking?
Hi Mary,
So Mrs. Sinatra had a “successful” abortion practice with “no abortion deaths?” The dead babies would say otherwise. Sure, abortion has been around a lot longer than our modern era. But anyone disposed to logic cannot deny that when you promote sex apart from the natural, intended result (a baby) the end result will be that people will demand sex with no consequences and no natural result = no baby, no way, no how. If baby has the nerve to show up anyway, then baby has intruded upon the adults freedom of choice and gone against their wishes, which were to have sex with no consequences and no natural results. How presumptuous of baby! The next logical step is to get rid of baby via abortion.
Abortion is the bad fruit of the contraceptive mentality that separates procreation from sex.
Robert Berger: typical anti-Catholic rant. So the Church is responsible for all social ills and blah, blah, blah. Think of something original. That tirade is old and tired. The fact is that the Catholic Church is the only institution on the planet that remains unwavering in its defense of the inherent dignity of every human person, including the unborn, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, etc. The Church is the only institution that will never embrace homosexual “marriage” because they know it will destroy the family unit and therefore destroy society because it is inherently disordered; the Church is the most pro-active institution on the planet in terms of serving the poor around the world — they actually provide more care to more people than anyone else, period.
Comparing pregnancy to an insect bite? That’s contraceptive mentality for you. Babies are not bugs or bites or a nuisance or a punishment. They are a gift of life from the Creator of life. If people had even a scintilla of understanding, even a smidgen of respect for the sanctity of human life they would stop seeing babies as pests to be either kept away or destroyed.
Sure – if less contraception is used, there will be more abortions.
“Anti-choicers and the Catholic church have spread all manner of ridiculous false rumors about how dangerous contraceptives supposedly are. While there may be SOME potential health risks, they have been wildly exaggerated by the anti-choice movement in a campaign of fear-mongering. There a many other pills which people routinely take for medical reasons which have far greater health risks. Yet the Catholic church and anti-choicers have absolutely no objection to these.”
This is a great couple of sentences to illustrate how little you know, Robert, about why the Catholic Church opposes contraception. This is nothing even remotely close to any of teh moral reasons the Church outlines in her documents as so why she rejects contraception. Why is it okay for you to rail against teh Church’s teaching on contraception when you clearly have no clue as to why she rejects it? This is embarrassing, Robert, even for you.
Now that you know that you have no clue why the Church rejects contraception, Robert, will you look into why and educate yourself? No. Will you continue to repeat the exact same things (I refuse to call them arguments) that you have been for the last 6 years, avoiding any sort of substantive interaction with anyone on here at all costs? Yes.
What army_wife said.
I swear if I hear the phrase “contraceptive mentality” one more time…
Not everyone is going to follow the same moral code. I think this talk about contraceptives and banning them is very detrimental to the pro-life movement.
“Essentially, no need to buy an abortion pill, just increase your current dose of BCPs.”
That’s not even an argument. I could overdose on my antidepressants and kill myself, doesn’t mean that they should be illegal.
The arguments against contraception do not need to be religiously based to be true. Abortion and contraception are simply bad for LIFE, all around.
http://theguidingstarproject.com/how-is-this-pro-life
I’ve collected a number of articles on the pill’s alleged abortifacient properties and on emergency contraception over the past few years and have incorporated them into my own blog. See here.
The most fundamental of questions man (meaning men and women) has wrestled with is why we are here and what is this thing called life all about. Is it a matter of “forcing religious beliefs into the debate” (Tony @ 9:31) when for millennia the world’s major religions and ancient to modern day philosophers have proposed answers to these questions within the framework of religious experience?
It is impossible to separate questions of life and our reason for existence from the question of preventing or eliminating life. They are really two sides to the same coin. Ergo contraception is a “life” issue and contextually a “pro-life” issue.
I think pro-lifers need to focus on winning hearts to not have abortions. When they start saying “don’t have abortions, and you have to devote X time to this, and you have to not use contraception ever, and you need to…” – I think it turns it from a view of life into a view of being preachy that turns a lot of people off.
I get the debate around the pill and how it can lead to what many say it technically an abortion – I get that – but I also think that if you give some pro-lifers a long enough rope, they’ll end up with this argument that sex is confined to married, 21-40 year olds who are having sex solely to make a baby, and anything other than that is this awful equivalent to having an abortion itself.
I agree with army_wife and JackBorsch.
Honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of people acting as though my support for non-abortive contraception is going to drag me, kicking and screaming, down some kind of slippery slope where it’s suddenly okay to dismember a living, growing human being.
I believe that abortion is wrong because I believe it kills a living human person, and killing living human persons is wrong. I believe this should transcend religion or lack of religion (as places like Secular Pro-Life show). In order to oppose abortion, I do not need to believe that sex is only for making babies. I just need to believe that, once a new human person has begun its life, it’s wrong to kill it.
Is it ‘preachy’ to tell women that sex with men can result in pregnancy?
Is it ‘preachy’ to tell women to stop killing their kids?
Is it ‘preachy’ to tell women to pay for their own medications?
Is it ‘preachy’ to tell women to pay for their own elective surgeries?
Is it ‘preachy’ to tell irresponsible women to keep their uterus out of my wallet?
Very well said, Katey.
Yes Ken, those horribly irresponsible married women who don’t wish to have more children. The horror!
“You cannot “murder” something which is microscopic, and a couple of cells are not a
“child”.”
RB,
Most women are not fertile until about 14 days after their last period.
When conception occurs it takes some time before the ova travels completes the journey from distance from the ovary to the uterine wall and implants. At implantation the ova is a lot more than just two cells, but the ova is no more or less alive, when he/she was just one cell and no more or less human.
Until the ova implants and makes it presence known to the female body, the pregant woman does not yet know she is with child. It will be on the average 14 days before she ‘misses’ her next period. This will be the first indication that she might be pregnant.
I suppose some of the new home pregnancy tests might be sensitive enough to detect a pregnancy before the 14 days to the woman’s next period. So it is possible that some women might know they are pregant, before they ‘miss’.
Most women would probaby wait til they ‘miss’ for the second time before they confirm they are indeed pregnant. On the average that would be 42 days.
It has been a while since I read the data, and some of my more knowledgeable commenters can corroborate, but I believe most elective abortions are committed on 6 to 7 week old human embryos/fetuses.
Perhaps one of our moerators can post a photo of a 6 to 7 week old human embryo/fetus and you can ask a fifth grader to describe the image to you,
or,
RB,
You can ask your momma what species of embryo/fetus was present in her uterus when she was pregnant with you.
JackBorsch says:July 24, 2011 at 2:47 pm
“Yes Ken, those horribly irresponsible married women who don’t wish to have more children. The horror! ”
===================================================================
Yes JB,
Those horrible irresponsible women, married or not, who choose to murder their pre-natal children.
One could argue that contraception and abortion, though clearly different by definition, are related. Widespread acceptance of the former has aided acceptance of the latter. When two people go into sex with the attitude that a baby is something to be prevented at all costs, they’re more likely to see abortion as an option should a pregnancy arise — arguing that they were “careful” or “responsible” and the contraception just failed.
This doesn’t mean all the couples who use artificial contraceptives should be admonished, of course, but, yes, this “contraceptive mentality” has proved quite toxic — and, no, you don’t need to be religious to believe that. I simply think the odds against any one of us being conceived were so great, and that it’s a really “heavy” concept to think that someone could easily have prevented our coming into existence. Again, not a religious view.
Jack Borsch: “Not everyone is going to follow the same moral code. I think this talk about contraceptives and banning them is very detrimental to the pro-life movement.”
If we’re talking about non-abortafacient contraceptives, I don’t think anyone is talking about a “ban.”
Anti-choicers who are opposed to contraception are unbelievably foolish.
I am opposed to contraception and support NFP. I did not feel this way until I took the time to really study NFP.
It’s not surprising Berger finds me unbelievably foolish. Oh well.
well.
That is a very sober, rational, and non-religious assessment, bmmg39. And just for those wondering, I don’t think bmmg39 adheres to a particular religion at all… or at least if (s)he does, (s)he has not ever mentioned it…
Abortion is the fruit of contraception. Procreation may not be the ONLY reason for sex, but having sex is the ONLY (natural) thing that causes it.
JackBorsch says: July 24, 2011 at 1:33 pm
“Not everyone is going to follow the same moral code.”
=================================================================
JB,
That is a true, but someones moral code will always prevail and someone else’s moral code will not.
The ‘humanist’ moral code is completely relative and subject to change with next wave of public opinion.
The primary purpose of ‘governement’ is the preservation of human life and the protection of liberty.
We have a ‘constitution’ that guarantees certain fundamental human rights, among these are the right to life, to liberty and to property/pusuit of happines. [Note;there are no animal rights recognized, only human.]
Those rights are not derrived from the constitution, but are only ‘acknowledged’ by the document. The ‘right to life’ is not granted by government, it is the gift of GOD.
If you doubt the premise I challenge you to give an example of any kind of ‘life’ that is the product of ‘government’.
Embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is a ‘moral code’ based on a Judeo/Christian world view.
Only a myopic and simple minded fool would ever concede that his/her/it’s ‘right’ to life is granted by government.
If our ‘right’ to life is granted by government, then it can be rescinded by some legislative/judicial/executive process.
But thank GOD, the author of the Declaration of Independence was forced by the overwhelming majority of delegates to include ‘all men are created equal and endowed by GOD’. THey refused to ratify the document til Jefferson included that phrase.
The delegates to the contitutional convention refused to ratify that document til they had the assurances that the first ten ammendants, known today as the bill of rights, would be added.
These men were anything but myopic and simple minded fools. They had all experienced the abuses ‘divine right of kings’ to steal, kill and destroy. And there were determined to discover a more perfect way.
These were the same men who required that the president of the United States be resident for 14 years, at least 35 years old and a ‘NATURAL BORN CITIZEN’.
Words mean things.
duces tecum
@ yor bro ken ; there is a beating heart around the end of the fourth week, that constutes life in my book, and God has instilled an eternal spirit (soul) at the moment of conception, tell God it is not life.
Ken,
You knew I was talking about contraception, not abortion.
It doesn’t matter how you want the world to be, it is never going to be perfect. People are going to do as they will whether it is moral or not in your eyes. The best society can do is outlaw and police practices that harm others. Don’t try to tell me that Christian morality hasn’t changed, because it has. And we are not talking about Obama.
I don’t consider them related enough to make contraception awareness a political or moral goal of the pro-life movement. An anti-iife mentality often accompanies contraception but the anti-life mentality is the problem, not the contraception itself (insofar as abortion is concerned – not talking about philosophical approaches to the act of sex at this point). If someone is pro-life and uses contraception I don’t really see how it’s the business of the pro-life movement.
For the record I have never used hormonal contraception myself and I wish it were not such a common Plan A for couples. I am agnostic and unmarried and I use NFP, but that is out of a philosophical view relating to my body and to sex with my partner, not out of any relation to abortion.
Ken & Jack, I think you both misunderstood one another. Jack, Ken’s original comment was, I believe, directed at ex-GOP’s comment, not your own. I think that’s where the confusion began. . .you’re both talking about entirely different things.
Or maybe I’m the one confused.
Ken the Birther -
Yes, some of those – yes. Some are stupid too.
The extension of my post is, I think that some people write off the pro-life crowd as morality police that just want to control behavior, because again, it isn’t just don’t have an abortion, but it extends into birth control, sex…heck, a LOT on this board on homosexuality as well. Pro-life as a banner takes on more and more issues that make it easier and easier to write off.
Hi Jen,
I said her business was thriving, not successful, indicating that contraception and abortion do not necessarily go hand in hand. Also, by pointing out Sinatra’s track record, I show that women were not dying like flies from illegal abortion prior to Roe v Wade, as abortion advocates would suggest.
Since both contraception and abortion are as old as the human race, its hard to say what causes what. If anything, it would appear that contraception has done little to reduce abortion.
Tony, I realize Ken’s comment wasn’t directed at me. I answered because I am very tired of those who act like people who use contraceptives are irresponsible and one step away from killing our kids.
Amen JackBorsch…Amen
No, the two aren’t related.
Now on a different note, I find the idea that making birth control free will lower the abortion rate to be rather… odd. I don’t think it’s a safe assumption to say that a woman who didn’t use birth control and has an abortion failed to use birth control because she couldn’t afford it. Rather, I’d think it a safe assumption to assume that she didn’t use any even though she could have. How, then, does making birth control free make her use birth control? The old addage holds true; you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him, or her, drink. Just look at NYC, for example. A sky-high abortion rate even though contraception is easy to come by (the city itself gives out millions of condoms per year).
The simple fact– whether or not pro-choicers want to admit it– is that for as long as abortion is readily available, people won’t use birth control at the same rate they would if abortion wasn’t available. Making birth control readily available, or even free, isn’t the big panacea they like to claim.
I view contraception as a pro-life issue. To identify as pro-life, I believe one has to be open to ALL life. To use contraception denies the beginning of LIFE, and is therefore (in my opinion) against pro-life views.
Does it make a difference if you deny a child the right to life before conception, or after conception? No. It still denies our children the right to life. Whether we prevent a child from being created, or kill the child after creation, the result is the same. Abortion and contraception are both against my pro-life beliefs.
Yeah, there is actually a huge difference between not getting pregnant and killing a helpless unborn child.
How does Ken turn every argument into a birther argument?!? Seriously, his delusional harping is hilarious.
Want less abortions, ladies and gentlemen? Contraceptives are the only way. Keep on dreaming that the only people allowed to have sex are married Christian couples but guess what? The world has never worked that way and it’s not going to start anytime soon.
I once saw an episode of Everwood ( an old show on the WB) and the father was taking to his 15 year old son and he said. Trying to stop sex is trying to stop the ocean with a broom.
I find there to be so much truth in that statement.
When people say, take away birth control people will behave more responsibly, and that birth control is why people divorce sex from procreation, I sort of want to laugh.
Ninek,
“The use of contraception sets them up to expect NOT to produce a child, and when they do they seem shocked and amazed that it could happen. ”
I don’t know a single sexually active person who HASN’t forgone birth control and had sex anyway. PEOPLE DON”T NEED BIRTH CONTROL TO HAVE IRRESPONSIBLE SEX. When they have un-protected sex its not like they understand a baby will be created and don’t freak out. I guarantee there are LOTS of couples who didn’t use birth control and are still shocked they end up pregnant. The attitude: I want to have sex with you but I don’t want to have a baby with you, was NOT created by birth control. It was created by hormones.
I understand you think this is because people assume abortion as a back up plan. But I think you are giving people too much credit.
I am not trying to be condescending. I say this as a 21 year old who sees the sexual habits of other 21 year olds. No one is walking around thinking i won’t take my bc, because then i’ll just get an abortion ( why would anyone bank on an expensive painful surgery when they could just take a pill) It is because it’s something we genuinely don’t think about. This is not unique to my generation, as i’m sure many of you know people in your generation, your parents generation or your grandparents generation who did the same think when abortion was illegal and birth control was not relied upon.
People who push contraceptives are really just trying to get people to take them!!
It is abundantly clear from our high abortion rates and the fact that 50% of children are born out of wedlock that people will have sex AND they will not use contraceptives.
When i say use contraceptives I mean using them RELIGIOUSLY, something frankly most people will not do.
@derrr, it is amazing what subjects can be connected to Obama if you try!
Contraception is Grendal’s Mother. The main reason for it is to have sex without consequense. If pregnancy results from sex, “oops, not my fault”. There is a fix for that though.
Since the pill, we now have 49% of sexually active non-married carrying HPV (Human Pap. Virus). So free sex isn’t so free and we aren’t dodging disease. Fortunatly for us guys, it’s most deadly for the women. Don’t worry though, the condom only fails three out of ten times.
Even if a person is athiest, does that negate thousands of years of experience. It’s like standing on the shoulders of giants and then jumping off.
Do you know that a study from a liberal group found the people having the best sex are in a monogonous, married relationship. The study was dubbed “revenge of the married ladies”!
Maybe we should quit treating each other like animals, let go of the contraception idea, and go with commitment.
“Want less abortions, ladies and gentlemen? Contraceptives are the only way.”
That is simply untrue. A cursory glance at abortion rates by state (or just compare abortion rates in, say, NY to ND) will tell you this. Again I point out, simply giving people contraceptives will not lower the abortion rate. Even though it cuts at the “no one has an abortion lightly” line that pro-choicers like to give, readily available abortion mitigates contraceptive use. In other words, people are more apt to use contraceptives when they can’t readily obtain, or even obtain an abortion at all, than they are when they can readily obtain an abortion. There have actually been a few studies on this. Let me see if I can find again.
“Keep on dreaming that the only people allowed to have sex are married Christian couples but guess what? The world has never worked that way and it’s not going to start anytime soon.”
I do believe this is a straw man.
“Do you know that a study from a liberal group found the people having the best sex are in a monogonous, married relationship. The study was dubbed “revenge of the married ladies”!”
What study is that? Link?
“The main reason for it is to have sex without consequense”
Ah, the old pro-choice slutty women argument. And what, pray tell, is wrong with sex “without consequences?” Sorry, but the majority of Americans (and Catholics) don’t have a problem with birth control. Allowing each sexual act to be “open to conception,” (a religious view) leads to third world over population and poverty. Sex is a natural act, just like digestion. If folks want to enjoy it, without consequences, what business is it of yours?
But here’s the big question.
Along with abortion, do pro-lifers want to ban contraception?
And if contraception fails, just think what a happy babylicious world it will be without contraception. Lots more American babies which leads one to ask whether the anti-abortion/contraception argument is all about demographics. And who cares if they are poor babies. Texas is doing lots of anti-choice legislation and meanwhile, they have one of the highest rates of babies born to poor women. Oh, right. I forgot. Nice Americans of means would love to adopt these babies and if they’re home grown, it’s easier than going to China or Russia. And those that don’t get adopted will go to nice orphanages which will be run by the churches….
“Is it ‘preachy’ to tell irresponsible women to keep their uterus out of my wallet?”
Is it preachy to tell pro-lifers to keep their religiously based beliefs (sorry, folks, there is no ”scientific” consensus on the morality of abortion because science doesn’t deal in morality) off the laws of this country and the uteri of American women who don’t believe as they do?
CC,
Was there any consensus, scientific or otherwise, on the morality of slavery? How about civil rights?
I mean the study was dubbed “Revenge of the Church Ladies” and it was published in 1999 in USA Today. I think it done by University of Chicago.
This was for derrr:
—
The empirical results also provide support for the hypothesis that increases in abortion costs not only reduce the number of abortions, but also reduce the number of pregnancies by altering women’s sexual/contraceptive practices.
—
http://www.springerlink.com/content/b41t86264u67245p/
(Unfortunately I can only get access to the abstract.)
It isn’t so much the availability of contraception which matters so much as it is the availability of abortion. For as long as abortion is a readily available option, women will think to themselves, “Ehhh, I don’t need to use contraception, as if I get pregnant I can just have an abortion.” Sure, that’s not exactly a nice image, but reality isn’t exactly always filled with nice images.
I am against abortion, completely. I also support contraception. I am open to any life that may be conceived, since no birth control method is 100%, but I am SO TIRED of not being “pro-life enough” since I believe in artificial birth control. This argument is tired. Is it not enough that I love and fight for the unborn babies? IT SHOULD BE. I do not share your beliefs on everything, and to imply that only Christian, religious, married, chaste, virginal, Republican, NFP-practicing individuals are “truly pro-life” is false, discriminatory, unjust, and inaccurate.
Please please please continue to go after contraception. You will lose that battle 1000 times over and everyone will see how deranged the Pro-life moment is. You people are unbelievable. Scary indeed.
Personally, I don’t care about people using contraception and it’s to be commended. I take issue with the notion that promoting contraception will lower the abortion rate. Within itself, it won’t– especially if abortion is readily available. But most pro-choicers simply won’t acknowledge this, with many flatly refusing to do so no matter how much evidence they are presented with. That I really don’t understand.
Mary Lee,
I do not know if anyone is saying all those things you described. I am not. What I am saying is contraception does not provide safe sex or better sex. It allows for sex with less chance of getting pregnant, that’s it. Sexual disease has increased dramatically over the last forty years. We have said since we are going to have sex, let’s use condoms and the pill. Logic says it should work, but even wishing it was so does not make that the case. The article in USA Today referred to other studies as to why sex was so much better for monogonous married couples and when you read the findings and the reasoning, it really does not seem surprising. They are not worried about getting pregnant, they are not worried about getting a disease, they are not worried about guilt in the morning. They are really free to enjoy being with each other. In this comments page, I have seen all sorts of stuff referring to taking the pill religiously. That won’t protect you from the things you really need to worry about. Having children is alot of work. I know. It is the best work I have ever done. They are awesome. The things we need to be more concerned with are the diseases that acompany multiple sexual partners. Is this a pro-life issue? Is the use of the pill billed as safe sex? If you were jumping out of a plane and I only gave you a parachute that worked seven out of ten times, would you jump? Condoms work seven out of ten times and do not protect at all against some disease.
People say things deliberatly to cloud the arguement. One person arguing taking exception to my argument used the “its the pro-choice slutty women …” Why even go there? I don’t feel that way. I did not say that. The truth is, I really like sex. Alot. I do not worry about STD’s. We do not use contraceptives. No one could love me like my wife. We have children. They are wonderful. I hope the same for you.
Being married or monogamous and wanting to control how many children you have isn’t anti-prolife. That is where the pro-life argument against contraception drives me crazy. I am married with two kids, I don’t want more. It isn’t “contraceptive mentality”, it’s knowing what you can handle and not being irresponsible. And really, you can warn of the dangers of casual sex all you want, not everyone is going to listen. I didn’t as a teen, and most everyone I know didn’t either. Condoms and contraceptives at least help a bit, better than nothing.
I am ardently pro-choice. I came to this site to see how the other half lives, so to speak. I personally don’t believe artificial contraception is a form of abortion. It PREVENTS abortions.
That being said, I recently switched from the Pill to the Paragard IUD. No hormones. I was tired of having synthetic hormones coursing through my body. My husband and I are almost 100% sure we NEVER want kids. But until we decide for sure, we don’t want any accidents.
I will say that if I did get pregnant while using contraceptives, I would have an abortion. It’s not an easy decision but one I would make. Sex is NOT just about procreation. It’s also a way to get closer to your spouse and a way to have fun. God did give women an organ that is purely for pleasure. Just my two cents.
Olivia Dunham,
Why wouldn’t abortion be an easy decision to make? Was contraception?
Mary,
Contraception is a super easy decision to make. I am preventing a pregnancy and not ending one. As pro-choice as I am, I don’t deny that a fetus is alive when the pregnancy is terminated. But I don’t consider a 12 week old fetus to be even remotely close to the development of a 32 week old fetus. There’s nothing wrong with contraception. And abortion is Plan B for many of us when our contraception fails.
Olivia
Perhaps I am just odd, but I do see a connection between contraception and abortion.
Since this is my first post, allow me to introduce myself: I am a university student, a Latin major, and have a minor in both philosophy and comm. studies. I say this so as to make myself as credible as I can discredit myself.
There is a principle in Logic and formal debate which states that something is not necessarily good or true just because it has always been done. I say this in response to the many who have already said that contraception and abortion have been committed in some form in every society. I am not going to provide any counter-argument save that that particular frequent example is a really bad argument from the perspective of Logic. It sounds convincing, but then, so do most fallacies, which is why they are used.
I do think that, at the present time, taking a unified stance against contraception within the pro-life movement is both impossible and detrimental. There is too much conflict over the matter at the current moment even among our own ranks. Also, there is nothing outside the pro-life movement to which anti-contraception arguments could take root, precisely because all of the anti-contraceptionists are on our side, and I doubt they are even the majority.
HOWEVER, I do think it will be impossible for the pro-life movement to achieve a permanent victory without getting rid of contraception. It won’t happen in my parent’s generation. I don’t even think abortion will be overcome in my generation. We are simply the first real wave against it. My generation’s children or grandchildren will be the ones who put abortion in the coffin. And it will take generations after that to bury it.
We will not survive this war, and so it does not surprise me that our numbers are now divided. However, the pro-life movement will one day unite, one way or another, and, depending upon which way, history will either close this chapter or else repeat itself.
I will say that I do not think contraception to be the ultimate cause of abortion. There is something else – something I have seen in my philosophy classes. The cause of both is in the realm of philosophy – philosophers have ultimately caused both, and only philosophers can, in the end, end both, and both need to be ended for they stem from the same philosophy (and I do not mean the “contraceptive mentality”). It is, unlike what some Catholic pro-life apologists might say, not a recent occurrence. It is as old as philosophy itself – and is tangential to the seemingly eternal debate between Plato and Aristotle. It is not new, but it has risen anew in recent times.
But, perhaps, I am simply an Classicist drunk from Vergil before his time.
Leila, commenter up near the top, summarizes my views pretty well.
I would only add that probably 99% of the American population has no idea that the standard birth control pill — “THE Pill” — is, in fact, abortifacient in 2 to 10 percent of monthly cycles. I.e., if you are on the Pill, there is a not-inconsiderable likelihood that you have, in fact, had one or more very-early abortions. Thanks to the “breakthrough ovulation” that is a feature of the modern Pill, fertilization can indeed take place, and that is where the abortifacient pharmacological mechanism kicks in: The Pill alters the uterine lining so that the newly conceived embryo cannot implant, so he or she starves/suffocates to death and dies, and passes out of the mother’s body without her ever even knowing she was pregnant.
Thus, millions of pro-life women who would never dream of having a surgical abortion have unwittingly had chemical abortions because of being on the Pill.
The abortifacient mechanism is clearly described in the drug manufacturer’s pamphlet, it’s just that the print is so fine, and the language so technical, and the text so long, that even most doctors have never bothered to read it.
http://www.pfli.org/faq_oc.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiCU46_lWeE
Olivia, as an otherwise liberal and secular pro-lifer, I am distressed that you would qualify any human person based on their development. A 12 week old fetus is of lesser value than a 32 week old fetus? WHAT NOW? So, my daughter is worth more now, as a ten year old, than she was when she was 2? Because now she can ride bikes and use the computer and take a shower herself, and isn’t as dependent on me? As unfair as I think the “anti-birth control” crowd is, I respect them more because they respect the lives of BOTH women AND their babies. Life is a continuum. It begins at one point and ends at another. We have NO RIGHT to decide when to end a life that already exists.
As for “the other half”…..some pro-lifers are religious, some are not. Some, like me, fight for gay rights, others may think it is a sin. We are a more diverse group than most abortion advocates would like to believe.
I am truly vexed by those on here who consider contraception a form of abortion. Seriously? It prevents the need for abortions.
I was on the Pill for a decade and never got pregnant. A clump of cells to me is just a clump of cells. Taking away contraception is yet another way to control women via reproduction. The thought of it is ABSURD!! But you all will never beat Big Pharma.
As for you, Mary Lee, an unborn fetus of 12 weeks is completely unaware of its existence. If my mother had aborted me, I never would’ve known. You are being obtuse on purpose. My point was that one fetus cannot survive outside the womb while the other one can. You can’t compare your very much born and living on this planet children to those in utero. It’s apples and oranges.
I think the answer to the question is a slightly qualified yes.
Most of you are against abortion at any stage which also means that you are against some contraceptives because they may impact after fertilization.
Some of you are OK with pre-fertilization type contraceptives.
Some of you are against anything at all which may stand in the way of or prevent fertilization.
Therefore most of you are against contraception most of the time (as a rough guesstimate).
So it is a pro-life issue.
That’s just my broad stab at a response of course.
Olivia 9:3oPM
You didn’t answer my queston. I didn’t ask about a 12 week fetus as opposed to a 32 week one. I asked why abortion wouldn’t be an easy decision.
A fetus is completely unaware of its existence. You know this for a fact how?
“As for you, Mary Lee, an unborn fetus of 12 weeks is completely unaware of its existence.”
Humanity isn’t dependent on sentience or awareness. A coma victim isn’t less human than you or I for not being conscious.
“My point was that one fetus cannot survive outside the womb while the other one can. You can’t compare your very much born and living on this planet children to those in utero.”
But the exact same fetus couldn’t survive outside the womb just a couple months earlier. I think ranking human worth on dependence or location is just nonsensical. At different times in your life, you will be completely dependent or completely independent of others. Your humanity and rights don’t change depending on your situation.
I think the upshot of it is, not all of us want children. And we will do whatever we have to do to prevent conception. I say that if my contraception failed, I would have an abortion. I don’t say this because it’s an easy thing to do. I’ve been down that road before and it sucked.
I am using the IUD and it has a less than 1% failure rate. That being said, even people in couples who have been sterilized risk conception. My view is that if you are doing everything possible to prevent conception and it happens anyway, abortion is the next logical step for most of us. I am still confounded as to why so many of you are against contraception. Preventing abortions seems to be the most important issue here.
Mary,
I was a fetus once. I remember NOTHING about it. I’m sure this is true of fetuses in general. My answer to you regarding the difference between a 12 week old fetus and a 32 week old fetus was in my original answer to you. One fetus can survive outside the womb while the other one can’t. And you can’t compare your living, breathing on this planet daughter to a fetus. Apples and oranges, as I said before. And no, abortion would not be easy. But it’s my legal right. Abortion would not be an easy choice because I work in Obstetrics and I know how developed a fetus is at various stages. I’m not stupid. I know abortion is taking a potential life. But it should always remain legal.
Olivia
My view is that if you are doing everything possible to prevent conception and it happens anyway, abortion is the next logical step for most of us.
This statement is a good example of the reason I do believe contraception is a pro-life issue. Also the abortifacient effect of hormonal contraceptives leads me to that conclusion as well.
Olivia,
Do you have any memory of being a newborn? Is this proof positive that newborns are unaware of their existence?
The 32 week fetus outside the womb is as dependent on another human being for survival as inside the womb. This is not an individual capable of independent life.
So please answer my question. Why isn’t abortion an easy decision?
I will say this. My niece was conceived on the Pill. I love that kid more than my own life. My sister got pregnant a second time on the Pill, but miscarried. The Pill worked great for me for 10 years. But I’m relieved to be using a contraceptive now that has such a high success rate.
Mary,
I did answer your question. Abortion is not an easy process for ANYONE to go through. I work in Obstetrics. I see sonograms daily and hear heartbeats. When I had an abortion in my early college years, I knew how developed the fetus was and that made it harder. But it didn’t change my mind. I made the right choice but I knew exactly what I was doing. I never want to go through that again. A fetus is a potential life. No one can deny that. So that’s why it’s hard.
Olivia
If abortion was so difficult, then why wasn’t an adoption an option for you? You could have given the child to a loving family, and avoided the pain of ending a “potential life”.
Olivia,
So you do acknowledge then that abortion is the destruction of a human life. Of course contraception is easy, it prevents the formation of a new life. Abortion destroys it after it has begun.
That explains why you don’t consider abortion an easy decision. Thank you for answering my question.
BTW, do you have any memories of being a newborn?
A fetus is a life, whose potential you seem to value Olivia. So if you were to get pregnant, why not let that life live to reach its potential? You could always put your child up for adoption if you don’t want to raise him/her yourself.
Obtuse, Olivia? Hardly. I have a couple of graduate degrees and understand biology. So as 12 week old doesn’t meet your criteria of a valuable person because he can’t say “Oh, mummy, look at me doing math and expressing my feelings with words!” Pffft. There are people OUTSIDE the womb who aren’t self-aware. All babies need help surviving. Heck, all PEOPLE need other people to survive. Who cares that a 12 week old fetus can’t write an essay on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave….your argument is relativist, arbitrary, functionalist, and is not based on anything but the old pro-abort belief: “I have a right to kill my child based on whether or not he or she is convenient to my own, more important life.” That’s a yucky way to think. *shudders*
It is not a potential life. It IS a life. I haven’t reached my full potential yet either. I’m fluent in French and Italian, but haven’t mastered Portuguese yet. When I do, I guess I’ll have more value!
We ought to stop basing the value of life on what that life DOES, how it looks, and instead have only one set of criteria….Is it a unique person with his or her DNA and a heartbeat? Good. That’s all it should take. Our right to exist, to live, is fundamental, and it is based on what we ARE, not what we “do.”
If you’re not against contraception, you’re not pro-life.
I think that attitude is a lovely way to splinter the movement, Bruce.
I have a question for Olivia. Hypothetically speaking, if some new technology came out tomorrow that pushed the age of viability back to 12 weeks, are you saying that abortion would become impermissible at 12 weeks?
CC:
Sex is a natural act, just like digestion.
——————————————-
I mean seriously! It happens subconsciously at all times, running in the background without our direct interaction. It just happens! And without it we’d die!
Thanks CC! That was a great laugh!!!
Olivia: My view is that if you are doing everything possible to prevent conception and it happens anyway, abortion is the next logical step for most of us.
There you go, folks. That’s why we say abortion is the fruit of the contraceptive mentality. Because it is simply the next logical step after contraception.
Olivia, you may work in Obstetrics, and you may hear heartbeats and view sonograms every day, and you may know the development of a fetus, but you are as blind as they come. You do not see. You look at the child in the womb but you see nothing but cells and tissues and “potential.” The baby in the womb is not a “potential” human being but a human being with the potential to grow, change and become, just like you. Abortion is hard because you know it is wrong to kill the child in the womb. There’s no rationalization or sophistry that can ever make it okay. Why on earth should it always be legal to destroy our own children??
I used to take part in vigils outside Planned Parenthood clinics, and they would hand out literature saying the Pill causes early abortions, and it made me wonder about some younger people who would show up in our group for a week or two and then drop out. See an earlier post on my own blog, http://roberttreat.blogspot.com/2011/04/upcoming-pro-life-events-plus-some.html
Olivia Dunham, you’re comments come from the “Fringe” of knowing about the birds and the bees. You must be new here. Perhaps from an alternate universe? :)
We can very well compare children born and living on this planet to children in utereo. They are not apples and oranges. They are ripe apples and soon-to-be-ripe apples.
And you call these “potential lives”? Really? I guess you really meant to compare apples and apple blossoms. In that case you really do need to study the birds and the bees to get the concept of fertilization.
Those heartbeat should have been your first clue on just how “potential” those lives were.
“Tony, I realize Ken’s comment wasn’t directed at me. I answered because I am very tired of those who act like people who use contraceptives are irresponsible and one step away from killing our kids.”
I agree Jack, especially if they’re using non-abortifacent methods like the diaphram, sponge, condoms and various forms of spermicide used with the diaphram, sponge has it automatically and some condoms have it automatically and block sperm as a last resort. That’s not killing a pre-natal fetus, unless you consider sperm a form of life and then in that case, that’s before conception.
Abortion is contraception taken to its logical and natural conclusion. First, one treats his or her own fertility and healthy reproductive capacities as a disease. Then, one treats pregnancy as a disease to be avoided. If the attempt to mutilate one’s healthy organ system fails, and an “illness” of pregnancy results, abortion is the next logical step. It does not surprise that this happens nearly all the time. According to statistics, some 90%+ of childbearing age women contracept, and yet we still have ridiculously high numbers of abortions. Why is this? Well, because once one separates procreation from coitus, and adopts an attitude that treats fertility as a disease, it is not much of a stretch to view pregnancy as a disease as well. Contraception is anti-life by nature, and one cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception.
And, for that matter, one cannot also be pro-homosexual and pro-life either. The two are mutually exclusive.
I may be a liberal, but I’m not a libertine. I don’t condone sexual promiscuity,or people having reckless,irresponsible sex. This is NOT a good idea. But the fact remains that this kind of irresponsible sexual behavior has always existed and always will.
It’s totally unrealistic to expect people never to have sex unless they are married , not to use contraception of some kind, and also expect and demand that no woman ever have an abortion. This is pie in the sky. An absolute impossibility. People SHOULD be careful about sex. But not all of them are.
Last night, I watched a ludicrous and pathetic speech by Dr. Janet E. Smith, a leading Catholic theologian on EWTN. She cited all manner of bogus statistics about the supposed dangers of contraceptives,and all kinds of absolute bunk about how destructive they are. This woman is a fraud and a liar.She is totally biased and distorted the facts for her own foolish anti-choice and anti-contraception agenda.
“She cited all manner of bogus statistics about the supposed dangers of contraceptives”
Wow, that is really impressive that you were able to dig up all the papers and articles containing all the statistics she was referencing without any kind of citations, only relying on your memory of what she said, read through all the papers carefully, and find exactly where the errors are in order to confidently be here today to say that they are all indeed “bogus”! All in only about 12 hours.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FnwvgdG&h=vAQAC4ybQ
My take: Contraception is a bigger issue than pro-life. It’s at least that, but it’s more than that. And I think many pro-life Catholics have damaged the pro-life cause for thinking the pro-life perspective owns the contraception issue.
Contraception is most fundamentally, IMO, concerned with the most fundamental social relationship among people — man and woman. And child, where contraception fails. Where contraception fails, abortion’s an option for many because, in part, like contraception it’s about controlling outcomes.
Seriously, I think many Catholic pro-lifers drop the ball badly on this one. I’ve seen way, way too many cases where Catholics expect secularist pro-choice folk to step over two lines (abortion and contraception) instead of just one (abortion). I consider that borderline insane. If a person can’t accept the premises of pro-life, there’s no way they’ll hear the more sophisticated argument against contraception. You’ve increased the distance your interlocutor needs to go to satisfy YOU, not to value life. And because they see that further distance as part and parcel of your pro-life position, they’re less likely to go the further distance for reasons they now consider less compelling.
When pro-lifers do that, it’s as if they want pro-choicers to become more recalcitrant.
Bruce, your remarks are right there. The effect of insisting on the importance of contraception is that you alienate those you might win over to opposing the destruction of existing human life in the womb, all because you hold in contempt their willingness to prevent life in the womb. That’s purist ideology with no sense of proportion.
Win the argument that saves lives and redeems killers. Then they’ll be in a place to understand implications of contraception for family life — and beyond — that may have escaped their notice in their days of madness among the pro-choice.
This woman is a fraud and a liar.
If you are going to call someone a liar, you really should back it up. What did she specifically lie about Robert?
To amend:
For some of you who imagine that abortion is “the fruit of contraception” or somesuch — no, not NECESSARILY, at the personal level (sociologically, you have a point). It may well be generally true that those willing to abort rarely have any principled objection to contraceptive use, and indeed do use it. But it’s certainly broadly false that those who use contraceptives, by so doing, indicate that they have no principled objection to abortion. Vast numbers of pro-lifers — active ones, mind you — who are not Catholic simply don’t get this association in the minds of their Catholic friends. You may deem them misguided or lacking a full understanding (recommending they read EV is a great idea), but you’re not rationally entitled to talk as if embracing contraception ENTAILS tolerance of, or use of, abortion. It does not. However, willingness to abort probably does, indeed, suggest willingness to use contraception.
People who are willing to prevent pregnancy are not necessarily willing to terminate one by killing an unborn child. People who are willing to kill an unborn child, on the other hand, would certainly have no objection to preventing ones conception.
On the other hand, some folks over-react to Catholic pro-lifers by adopting an uncritical defense of contraception, and pooh-poohing genuinely alarming facts regarding the health effects of some forms of contraception. Also, Catholic arguments against contraception, at their best, are sophisticated (not sophistical) and incisive. It’s unfortunate that few laypersons or priests are good exponents of these arguments, often giving them a bad reputation through fallacious representation.
Logic, folks. Use it.
Also, natural family planning is fun, sexy, adventurous, open to life, and free of anxiety in general. It’s not for everyone, to be sure — though some folks who use other methods at one point in life may opt for natural family planning at another. It would be irrational to reject natural methods preferred by Catholics simply because they sometimes poorly argue their case.
That was VERY WELL SAID, Rasqual! I am not against contraception, but I am whole-heartedly against abortion. Abortion is not birth control; it is murder. As I’ve stated before, though I use birth control, my husband and I are open to the possibility that it may fail and we would welcome the life that would be created. I understand why the Church is against contraception, and I respect that; however, I am not less pro-life than any those who disagree with me. There is a difference between contraception and abortion—though I can see that abortion supporters cannot see the difference between preventing pregnancy and killing a baby. Abortion, to them, is a form of birth control, no matter how much they claim it’s a “difficult” and “personal” decision.
I’m Catholic. I’m against contraception. I see a link between abortion and contraception. However, I would never say this: “If you’re not against contraception, you’re not pro-life” and I don’t believe it to be true.
Catholics are not the downfall of the pro-life movement.
I don’t think Catholics are the downfall of the pro-life movement. But I do think Catholics who expect that pro-choicers must repent of two things–not merely one–are prolonging their Babylonian captivity.
Pro-life’s strongest arguments and highest stakes are concerned with abortion.
Pro-life’s most sophisticated arguments (burdening one’s uninterested pro-choice interlocutor beyond their willingness to consider) are concerned with contraception.
If the connection is as real between the two as Catholic pro-lifers assert, then by winning the stronger arguments against abortion you’ll put the ex–pro-choicer in a position where they’re infinitely more open to the more sophisticated arguments against contraception.
But as long as there’s a critical mass of “all or nothing” purists ranting, Pro-choice gets another chance to demagogue: ”See? They’re just using abortion as an excuse to further their broader agenda of outlawing contraception.” C’mon, folks, you’ve seen it. You’ve seen the demagoguery. And then you have to defend yourself against THAT, sapping energy from the pure, simple, central premise: the unborn should be welcome in life and protected by law (not “the unconceived should not be denied an opportunity to come into existence!”).
“Hands off my uterus” as a slogan isn’t so simple when there’s an unborn child in there — it’s just callous. Y’know what, though? It really is that simple when there’s no child in there, and the woman is merely asserting that she has a right to use contraception. She does.
Humanae Vitae was prophetic and 100% correct. Anyone who wants to understand why Catholics say abortion is the fruit of contraception should read it. It’s a continuum… it starts with contraception. Yes, not ever contracepting couple will go on to abort, but that doesn’t mean that abortion is not the logical, even natural fruit of contraception. Widespread contraception use opened the floodgates to all the sexual debauchery and death we’re living in. It opened the door to the destruction of marriage, fidelity, and the family in general.
Pope Paul VI was absolutely right. He spelled out the mess we’re in long before we got here, but no one wanted to believe him or listen.
As a Catholic pro-lifer, I think any birth control that can affect a human embryo after conception is abortifacient and directly a pro-life issue. True contraceptives (that act prior to fertilization) are a moral issue and certainly part of the larger discussion surrounding sexuality and the human person, but they are not a direct issue for the pro-life movement. Someone can use true contraceptives and be pro-life as long as they are committed to never ending an innocent human life as a way of dealing with the consequences of contraceptive failure.
Having said that, I don’t think we need to bar discussion of the broader issue of contraception. For example – an earlier commenter said the following: “not all of us want children. And we will do whatever we have to do to prevent conception. I say that if my contraception failed, I would have an abortion.”
This is what people are talking about when they talk about the contraceptive mentality – the notion that you’re entitled to sex without consequences to the point of killing innocent human lives that result from your actions. Abortion becomes a backup for contraceptive failure. Not all people who use true contraceptives fall into this category (I wanted to bold that lest people read the first part and freak out – not to shout), but b/c many do I think it can still be a useful topic of conversation.
A question to hose against contraception, do you think unfettered fertility is good for women and good for America. I’m not talking about NFP (which i will lump in with birth control and which doesn’t ever allow a woman to have sex during her prime time) I’m talking about unfettered fertility, who genuinely thinks that is good for women?
Also who would seek to make contraception illegal or only availible to married couples?
I’m talking about unfettered fertility, who genuinely thinks that is good for women?
Fertility is naturally “fettered,” Shannon. A woman is only fertile for an extremely short window of time every month, and in that short window of time, there is about a 25-35% chance that she will conceive.
So, you’re basically asking us if we think it’s impossible for women to abstain from sex for, at most, a week out of every cycle. The reality is that it’s more like 3-5 days, but I’m being generous here.
The question I would have to ask is, in regards to hormonal contraception, is it genuinely good for women and young girls not yet sexually mature to take artificial (and carcinogenic, according to the WHO) hormones which sabotage a perfectly healthy, functioning reproductive system, causing it to “think” it’s continually pregnant?
Shannon:
do you think unfettered fertility is good for women and good for America. I’m not talking about NFP (which i will lump in with birth control and which doesn’t ever allow a woman to have sex during her prime time) I’m talking about unfettered fertility, who genuinely thinks that is good for women?
So by unfettered fertility you mean what? A woman in her natural state of fertility (barring health issues) wherein she ovulates and is fertile for a couple days a month? If that’s what you mean, then I think there is nothing wrong or unhealthy about a woman in her natural state of fertility. It’s not a defect that needs to be cured or fixed.
If instead you mean do I think mindless reproduction is good for women or America – obviously no. Sex and reproduction are very serious decisions and should be treated as such.
Also who would seek to make contraception illegal or only availible to married couples?
I would not seek to bar access to true contraceptives. Abortifacients should be banned as methods of contraception.
Contraception is indeed the premiere Pro-life issue – if it weren’t for the widespread use of contraception, abortion would never have come out of the “back alley” and onto Main Street. Why did the U.S. Supreme Court have to rule on Griswold vs. Connecticut (ending any remaining illegality concerning contraception)? Simply, to pave the way for Roe vs. Wade. Planned Parenthood knows only too well (and a number of former abortionists, Planned Barrenhood employees, etc. have admitted as much), that first providing the apple of contraceptives to young people is “good for business” – after they bite into this sin, their respect for the sacredness of human sexuality declines, and they’re soon back – now to kill their newly-conceived son or daughter. Contraception is the primary fuel that runs that diabolical organization.
Contraception has become such an “American Way of Life”, so established as a bedrock foundation to the often obscene levels of American consumerism and suburban materialism, that even many Pro-lifers aren’t able to see this “forest for the trees”. Fr. Paul Marx (R.I.P.), who established the world’s largest and most expansive Pro-life organization (HLI – Human Life International), and who had visited and established HLI affiliates in nearly (90) countries worldwide, used to be tireless in publicizing what he’d seen the world over – that there is an inseparable link between contraception and abortion. The anti-lifers know this better than many seasoned Pro-lifers: First introduce contraception in a Third World country (usually joined at the hip with classroom sex education), wait a few years to thereby thoroughly corrupt the nation’s morals, then get legislators to introduce baby-killing legislation, and bingo – another statistic (poor country legalizes abortion).
In a word, contraception promotes selfishness, separating the procreative element of human sexuality from the pleasurable. Why has divorce skyrocketed since the introduction of the oral contraceptive pill? This should be most obvious.
The oral contraceptive pill can function as an abortifacient, the IUD is clearly so, and any other forms still function in causing egocentric selfishness between spouses. Contraception says “We don’t want a child” – making an excellent segue to abortion. It’s all about a total reversal of the once-natural love for and accommodating spirit towards new human life, and it all begins with contraception. To claim to be in favor of contraception but against abortion is tantamount to jumping-out of an airplane without a parachute, and so doing because you promised the pilot not to get hurt or killed when you reach solid earth.
It wasn’t until 1930, with the Church of England’s Lambeth Conference decision to allow the use of contraception (“for the gravest of circumstances”, etc.), that Christendom broke from its former unity in universally seeing the evil of contraception – it was the proverbial “no-brainer”. In the following years, this disregard for human life (through contraception approval) spread like wildfire through effectively all of the Protestant Churches – now the Catholic Church remains alone (with at most a few small exceptions) in continuing to denounce this sinful attack on God’s gift of human procreation. Those still unconvinced should research Martin Luther’s 16th Century writings relative to contraception – he spoke in the most virulent terms in denouncing this scourge from hell.
Of course contraception is a Pro-life issue – it’s why were drowning in this Culture of Death today.
I’m not talking about NFP (which i will lump in with birth control and which doesn’t ever allow a woman to have sex during her prime time)
Shannon, practicing NFP does not mean a woman can never have sex during her fertile time. It means she will be aware that it is her fertile time and that there’s a higher likelihood that she will get pregnant. In fact, NFP is very effective for couples wishing to conceive.
The fact that someone has to ask if it’s “good” for a woman to be in her natural state of fertility says something. Fertility is now a disease that needs treatment. How sad.
Let’s face it. The Vatican’s policies on human sexuality,marriage and the family are atrocious. They cannot lead to anything but untold amounts of death and destruction. That’s how unrealistic and misguided they are. A bunch of foolish old men in robes expects all women to give birth even if they are far too poor to provide decent food, shelter, education and medical care for them or if a pregnancy would kill them or ruin their health. ‘
They expect that no one have sex unless married ,no on use contraceptives, and demand that no woman should ever have abortions. They demand that no one use erotica for self-stimulation ,and stupidly tell gullible faithful Catholics that God will send them to eternal damnation if they do this,. Unbelievable. You would think that God had infinitely more important matters to be co0ncerned with than this.
The Catholic church is anti-women,anti-children, anti-pleasure, and anti-people. What the Vatican demands is incredibly stupid and destructive.Sorry if I offended any Catholics,, here, but I’m far from being alone in feeling this way. I don’t hate Catholics as individual people ; but I’m appalled by everything the Vatican stands for.
KEL–I actually think the percentage is more like 40-41 percent that a woman can get pregnant at her most fertile time, but I’ll have to check that information again.
I’m a Catholic Woman who uses Natural Family Planning (NFP). My reasons for being against abortion and contraceptives are not limited to religious reasons. I have other reasons for opposing contraceptives.
Is contraception a pro-life issue?
Extensively study and research (and pray about if you believe in God) the claims in Fr. Klee’s post vs. the claims in Robert Berger’s post.
It really is not rocket science but common sense.
Let’s face it, Robert Berger, you know almost nothing about Catholicism.
Robert, this is a genuine question: are you under the impression that you have made a coherent and cogent argument that one, upon careful consideration, may find persuasive or at least be compelled to look into more deeply?
Actually, first things first- are you under the impression that you have simply made an argument?
contraception is POISON that disrupts natural functions. Its natural for a woman to have a monthly cycle. Pregnancy is the natural outcome of sexual love between a man and a woman.
It has led to irresponsibility and disrespect for humankind. Children are no longer seen as a gift but as a burden. Unexpected pregnancies are spat at and called tissue or blobs to get the woman to abort.
We have a huge divorce rate in this country. Many children growing up in broken homes with no father (and often no mother, but more likely to be no father).
Couples no longer wait for their wedding night. Sex is being sold as “fun” to CHILDREN as young as 11 or 12.
Birth control pill is a carcinogen!
KEL–I actually think the percentage is more like 40-41 percent that a woman can get pregnant at her most fertile time, but I’ll have to check that information again.
Well, I got my info from a NFP book a long time ago, but I seem to have lost it. :(
BabyCenter has the number at about 20%.
To everyone on here, I respect your positions but I will always be pro-choice. That is to say, for safe and legal abortions. The alternative is dead and dying women.
However, because I do work in Obstetrics, I cannot deny that life is what is growing in a patient’s womb. I see these children from the time they look like a kidney bean with a heartbeat until the day they are born. It is a miracle. I look at my niece and see a miracle.
As for me, the reason I am using the IUD is not just so I WON’T have synthetic hormones in my body, but also because of its effectiveness rate. 99.9%. I don’t want to have an abortion and to be honest, though I say I would have one if this IUD failed, I’m not sure that I would. No one knows until they’re in the moment.
One quick question: Why are IVF and other fertility treatments seen as wrong by some on here? Just curious.
One other thing. NOT EVERYONE WANTS CHILDREN!!! And I should be able to enjoy sex with my husband without the fear of falling pregnant. This is why we have contraception. And there is nothing wrong with being a family of two. My niece is enough kid for us.
My friend is Catholic. She has 8 kids and she’s not even 40 yet. Every time she had a child, she had to have a C-Section. By baby #8, her uterus ruptured and she almost died. She had to have a hysterectomy. This is crazy making stuff.
I have never sympathized more with the pro-choice slogan “keep your Bible off my body”. For sure, I will always against killing unborn children, but to judge and claim those who use a condom are one step away from abortion? Claim that people who are pro-life cannot approve of contraception? This stuff is why I spend half my abortion debates trying to show that I am not trying to get involved in people’s sex lives, Really, insistence on this just makes everyone look fringe and bad.
Olivia, people don’t like IVF because it destroys embryos, at least that is why I don’t like it. Others may have different reasons.
Oh dear. It appears that I am compelled to look into this argument more deeply.
Let’s face it. The Vatican’s policies on human sexuality,marriage and the family are atrocious. They cannot lead to anything but untold amounts of death and destruction. That’s how unrealistic and misguided they are.
Please picture a world in which couples stayed together for the duration of their life and were mutually faithful. Before becoming a couple, they spent years considering their decision and went to experienced couples for advice on their relationship. The couples worked together and with the natural state of their bodies, to plan a family. In this world, there would be less heartache from separated partners, virtually no STDs, no side-effects from artificial contraception, no absentee fathers, lower crime rates, a great respect for children (Which would be helpful for widows, orphans, and the poor families.) and more well-educated people. This would not be a perfect world. Husbands might still abuse their wives and children, but separation for that reason is not forbidden by the Catholic Church. This is the view that you find to be atrocious. So far, the only argument that I have heard against this view is that people will not be convinced to behave.
A bunch of foolish old men in robes expects all women to give birth even if they are far too poor to provide decent food, shelter, education and medical care for them or if a pregnancy would kill them or ruin their health.
An ad hominem attack is a logical fallacy. The Church helps provide the poor with food, shelter and education, as well as training on how to use NFP.
Haven’t you heard of religious women? You know, those ladies that are greatly respected by the Church even though they will never give birth?
Please look up the Church’s teaching when it comes to a woman who will certainly die if she tries to carry her child to term.
They expect that no one have sex unless married ,no on use contraceptives, and demand that no woman should ever have abortions.
What, exactly, is wrong with telling people how to live a better life?
They demand that no one use erotica for self-stimulation
Discipline is a good trait to cultivate.
,and stupidly tell gullible faithful Catholics that God will send them to eternal damnation if they do this,.
“Stupidly” is once again an ad hominem attack. So is “gullible,” but not “faithful.” The official teaching says that we don’t know how any individual will be judged by God.
Unbelievable. You would think that God had infinitely more important matters to be co0ncerned with than this.
Actually, sex is so beautiful and wonderful that God is very concerned about how we treat this gift. Will we ruin it or will we enjoy it?
The Catholic church is anti-women
How?
,anti-children,
How?
anti-pleasure,
Try anti-gluttony.
and anti-people.
I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
What the Vatican demands is incredibly stupid and destructive.Sorry if I offended any Catholics,, here, but I’m far from being alone in feeling this way. I don’t hate Catholics as individual people ; but I’m appalled by everything the Vatican stands for.
Wisdom, understanding, fortitude, knowledge, counsel, fear of the Lord and piety. Charity, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, patience, faith, modesty, self-control, chastity, gentleness and generosity.
Jack: YES!!!! Yes absolutely!!!! If I want to use contraception, that is my business, because it is MY BODY.
Once a child is conceived, there is another person’s body which must be loved and respected. But please, I am not less pro-life because I don’t practice NFP. Give me a break.
Olivia, the “dead and dying women” thing is played out and false. Bernard Nathanson ADMITTED THAT THEY LIED about the number of women who died from illegal abortions. Most illegal abortions were committed by doctors, not butchers.
Also, why don’t you abortion advocates try to find out WHY women feel the so-called “need” to abort? It’s not 1950 anymore. Women don’t live with the stigma that they did back then. We don’t have to kill our children to accomplish things. Women sought abortions because they thought their lives were over. Now we know that isn’t true. Now we know what abortion IS. There is NO SUCH THING as “safe, legal abortion.” It always kills a child, it is not necessary, and there are other, better, and more life-affirming answers to an unexpected pregnancy. I’m a rape survivor and was a single mother for years. Don’t tell me I’m not capable of having a baby AND finishing a degree. Pregnancy is not a disease. It is not a flaw. I do not need a destructive “medical” procedure to make me equal to men. Women are mighty; killing our children in the name of “choice” is scourge on all of us. It is not liberty; it is chaos. There is a difference between the ABILITY to do something, and the RIGHT to do something. There is a difference between liberty, and license. Pro-aborts want license. Killing our children is not a right—it never was, it never will be. And if women are so desperate that they feel the need to kill their babies to make their lives better, maybe we should help them at the source. Maybe we should give women more actual choices, maybe we should stop debasing human life, especially the life of our babies.
Ah, the IUD, or as I like to call it, the mini personal abortion device. You do know how it actually works? Well, of course you do! But as long as YOU aren’t inconvenienced, who cares how many embryos you’ve killed?
Natural Family Planning isn’t paradise but lots of people who use it say it works, hormone free, and good for the environment. I just love when hypocrites lecture us on who perpetrates death and destruction. Last I checked, the Catholic Church didn’t have the blood of tens of millions of developing children on its hands. Oh, and let me pre-emptively spare everyone the Crusades and Inquisition argument, because all together those deaths numbered about 200,000 over a period of 400 years and most of the Crusaders died of disease along the route.
Every woman who gets an abortion bleeds profusely, whether its chemical or surgical. And who’s blood is that besides her own? Oh, yes, her child’s. Now, last time I went to church, I didn’t exit bleeding, and I didn’t continue to bleed for 3 weeks.
You know, you abortion advocates are really hurting your own cause. I haven’t seen a single pro-lifer on this or any other site who suddenly changed into an abortion advocate due to your illogical and badly rendered so-called ‘arguments.’
Contraception was a difficult battle for me to decide on, and I think it may be a matter of each person’s heart and where they’re at with the Lord. Contraception is another false sense of control that each person struggles with in all aspects, even aside from children. The beauty of control is that it is an allusion, and the Lord is so good at ruining our silly plans to show us something greater. The Lord is in control at all times, no matter what, and so I think it could depend on where our hearts are and what we know we struggle with. I talked it out with my mother and did a lot of praying before I decided to remain on it. I’m on it for medical reasons firstly, and was never on it for contraceptive use until I got married. And I always told my doctors I wanted to have my monthly period because it was natural. I don’t think it’s healthy not to have it each month. It took me a few months to understand that if I was going to continue using contraception that I needed to remind myself daily to be willing and ready to receive a child when (and if) the Lord decided to bless us. I know simply taking a pill isn’t going to inhibit God’s work (as we all witness by the failure rates of any contraceptive method). If I remain faithful to Him and am not seeking to “control” my fertility, then I know He will understand my heart and medical need (as well as my husband’s, who seems more comfortable everyday with the idea of a child). To be truly honest, I don’t feel ready for a baby (I’m only 23 and about 6 months married), but I trust the Lord’s timing and when He says it’s time, I know it will be right and we will be ready. And of course excited! :)
I really think though that if someone struggles with giving these types of areas over to the Lord and trusting His timing for everything in their life, contraception may be an area to pray hard about. We need to trust Him with everything, and especially our children.
You can’t be pro-life and pro-contraception.
All right, guess I am not pro-life, since you personally define it Bruce. Blast me and my evil, condom-using ways!!
You can’t be pro-life and pro-contraception. It is really pretty simple to understand, and no acrobatics are required to justify this stance, unlike the opposing view. Unless one is utterly selfish, the purpose of coitus is two-fold, since it is naturally ordered toward the comprehensive union of male and female as well as the procreation of a child. Once one of those two ends are eliminated (either by means of separating the unitive from the procreative, as in IVF or separating the procreative from the unitive, as in contraception) you no longer have an ordered form of coitus, but something else. As a result, the value of the part that is neglected decreases. In the case of contraception, the value of the child is decreased and placed under that of the pleasure of the couple. In other words, pleasure is more valued than a human life. Likewise, in IVF, the child is placed at a higher value than the marital union of the spouses, which is a disordered relationship as well, harmful to both the spouses and the child. If you are going to claim to be pro-life, you must be consistent. Being pro-life means supporting ordered sexual activity, which is both unitive and procreative. Otherwise, you are inconsistent and hypocritical.
No one knows until they’re in the moment.
Wrong.
One other thing. NOT EVERYONE WANTS CHILDREN!!! And I should be able to enjoy sex with my husband without the fear of falling pregnant.
Are you opposed to sterilization for you and/or your husband?
I know I’ve said this before but more young prolifers need to go into obstetrics.
Jack, I have always been prolife (opposed to legal abortion) but was on the pill for years (did not realize it could cause abortion) and later used de evil condoms. It wasn’t until I started studying why the Church opposes contraception that I understood the relationship between abortion and contraception.
That being said, if you oppose abortion, you are prolife in my book. You may be interested in study Theology of the Body someday. It’s pretty interesting stuff.
Beautiful daughter btw.
Bruce, your Bible and your morals don’t tell me how to live, or tell me what I believe. I honestly think that people like you turn more people pro-choice than the most ardent abortion supporter.
Thank you, Praxedes. I don’t like the pill, but the time to argue about that is when elective abortion is illegal. I am simply SO tired of being told I am not pro-life enough.
I know I won’t change anyone’s minds, just as none of you will change mine. I use the IUD, which either immobilizes sperm to keep it from reaching the egg OR makes the uterus inhospitable to a fertilized egg.
I personally don’t think a clump of cells is the same as an 8 week old fetus. And doctors and scientists don’t consider a woman pregnant until the egg implants. Plus, even those practicing NFP may conceive and never know it, because the zygote gets flushed out with menstruation. This happens more than you realize. I don’t want children, so I will continue to use contraception until my husband gets fixed.
Plus, even those practicing NFP may conceive and never know it, because the zygote gets flushed out with menstruation.
You work in obstetrics but don’t know the difference between a human dying from natural causes versus someone choosing to kill a human? Goodness sakes.
CC: “Is it preachy to tell pro-lifers to keep their religiously based beliefs (sorry, folks, there is no ’scientific’ consensus on the morality of abortion because science doesn’t deal in morality)…”
The scientific consensus is that a new human being’s life begins at the moment of fertilization. Science, as you state takes no moral position, but it also seems obvious that African-Americans, Native Americans, women, and death-row inmates are human beings as well. We know that, scientifically, these are human beings; while science doesn’t have a moral stance on slavery, genocide, rape, or capital punishment, it doesn’t need to. Science “tells” us that all of the above (as well as human embryos) are human beings, and it is then up to us to decide that they need protection.
So the pro-life argument IS rooted in science, even if science, itself, doesn’t deal with morality.
Bobby Bambino: “That is a very sober, rational, and non-religious assessment [about contraceptives use], bmmg39. And just for those wondering, I don’t think bmmg39 adheres to a particular religion at all… or at least if (s)he does, (s)he has not ever mentioned it…”
Much obliged, Bobby. (Ah’s a “he.”) And, by the way, my religious beliefs are somewhat convoluted, but my stressing that one can feel weird about contraceptives without being religious doesn’t mean I’m ridiculing those who are religious. My position is that neither atheists nor devout believers deserved to be mocked for what they think.
Robert Berger: “Let’s face it. The Vatican’s policies on human sexuality,marriage and the family are atrocious. They cannot lead to anything but untold amounts of death and destruction.”
I love the “let’s face it” part as an attempt to add credence to some half-cocked comment that follows it. I’m also picturing a nation of cities with collapsed buildings and burning rubble — all stemming from the Catholic Church saying not to use the Today’s Sponge.
Wow.
A fertilized egg is a clump of cells that MAY grow into a full term baby. But until it implants, it’s just a clump of cells.
Jack said, “Bruce, your Bible and your morals don’t tell me how to live, or tell me what I believe.” I would like to ask you, Jack, where I quoted Scripture in my response to you? Methinks you are imagining things that are not there. Please go back and check my response once again, for if there is a Scripture quote in there, I shall stand corrected. One does not need the Bible to know that contraception is wrong, as I have shown. Jack also said, “I honestly think that people like you turn more people pro-choice than the most ardent abortion supporter.” I wonder why that is? Could it be guilt on your part? Its okay, we all have those feelings, and they are normal. Things I feel guilty about make me angry too. Try to look beyond the guilt and anger and view this subject objectively. You really cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception. It is a matter of very simple reason.
LaLa: Ultimate and perfect control is, indeed, illusory. But there are many things in this world we’re actually responsible for controlling — not optional — that likewise suffer from vulnerability to matters beyond our control. That incontrovertible fact does not imply that we’re somehow Quixotic, or fools, for making the effort.
I don’t think it’s fair to folks who use contraception to, from a distance, imagine inside our own heads that they’re engaging in a pathetic effort to control the uncontrollable. The book of Proverbs is about wisdom, which is generalized judgments about how life works. Many of the proverbs are generally true but sometimes not. That’s how wisdom works. That’s how generalizations work. That doesn’t mean as pronouncements they fail, because generalizations aren’t intended as some kind of 100% predictions. As generalizations they — and wisdom literature from other traditioons — succeed quite well in producing in us the desired effect: thinking about the world as it is as God’s creatures who bear ongoing responsibility for its state.
Likewise, if control of a thing works generally — whether it’s fertilizer on the crops (what good is it if weather prevents timely maturation?), Pasteurization (what good if folks leave it unrefrigerated?), weather prediction (heh), and so forth — if such control doesn’t yield the hoped-for result, does that mean one shouldn’t have made the effort?
That’s not an argument for contraception — it’s just denying that some arguments against it have merit, unless one is also willing to grant that other efforts to control things in this world are some kind of ill-advised delusion.
The Lord is in control of the weather — and yet farmers fertilize. And buy crop insurance. And that’s wise. Nor, though, is it mistrust in the Lord. It’s understanding his not-yet-redeemed world even if he, sometimes, is inscrutable.
Jen: Whoops, my bad, far above now. HV, not EV. Well, EV should be widely read by non-Catholics too. ;-) But please, please, understand that Catholic philosophy (which I take more generically as a strand of Christian philosophy) and what one seeks to implement in law (or oppose in law) are not necessarily identical. “The church says this” (often quite rightly) neither means “therefore, it should be in the USC”, nor does it mean that all church teachings are of equal importance — either for Catholics or if construed as something that should be public policy (or not).
Win the argument for not killing unborn children. THEN converts to life will see the wisdom of other things. If you insist that they cannot know the flower in the cranny wall until they know the world and all, then the result will be that they will know neither.
Robert: You’re insanely illiterate on Catholic teaching. But this is a good pairing with your bigoted generalizations, so you get bonus points for the perverse rational aesthetic!
KEL–Like I said, I’ll double-check.
Robert Berger: First of all I gotta give credit (a good hulking hunk of credit) to RCJC because he or she gave you an excellent response.
Second, I’ll add my answer to your claim that “The Chuch is anti-pleasure”
Do you even KNOW the Church’s view on sexual intercourse? Have you READ ANYTHING about JPII’s “Theology Of The Body”? (good resource on explanations of JPII’s “TOB” is Christopher West: http://www.christopherwest.com ).
The Catholic Church’s stance is, in shorten terms the following:
1. Made by God Himself.
2. Serves 2 MAIN Purposes.
Those 2 Main purposes are:
1. The reaffirmation of the marriage vows that were spoken verbally at the time of the wedding ceremony now spoken with the body through sexual intercourse. It’s a mutual self giving–this is what’s called “unitative”.
2. Being open to the POSSIBILITY of children. The Church knows that babies don’t happen with every single sexual union (this is true even for noncontracepting nonabortive couples). However, with every single sexual encounter the couple knows and recognizes that there is a possibility that a child could be conceived. To this end, the Church says the couple is to bring up any resulting children in a loving, caring home–that is NOT abort and NOT abuse–whether child was planned or a surprise pregnancy. This is what’s called “procreative”.
So every sexual encounter must fulfill both things.
The unitive quality of sexual intercourse is bound to be pleasurable for the husband and wife because God made it so. This is the reaffirmation of the marriage vows. The mutual giving and accepting of the husband for his wife and the wife for her husband.
The Church knows this and says that this ultimate complete self giving and accepting fully of one’s spouse is a GOOD thing–so the Church doesn’t frown on the couple experiencing pleasure for the sexual embrace, it frowns on a couple not accepting everything the sexual encounter MEANS.
Jack I was just about to say that no one is claiming you can’t be pro-life and pro-contraception when I see Bruce. So nevermind, bleh. I do think you can’t be pro-life and pro abortifacient birth control, but certainly you can use a condom and not be “one step away from abortion” as you put it.
The problem is that anytime you have sex you are one step away from possible pregnancy, contraceptive or no. And the farther SOME (not all) people get from that reality the more they start to think of pregnancy as some sort of grave injustice that no one who’s ONLY having sex (particularly ‘SAFE’ sex) should have to face. That’s where contraception and abortion cross paths. But use of a condom (or other true contraceptive), by itself is not a pro-life issue and I think most people on here agree with that from what I’m seeing in the comments.
I agree with Bruce and Fr. Klee on the morality of contraception, but Bruce, how can someone who opposes abortion, opposes abortifacients, opposes the destruction and mistreatment of embryos in IVF and ESCR not be pro-life?! They are on the side of the voiceless! I disagree with a lot of people on here about different issues, but pro-life is pro-life and the act of using a condom does not negate that, regardless of my reasons for believing it is otherwise destructive.
For what it’s worth, a true story:
One of my dearest friends in the world had her tubes tied years ago. She and her husband thought they didn’t need any more children. Not long after, she got pregnant anyway. Abortion was never even a consideration, but she did think about suing the doctor to make him pay the bills for her prenatal care and the delivery. In the end, she decided against a lawsuit, figuring it would only add stress and negativity to her already challenging life.
When the baby was born, she and her husband named the little girl Joy — because by then, they’d realized that what they’d first thought was an unwanted obstacle, was actually the greatest imaginable blessing, which God had lovingly intended just for them. I have watched Joy grow up to be a beautiful young woman who has always marched to the beat of a different drummer. She is an art prodigy, as well as a gifted linguist, teacher and writer. She has blessed, and continues to bless, many, many lives. Her parents are the first to tell you that God knew better than they did how many children they were supposed to have.
I don’t feel guilty, Bruce. I am irritated, because I constantly have to qualify how I don’t think gay people are immoral and I don’t think couples have to be “open to life” to have sex. You know how many people I have talked to who dislike the pro-life movement because they think it’s just some excuse to convert people?
I don’t believe there is anything inherently disordered with having sex without the intent of getting pregnant. It is ridiculous to think that you are going to convince some atheist pro-choicer that contraception is evil, when they have no qualms about separating fertility from sex, no more than I do.
Thank you CT. For the record, I understand why people think that contraception is immoral. However, nobody’s morality gets to proscribe what I or anyone else lawfully does in bed when it isn’t hurting anyone else.
Jack said: I don’t feel guilty, Bruce. I am irritated, because I constantly have to qualify how I don’t think gay people are immoral and I don’t think couples have to be “open to life” to have sex. You know how many people I have talked to who dislike the pro-life movement because they think it’s just some excuse to convert people?
I know your post is directed to Bruce, Jack, but perhaps I might be able to help with some of what you say.
In terms of “open to life” it doesn’t necessarily mean wanting a baby right at that very moment–it means that if the couple was to conceive a child they wouldn’t do anything to end the child’s life (like abortion) and bring the child up in a loving and caring home.
As a Catholic NFP user, I don’t always have sexual relations during the most fertile part of my cycle, but should I get pregnant I know that I’d love that baby and bring him or her up in a caring, loving home. I wouldn’t abort. It might not be easy, and I might be very surprised, but I wouldn’t do anything to end the child’s life.
Olivia,
You don’t want children, so you can do your very best to interrupt sex and take away it’s reproductive aspect, but you may not always be successful. Once conception occurs you already have children. They may never get a chance to implant b/c you made your body hostile to that possibility, you may kill them at some later stage of their development prior to birth, or you may let them live and actually meet them outside the womb. But the entity you meet in the hospital is the same entity that existed at the moment of conception. All it needs to get from one stage to the next is time and nutrition and regardless of which stage of it’s development you destroy it, you kill a specific human being.
The argument that many embryos and early pregnancies naturally don’t survive is irrelevant to the morality of taking deliberate steps to insure that they don’t.
Also: you don’t think an embryo is the same as an 8 week old fetus based on what criteria? At what stage in our development does it cease to be ok to destroy a human being?
Open to life once it exists, and open to life before it does, are very, very different things. The former is something any secularist can appreciate as a legitimate concern by pro-lifers. The latter becomes a matter of theological fanaticism in some quarters, and that’s a problem.
Why some pro-lifers wish to dilute strong pro-lifer arguments which compel on a secular basis, with theologically freighted concerns intramural to the Christian faith but not in the least compelling to those outside it, remains in immense mystery to me.
Some folks, I think, just operate in broadcast mode — if a thing is true, they feel compelled to ensure that others darned well know it. Alas, such folk don’t consider that some truths are far, far more important than others. And they should, because as pro-life activists they rightly consider the cause more important than whether a fish on some remote atoll goes extinct.
CT: “And the farther SOME (not all) people get from that reality the more they start to think of pregnancy as some sort of grave injustice that no one who’s ONLY having sex (particularly ‘SAFE’ sex) should have to face.”
Well it’s obvious from your remark that using contraception is not a sufficient cause of the lamentable final state you describe. If only “some” end up there, it’s not the use of contraception as such, it’s how they think about contraception.
Their ideational framework — not an accessory they hang on it — leads them to devalue life. The accessory may serve their framework, true. But a battery can serve both a suicide bomber and a missionary. True, contraception is not that neutral. But a suicide bomber will find another way without batteries, if you ban them or convince someone to stop making them available. Likewise, a person will not value unborn life more merely because contraception is denied them.
It’s my observation that many people are driven further into their ideas by having them countered against their will. If I’m hoping desperately that they’ll learn to respect unborn life, I’d find it counterproductive to alienate them needlessly on a related matter that’s of philosophical interest to me but of no practical value in their own judgment.
Where I argue that life is of practical value to the unborn and should be to everyone else, there’s a case to be made. Where I argue that folks who have no reason to share my faith ought to consider more expansive issues still: “OK, since you can’t understand the simplicity of respect for unborn life, let me help you out by unrolling this tapestry that more holistically lays out Catholic teaching in a more broad way.” Good grief. That’s great if you can get a hearing from some incredibly accommodating pro-choicer who possesses genuine intellectual curiosity about that (heh). But beating recalcitrant enemies of unborn life over the head with that is insane. I.N.S.A.N.E.
“In terms of “open to life” it doesn’t necessarily mean wanting a baby right at that very moment–it means that if the couple was to conceive a child they wouldn’t do anything to end the child’s life (like abortion) and bring the child up in a loving and caring home.”
I am aware of what reasonable people mean by it. I agree with that aspect. If my wife got pregnant there is no way we would have an abortion, no matte how little I want more kids. What I am talking about is people like Bruce who sit around and tell people they are disordered because they use non-abortive contraception.
Jack, you have yet to point out where I am debating you with the use of religion and the Scriptures. Until you can show me where I have done that, I cannot agree with your assertion otherwise. At the heart of this little argument, Jack, is the fact that you define sexual intercourse differently than what it actually is. It is the comprehensive bodily union of male and female naturally ordered toward procreation. Quite simply, that is all it is. Once one redefines or distorts that reality, it opens the door to all sorts of abuses, the end product of which is the taking of a human life in abortion or the total negation of human sexuality that is homosexual activity. In reality, neither contracepted sexual activity nor homosexual activity are any different, since both involve the distortion of sexual activity which places pleasure above all else, including human life. A consistent pro-life ethic not only opposes abortion, it also opposes the distortion of human life and authentically human activities, especially sexual intercourse. To suggest that one can be pro-life and pro-contraception is to be inconsistent.
There is no such thing as a fertilized egg as a noun. An egg is fertilized by the sperm and immediately there is a zygote which immediately starts to divide (grow). When was I me? Was I me when I was 5 years old? What about 2? What about newborn? Was I me at 12 gestation? Yes. That was ME in my mother’s womb. Was I me at 11 weeks? 8 weeks? 4? 1? Yes. I was me as soon as I as a zygote began to grow. I had all my DNA, I was alive, and I was growing. I do not start being me at some nebulous point along my mother’s pregnancy or during some specific point in my childhood. I can’t even believe it’s 2011 and some abortion advocate is still pushing that ‘clump of cells’ bs!! HELLO McFLY!!! You and I are a clump of cells right now, but I happen to have fingers that can type comments.
disordered because they use non-abortive contraception.
Jack–I think Bruce said that because of the 2 main purposes of the sexual union. One of those purposes is “unitive” (the reaffirmation of the marriage vows said with the body).
Sexual intercourse says (nonverbally): “I accept you, everything about you INCLUDING your fertility and I give you everything of me, including MY fertility.”
Contraception’s nonverbal message is: “I accept everything about you EXCEPT your fertility and I give all myself to you EXCEPT my fertility.”
I think that’s what Bruce means to say. I use Natural Family Planning (NFP) and NO contraceptives for religious AND for other reasons covering a whole spectrum from health to psychological/emotional reasons.
P.S. I didn’t see Bruce’s answer to you until I posted this post.
In the case of contraception, the value of the child is decreased and placed under that of the pleasure of the couple. In other words, pleasure is more valued than a human life.
What about a couple who uses NFP but avoids the fertile time of the month? Do you feel that during the infertile period, the couple is valuing pleasure more than a (not yet existing) human life? Do you believe that a couple who uses barrier-type contraception to avoid pregnancy is devaluing human life more than the NFP couple who avoids their fertile time? In either case, there is no new human life to speak of – no life has yet been conceived.
And do you believe that pro-life couples who find themselves pregnant – whether they have used NFP or barrier method – would somehow be unaccepting of a newly created human life?
Likewise, in IVF, the child is placed at a higher value than the marital union of the spouses
While I disagree with IVF, it’s more for reasons of embryo destruction, eugenics, and harmful, artificial hormones pumped into women’s bodies, as well as a very high failure rate which puts stress on the woman’s body as well as the emotional state of the woman and/or couple. The “marital union” aspect is low on my list of wrongs dealing with IVF.
Bruce,
Then your argument is that Jack is disordered in his thinking about sex. If he nonetheless would not harm a life that resulted from those disordered sexual relations and also defends the right of all unborn human beings to live – how is he not pro-life?
The most fundamental of questions man (meaning men and women) has wrestled with is why we are here and what is this thing called life all about. Is it a matter of “forcing religious beliefs into the debate” (Tony @ 9:31) when for millennia the world’s major religions and ancient to modern day philosophers have proposed answers to these questions within the framework of religious experience?
It is impossible to separate questions of life and our reason for existence from the question of preventing or eliminating life. They are really two sides to the same coin. Ergo contraception is a “life” issue and contextually a “pro-life” issue.
Jerry – very good post. Makes one think. More later. Cheers!
Jack said, “people like Bruce who sit around and tell people they are disordered because they use non-abortive contraception” Well, Jack, all people are disordered, for we are not perfect. But that aside, I was referring to the act of contracepted sex as being disordered, which it is. If my language was not as precise as it should have been, my apologies. But as for the act of contracepted sex, like homosexual activity, it is indeed disordered and anti-life.
” At the heart of this little argument, Jack, is the fact that you define sexual intercourse differently than what it actually is. It is the comprehensive bodily union of male and female naturally ordered toward procreation. Quite simply, that is all it is.”
Now see, I don’t care. Whatever sex naturally is, the fact remains that we are sentient beings that can tweak things for our comfort. We are naturally omnivorous and yet I don’t eat meat. How awful! I am disrupting the natural order of digestion.
” Once one redefines or distorts that reality, it opens the door to all sorts of abuses, the end product of which is the taking of a human life in abortion or the total negation of human sexuality that is homosexual activity.”
I use contraception, and me and our wife will never abort a child. That isn’t the necessary end product of contraception, it’s the end product of dehumanizing the unborn and the devaluing of human life. There isn’t anything wrong with gay people, I am not going to argue about it.
“In reality, neither contracepted sexual activity nor homosexual activity are any different”
I am surprised to find out I’m gay. My wife will be shocked. ;)
” since both involve the distortion of sexual activity which places pleasure above all else, including human life”
So, what you are really saying, it trying to restrict the reproductive aspects of sex, that means that you are simply hedonistic and devaluing human life. Mmmmkay. Since my wife and I do not want anymore children, should we abstain instead? I fail to see how that would strengthen our marriage whatsoever.
“A consistent pro-life ethic not only opposes abortion, it also opposes the distortion of human life and authentically human activities, especially sexual intercourse. To suggest that one can be pro-life and pro-contraception is to be inconsistent.”
Nope. You don’t define the movement. I am pro-life because I believe already conceived human life is inherently valuable. Whatever activities you personally believe are distorted, they are not required beliefs for a pro-life ethic.
In terms of “open to life” it doesn’t necessarily mean wanting a baby right at that very moment–it means that if the couple was to conceive a child they wouldn’t do anything to end the child’s life (like abortion) and bring the child up in a loving and caring home.
As a Catholic NFP user, I don’t always have sexual relations during the most fertile part of my cycle, but should I get pregnant I know that I’d love that baby and bring him or her up in a caring, loving home. I wouldn’t abort. It might not be easy, and I might be very surprised, but I wouldn’t do anything to end the child’s life.
I would agree with this, and I would add that I am of the opinion that use of barrier method birth control can function much the same way. If a pro-life couple uses a barrier method and finds themselves pregnant anyway, I do not believe they would suddenly become pro-abortion.
CT, you and I must have been typing at the same time, lol!
Jack, I like your comments and input. I think that pro-lifers aren’t all identical, but we do have our pro-life goal in common. Some people think none of us are pro-life enough.
If we had a contraception in pill form that wasn’t abortifacient, would I embrace it? I probably wouldn’t personally, but such a product would be a step in the right direction for people who are growing toward a respect for all life. Condoms? Well, the way PP throws them around, I think young people are being mislead. But if people know the risks and are willing to allow a child his or her natural lifespan if they get pregnant using them? That’s a step in the right direction.
Kel said, “What about a couple who uses NFP but avoids the fertile time of the month?” A non-contracepted act of coitus is still naturally ordered toward procreation, and therefore is still ordered and complete, even if it does not result in the conception of a child. The nature of the act is unchanged and unaltered, for it is still unitive and still ordered toward procreation. Perhaps an analogy will help. A baseball team is made up of a group of men who practice playing baseball and play games. Their activity is ordered toward winning, but they do not always win. When they lose, they are still playing baseball and they are still a baseball team. Their act is ordered toward winning. Now, if the baseball team decides to purposely lose the game, their activity is no longer ordered toward winning, and therefore, they are no longer playing baseball. It is a disordered game. The same is true of sexual intercourse. When a man and a woman engage in coitus, the act is always ordered toward procreation, even if it does not occur (i.e., they “lose”) through no fault or cause of their own (such as infertility, old age, etc). The game is unaltered (i.e., penis enters vagina and ejaculates without any barriers placed to prevent fertilization) and therefore ordered. If the couple places a barrier in the way (i.e., tries to lose the game) the activity is disordered in a manner akin to a baseball team purposely losing a game for some other goal (such as gambling). In the case of the couple who purposely “loses the game” and engages in a disordered act of sexual activity, the “other goal” is pleasure. It is disordered and anti-life, as a result.
Bruce: Is Jack not intellectually free to differ with you on the purpose of sex, and yet still value unborn life completely?
It’s naive to imagine that everyone who is pro-life will agree on such issues. That doesn’t make them any less a friend of the unborn. And if it makes them less friends of the unconceived, they share company with NFP practitioners.
It’s like moving the goalposts. We talk as if conception is when life begins and folks are obliged to respect unborn life, but then to those who share that belief we insist that they’re not worthy claimants to the pro-life name unless they consent that active prevention of conception is a sin. But NFP gets special pleading.
It’s madness.
Bruce, wearing braces on the teeth is not “naturally ordered.” It seeks to interfere with God’s intention for the individual as mediated by nature, with obvious narcissistic intent. Just as some people are infertile and should not engage in IVF under the “naturally ordered” rubric (which I respect, when not abused), some people are endowed by nature with bad teeth and really need to accept that.
“I am surprised to find out I’m gay.” The trouble is, Jack, that contraceptive sexual activity is no different than homosexual activity. Both are naturally ordered toward pleasure, and nothing else. In that way, they are identical.
Jack said, “You don’t define the movement.” And neither do you, for it is not a matter of opinion, but rather of fact. The fact is, that one cannot be consistently pro-life and support contraception.
Rasqual, I think I agree with you, though sometimes I can’t tell (my own limitations, I’m sure).
Jack,
What I am talking about is people like Bruce who sit around and tell people they are disordered because they use non-abortive contraception.
Well I think there’s a difference between countering someone’s claim that there’s nothing wrong w/ contraceptive sex with your own view versus claiming that the difference there separates you on the pro-life issue.
Not addressing anyone in particular,
It’s hard to imagine how contraception stays entirely out of the conversation when (a) some widely accepted ‘contraceptives’ are actually abortifcient and thus come up all the time in legitimate pro-life debate and (b) while banning contraception (which I wouldn’t support) may not make a person value human life, the wide use and availability of is does lead many people to devalue it.
rasquel said, “Is Jack not intellectually free to differ with you on the purpose of sex” Now you are at the heart of the argument, rasquel. Do you believe in objective truth and reality, or is there no such thing? I know that objective truth and reality exists, and the only freedom that exists is recognizing truth and reality. I am not free to define truth and reality as something which they are not. Jack disagrees that objective reality and truth exist, and therefore disagrees with me. This is at the very heart of the pro-life movement as well, for we believe that it is an objective reality that a fetus is a child with the right to live. Pro-abortion people disagree, and claim that the reality of a fetus being a child, or just a fetus, is purely subjective, and therefore whatever one believes is reality, since there is no such thing as truth. When Jack says, “you don’t define the movement” it begs the question, “who does?” I know who does. Do you?
“Well I think there’s a difference between countering someone’s claim that there’s nothing wrong w/ contraceptive sex with your own view versus claiming that the difference there separates you on the pro-life issue.”
CT, Bruce is flat-out claiming I am not pro-life if I don’t see a problem with contraception. See: “for it is not a matter of opinion, but rather of fact. The fact is, that one cannot be consistently pro-life and support contraception.”
“The trouble is, Jack, that contraceptive sexual activity is no different than homosexual activity. Both are naturally ordered toward pleasure, and nothing else. In that way, they are identical.”
I am pretty sure when my wife and I have sex we are not doing it solely for pleasure, anymore than NFP couples are.
Bruce,
Maybe the correct question is: Is Jack free to be wrong on the purpose of sex and still right on the issue of life?
CT, Bruce is flat-out claiming I am not pro-life if I don’t see a problem with contraception.
Yeah he definitely is. I was just quibbling w/ the wording of what you said to clarify. Maybe I get too anal in the mid afternoon slump.
Rasqel, the analogy between IVF and braces fails. Why does one need braces? Other than cosmetic reasons, which we shall ignore here, perhaps one cannot chew food properly. Braces provide a means to correct a boy’s ability to chew food and thus provide nourishment to his body. The braces are applied to the boy’s body and fix his ability to act in an ordered way. IVF does not work this way. IVF separates the act from the body. Using our boy analogy here, an “IVF-style” treatment for his inability to chew food would be to remove his teeth entirely and create a chewing machine to chew food. The act is separated from the body and is disordered. The boy’s teeth are not addressed and his ability to chew is not corrected, but replaced. In IVF, the couple’s ability to become parents through coitus is replaced, not corrected. The act is separated from the body, and is disordered as a result.
Without sounding like I’m trying to drop the hammer on couples who happen to use contraceptives, they’re not comparable to homosexuals. Contraception is about making a deliberate decision to hinder the likelihood of conception (at least on a temporary basis). Gays and lesbians are engaging in the act of sexual love with people to whom they are romantically attracted. I seriously doubt anyone is saying, “Well, I can either have sex with THAT person and maybe have a baby, or I can have sex with THIS person of my same gender and not have a baby! All right!”
Bruce: Fine. Jack is not consistently “pro-life.”
However, he believes the unborn should be welcome in life and protected by law.
Nice to have that cleared up!
Is everyone now content with how terribly important it is to own the label?
Yeesh.
bmmg39: Right. Interestingly, homosexuals could use contraceptives and not run afoul of Bruce’s concern. They may be disordered with respect to being homosexual, but they could engage in the same precise contraceptive acts (ridiculous as that is) as heterosexuals, and this would not be disordered because it’s not effective in preventing some potential from becoming actual.
Thus, something that is utterly ridiculous would at least not run afoul of the criticism that it’s disordered. :-/
Thus, during gay sex gays fail to sin in a way which, alone, would constitute sin among otherwise non-sinning heterosexuals.
And the secular pro-choice mind is supposed to appreciate this and be won over, nodding assent while stroking their chin at its recondite wisdom?
I understand what Bruce is saying. What I don’t understand is any claim for parity in the valence of the contraception and the abortion issue. I’m not entirely sure even Bruce would go there, if he could be weaned off the importance of the pro-life label and who’s apparently entitled to it.
If I call myself pro-already-conceived-life, but heinously morally corrupt on every other issue, is that good enough Bruce?
CT asked “Is Jack free to be wrong on the purpose of sex…?” Well, that begs the question as to whether one can be free to deny any reality. Am I free to deny gravity exists? Well, not as I am falling to my death from a building. The reality exists, and I am not free to deny it, for I cannot stop myself from falling to a gruesome death. So, no, Jack is not free to be wrong on the purpose of sex, because he cannot do anything about the reality of sex. It simply exists, and he has no ability to change it anymore than he can stop the sun from rising. Can he still be pro-life? I would say no, because life springs from the sexual union of coitus. To disorder the spring is to disorder the river. It is an inconsistency.
“Can he still be pro-life? I would say no, because life springs from the sexual union of coitus. To disorder the spring is to disorder the river. It is an inconsistency.”
What the heck ever, dude.
“The trouble is, Jack, that contraceptive sexual activity is no different than homosexual activity. Both are naturally ordered toward pleasure, and nothing else. In that way, they are identical.”
I am pretty sure when my wife and I have sex we are not doing it solely for pleasure, anymore than NFP couples are.
Wow. So using a barrier, non hormonal contraceptive method of birth control is akin to homosexual activity? I gotta say that’s one I haven’t heard before.
I agree with Jack, here. It’s pretty insulting to claim that a pro-life, married couple who uses non-abortifacient birth control is somehow “disordered.”
Jack has children. Jack does not deny the purpose of sex, but the fact remains that since a woman is only fertile a few days each month, the purpose of sex is not for procreation alone, but also for pleasure and marital unity.
Actually, rasquel, all homosexual activities are disordered. Such activity is a corruption of the purpose of the organ system formed by male and female, which is also corrupted in contracepted sex. In terms of ends, homosexual activity and contracepted sex are no different, for the end is simply pleasure. This is actually the heart of the gay “marriage” movement as well, and they are correct to equate the two. To be pro-life, one must reject the corruption of sexual activity, for such activity selfishly places pleasure above the life-creating purpose sex is naturally ordered towards. It is a short walk from contraception and homosexual activity to abortion. In fact, it is only at arms-length away. You cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception.
Jack: “What the heck ever, dude.”
So, folks, Bruce is incapable of convincing someone who opposes abortion, on this issue.
And some of you think you’re going to do better with those who favor abortion rights, convincing them of the importance of contraception as a pro-life issue?
I mean, if you can’t convince pro-lifers (pace Bruce), how do your deluded brains think you’re going to convince secularist abortion advocates?
Please.
“Jack has children. Jack does not deny the purpose of sex, but the fact remains that since a woman is only fertile a few days each month, the purpose of sex is not for procreation alone, but also for pleasure and marital unity.”
Thank you Kel. I fail to see how wanting to enjoy time and bonding with my wife without making kids I can’t afford to raise makes me disordered. Or not pro-life.
“And some of you think you’re going to do better with those who favor abortion rights, convincing them of the importance of contraception as a pro-life issue?
I mean, if you can’t convince pro-lifers (pace Bruce), how do your deluded brains think you’re going to convince secularist abortion advocates?”
Amen, exactly Rasqual.
Kel said, “Jack does not deny the purpose of sex” Only sometimes, for he is inconsistent, as we have already agreed. It is okay for him to be hypocrite, for we all are, especially me. But that aside, it does not give us the freedom to deny what is right and true about human sexuality and the disordered activity of contraception. Contracepted sexual activity is disordered, for it purposely alters the nature of the act to re-order it toward something other than what it is for. To deny one of the two ordered-ends of sexual activity is to render it disordered. A wife on birth control having sex with her husband is no different than two men engaging in sexual activity or two women engaging in sexual activity. All of these actions are disordered and anti-life.
” A wife on birth control having sex with her husband is no different than two men engaging in sexual activity or two women engaging in sexual activity.”
And now I know why I have such trouble convincing my pro-choice friends that the pro-life movement isn’t insane.
Actually, rasquel, whether or not I “win” by convincing Jack on this topic does not make or break me, for I realize that this world is imperfect. All we can do is point to what is true and real and call what is disordered, disordered. The fact that many reject truth is neither new nor surprising. It is part of the human condition.
A wife on birth control having sex with her husband is no different than two men engaging in sexual activity or two women engaging in sexual activity. All of these actions are disordered and anti-life.
This statement is unbelievably twisted.
If the other Catholics on this board agree with this – that marital sex using birth control is just like homosexual sex – then you all need help.
Jack, how is the pleasure-orientated genital activity between you and your wife any different than the pleasure-orientated genital activity between two men? Both result in orgasms. Both involve heavy breathing and embrace. Neither create life nor is life even wanted. The fact of the matter is, they are no different, and it is only “insane” to actually deny reality and think that they are.
Can you explain how it is different, Kel?
I am just about done with this conversation, before I start saying naughty words and uncharitable things about Christians that I don’t really believe. Really, Bruce, listen to yourself. You are deliberately alienating a good portion of people who will aid in the fight to protect the unborn simply because of things you believe are true. Look at the damn poll, about half of pro-lifers disagree with you. Like it or not, the pro-life movement NEEDS people like me, more liberal and non-religious people, who can talk to secularists on their terms.
The posts comparing using contraceptives to homosexual activity makes me think of a couple of propositions in California in 2008. Prop 4 would have required parental consent for a minor to have an abortion, while Prop 8 defined marriage as between one man and one woman. Prop 8 passed, while Prop 4 didn’t. The lady who helped me get back into pro-life after too long an absence was an avid supporter of both propositions. She was a very dear, sweet lady, but I can’t help wondering if Prop 4 might not have passed if the work on Prop 8 hadn’t drawn energy away from the Prop 4 campaign.
To be inconsistent on life is to abdicate the pro-life position. The reality of the matter is this: When push comes to shove, a pro-life person supports authentic marriage and opposes contraception. A pro-choice person balks on those. That is the heart of the matter, and no success will be gained for pro-lifers by conceding on contraception and homosexual activity.
Alrighty Bruce. I am pro-choice then. And gay as well, apparently. See you at Mardi Gras while I revel in my hedonism!
Bruce, I don’t see too many Catholics backing you up on this one. If you really believe men having sex with men is the same as married men and women having sex with a condom, I don’t think any explanation will be good enough for you. I’m still in shock that you actually believe this. I didn’t know anyone thought this way.
Kel–I think I see what Bruce is trying to say, but it’s rather hard to explain.
I THINK (but I could be wrong) that Bruce is saying that contraception is similiar and akin to Homosexual in that in both instances they are not fulfilling the 2 main purposes of sexual union that is: unitative AND procreative (which I explained what unitative and procreative meant in an earlier post of mine on this thread, but if it needs to be repeated, just let me know).
He went about it in a roundabout way if that’s what he meant to say, but that’s what I got from it.
Jack, one does not need to lack faith or be “liberal” in order to speak with liberal atheists. Nothing I have posted relies on faith, but rather reason and the natural law, which is common to all mankind. Using simple reason, contraception can be shown to distort and disorder the act of coitus. No faith is required to recognize that reality. On the contrary, it is those who disagree who make bold statements of faith, for their assertions can neither be proven as true nor understood through the use of reason.
Like it or not, the pro-life movement NEEDS people like me, more liberal and non-religious people, who can talk to secularists on their terms.
Jack, people like Bruce aren’t only alienating non-religious liberal pro-lifers – they’re alienating religious, non-Catholic pro-lifers like me.
I have done pro-life work for a long time – and I currently work for Jill, so I still am – but I’m just not pro-life enough, am I?
Kel said, “I don’t see too many Catholics backing you up on this one.”
Is it necessary for one who claims to be Catholic to agree with me on this issue? I didn’t know that was part of it, and I also never claimed to be Catholic either. But I digress, if Catholics agree or disagree with me on this issue, they are either accepting reason and natural law or rejecting it. My understanding of Catholicism is that the natural law and reason is accepted, so one would be a “bad” Catholic for rejecting natural law and reason when it comes to ordered sexual activity.
Kel also said, “If you really believe men having sex with men is the same as married men and women having sex with a condom, I don’t think any explanation will be good enough for you.”
How is it different?
“I’m still in shock that you actually believe this. I didn’t know anyone thought this way.”
I am not really shocked that you don’t understand, since in our modern age, the concept of truth and reality has become so distorted, people do not even recognize it when they see it.
MIT, not all sex between married, NFP using couples is procreative, either. Nor is it even possible to fulfill the “procreative” portion of this two-fold purpose all the time.
Once again, you cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception. It is an inconsistency.
Kel, you missed my analogy earlier. There is nothing disordered about non-contracepted sex, even if it does not result in a child through no fault of the couple. The fact that a couple is infertile (be it due to the time of the month, illness, or old age) does not alter the nature of coitus. It is still ordered toward procreation, even if procreation does not occur. A baseball team is still playing baseball, ordered toward winning, even if they lose. When coitus becomes disordered is when one purposely frustrates what it is naturally ordered toward. Then it is no longer ordered, but a distortion. Similarly, when a baseball team throws a game, they are no longer playing baseball, but engaging in a different activity, since they are no longer engaged in an act ordered toward winning.
Kel, Jack, others, how is it different?
“Jack, people like Bruce aren’t only alienating non-religious liberal pro-lifers – they’re alienating religious, non-Catholic pro-lifers like me.
I have done pro-life work for a long time – and I currently work for Jill, so I still am – but I’m just not pro-life enough, am I?”
Nope, you are pro-choice, obv. ;)
I am not really shocked that you don’t understand, since in our modern age, the concept of truth and reality has become so distorted, people do not even recognize it when they see it.
Thanks, Bruce. I’m as hardcore Christian as they come, but I suppose since I don’t hold to your concept of truth and reality that makes me blind.
And not pro-life, either.
The fact that a couple is infertile (be it due to the time of the month, illness, or old age) does not alter the nature of coitus
And I guess the fact that two guys are doing it doesn’t change the nature of it, either. According to you.
I’m done with this conversation, Bruce. It’s bordering on the obscene.
Kel, you still haven’t answered the question. What is it you fear? If you are “hardcore,” why do you avoid the “hardcore” questions? If truth is debatable and does not lie outside of our minds and opinions, then it is not truth…it is not anything. Christians, like yourself, speak of Pilate who asked “what is truth?” I seem to be hearing his words echoed on here far too often. Is there a true sexuality? Is there a true sexual act and, likewise, disordered and false forms?
Well, Kel, you have yet to describe how the acts are different? Both are ordered toward pleasure, and neither is ordered toward life or even wants a life to result. Both involve human beings engaging in activity that results in orgasms. The mechanics do not matter, for both acts are ordered toward the same thing, and therefore, are not any different. The substance of each act is the same, even if the accidents are different. There is no substantial difference between oral sex, anal sex, and contracepted intercourse. The only difference is accidental, for all three have the same purpose. You disagree, but cannot say why.
I got your back, Jack. Truly.
And, Rasqual, thank you, again, for your comments.
*FIST BUMPS ALL AROUND wooooo*
You know what Bruce? I could care less if having sex with contraceptives is the same as homosexuality in your eyes. I am not hurting anyone. Everyone is consenting and happy. The things that I hate, rape, child sexual abuse, prostitution, those things have actual, real damaging consequences. Unless you are going to say that those things are morally equivalent to my perfectly normal sex life with my wife, then you really have no leg to stand on to call me “anti-life”.
To be fair to Bruce, I agree with what most of what he’s saying aside from the fact that you have to be right on contraception/marriage to be pro-life. So I agree that contraceptive sex takes a disordered view of sexuality, as does homosexual sex. I have no interest in weighing in on which is more or less or the same amount of disorder.
I think Bruce is the minority (at least in this thread) in thinking that you can’t be pro-life and in favor of contraception. I hear people saying that they spend a lot of time arguing against that view, but I think what really happens for the most part is that some of what is commonly termed contraception is abortifacient and an issue for pro-life people. So the topic comes up. And then some people suggest contraception should be packaged with pro-life efforts to reduce abortion. So those among us who don’t take that view have to speak up.
I completely agree that requiring people to be against contraception (or gay marriage, or atheism or whatever) to be pro-life is nonsense. But I don’t think a lot of people who get into those debates and discussions are making that argument. I’ve only seen one (maybe two if I missed someone) person make it in this entire thread.
There is no substantial difference between oral sex, anal sex, and contracepted intercourse.
The substance of each act is not the same. The organs involved aren’t even the same.
Sex that takes place during a non-fertile time will not result in a life, just as sex with a condom will not result in a life.
Just because sperm enters the vaginal canal in one instance and not in the other makes no difference, as no human life can result since it is an infertile time.
Therefore, you must believe that all non-procreative sex is the same as homosexual sex.
Bruce, you are clearly equating homosexual (and I believe, deviant) sexual behavior to married, heterosexual sex. Heterosexual sex which, if birth control did happen to fail, would result in a new human life. Life that pro-lifers like Jack, MaryLee and I would accept and protect.
Actually, Kel, the substance is the same: the acts are ordered toward pleasure alone. Only the accidents are different (gential combinations, etc). Perhaps another analogy will help. I have a nose. The substance is my nose. It is crooked. The accident is the crookedness of my nose. Whether my nose becomes more or less crooked (accidental change) does not change the fact that it is still my nose (no substantial change). Contracepted sex and homosexual activity are ordered toward pleasure and pleasure alone, since no other results are possible. Whether or not it is two, four, or six guys or a contracepting couple, the aim is always the same: pleasure by way of genital stimulation. Contracepted sex is not substantially different than homosexual activity, only accidentally. Therefore, it is not really different at all, just in combinations, for the goal and result is the same in both cases. This is, quite simply, the truth. Now, for a non-contracepting couple, their act of coitus is ordered toward procreation, and provided they have done nothing to prevent procreation from occurring, they are engaging in authentic and ordered coitus, even if a child does not result. I’m not sure I can make this more clear and simple, for we are at the most elementary of levels here.
Actually, Kel, I am not equating homosexual activity with marital coitus, but rather with contracepted sexual activity. In order to truly be authentic, marital coitus is not contracepted. Once it is contracepted, it ceases being marital coitus as it is ordered toward something else. This is why a married couple can sometimes engage in authentic coitus and other times erroneously and disorderly engage in activity no different than that of homosexuals. Authentic marital coitus and contracepted sex/homosexual activity are mutually exclusive. They are not the same.
Homosexual activity and contracepted sexual activity are not substantially different.
Kel says:
July 25, 2011 at 4:22 pm
MIT, not all sex between married, NFP using couples is procreative, either. Nor is it even possible to fulfill the “procreative” portion of this two-fold purpose all the time.
Fulfilling the procreative part is being open to the possiblity of procreation (children) and not putting any intentional barriers. NFP doesn’t have any intentional barriers (even if the couple has sex when it’s very likely NOT to get pregnant).
Contracepted sex and homosexual activity are ordered toward pleasure and pleasure alone, since no other results are possible. Whether or not it is two, four, or six guys or a contracepting couple, the aim is always the same: pleasure by way of genital stimulation.
So, heterosexual sex, if contracepted by any means (oh, except that of NFP, which basically provides natural contraception via avoiding fertile times), is just like an orgy. Got it.
In my opinion, by saying these things you denigrate marriage and reduce its purpose strictly to one of reproduction.
I am on a journey in my faith in Christ. I am still learning, and i have learned much from those in the Catholic faith. But I am absolutely mortified that you would equate my marriage, or Jack’s marriage, or MaryLee’s marriage, to a homosexual orgy. I really cannot believe this.
Yes, contraception is a pro-life issue. Not only that, but contraception is morally sinful. Any Catholic should know that and Protestants should learn why. I have written about it in depth here. Please stop by and read it. It’s a bit long, but worth the read.
http://www.motherinthevale.blogspot.com
Bruce: “Actually, rasquel, whether or not I ‘win’ by convincing Jack on this topic does not make or break me, for I realize that this world is imperfect. All we can do is point to what is true and real and call what is disordered, disordered. The fact that many reject truth is neither new nor surprising. It is part of the human condition.”
It’s not about you, Bruce. It’s not about you winning, it’s about adversaries of life being won to life. Good grief.
Not all things are expedient. When your son is arrested on a drug charge, you don’t criticize his grammar as he’s answering the officer’s questions. VALENCE. All truth is true, but not all truths are of relative importance. You’re not betraying a particular truth by not asserting it — you’re merely in a situation where the assertion of other truths is of vastly greater importance.
The goal here is not to dispense with your responsibility as a truth spouting machine. It’s not about you. It’s fine to cast your seeds broadly, regardless of what the soil is like. But when the soil in a human soul may be receptive to one seed of truth, you don’t stomp that ground into hard-packed oblivion by bludgeoning it with a truth it can’t receive, then assert that you’ve merely done your duty as a truth-dispenser and it’s “not surprising” that they now can’t receive the other, more precious truth as well.
Are you a bot? I’m a rationalist to a fault, and I never thought I’d come across someone who’s gone beyond fault with it into vice territory.
As for your comparison of contraceptive sex to homosexual sex . . . dude. Valence. Proportion. You might as well say it’s no different from beastiality or sex with moon rocks. All would be equally true. And if all that would be equally rationally consistent given your premises, even if your premises were 100% right they’d be understood, then, as practically irrelevant. And since being practical in saving lives and redeeming killers is a principal objective of pro-lifers, you’ve wonderfully found a way to be counterproductive while remaining thoroughly consistent.
Bruce, it’s not “concession” on contraception to understand that saving human lives and redeeming killers may depend on the primacy of the more fundamental truth about the value of unborn actual life — not some personal commpulsion to divulge exhaustively the warp and woof of all things pro-life. People need ALL truth — but none of us obtain it in this world. It’s unseemly to claim some kind of moral high ground as if your obligation is to promulgate it, results be damned.
Jack: I’m a social conservative evangelical Christian who understands and agrees with Catholic pro-life teaching (including sympathy for much Catholic teaching regarding contraception), but I find secular arguments against abortion compelling and generally sufficient. When we appeal to others by reason, our rationales must find a lodge in our interlocutor’s mind. If they respect authorities we also do, we can appeal to that. Catholics will be well-advised to deal with the vast number (not to say vast proportion) of Catholics who, sadly, abort. In those cases, there’s a presumption (which could be unreliable) that church authority may prove useful. In practical terms, given the vast numnbers of Catholics who abort, this has obviously not proven effective. Therefore, it seems even more foolhardy to imagine that secularists should give a rip about what the Magisterium has to say regarding contraception when the membership can be woefully unresponsive about abortion itself.
NFP doesn’t have any intentional barriers (even if the couple has sex when it’s very likely NOT to get pregnant).
Is that some sort of way to prove spiritual superiority? “I don’t intentionally erect barriers – I just avoid sex when I’m fertile!” I’m sorry, I don’t see how this is different. And btw, I have great respect for NFP, but I personally have very screwy cycles and for health reasons have chosen pregnancy right now could be detrimental.
But I am aware that there is a failure rate for condoms, and if that failure should occur, I am willing to welcome and accept a new life, even if it means a risk to my health or the baby’s – even though this is what I’m seeking to avoid. I am pro-life. Or so I thought, an hour ago.
I am not hurting anyone. Everyone is consenting and happy. The things that I hate, rape, child sexual abuse, prostitution, those things have actual, real damaging consequences. Unless you are going to say that those things are morally equivalent to my perfectly normal sex life with my wife, then you really have no leg to stand on to call me “anti-life”.
He could easily think those things are morally equivalent and take issue with your characterization of normal and not having damaging consequences. He still wouldn’t be right to call you anti life.
I think we need to be careful here. B/c if we’re saying that one’s views on the morality of non-abortifacient contraceptive sex are irrelevant to the pro-life view, then we have to accept that both views are out there (disordered v. perfectly normal – and probably a lot in between) and neither is going to get thrown out without being challenged. I love a good ancillary debate, but that’s not in the category of “alienating” people by requiring them to adopt your view before they can be pro-life.
Kel, what “denigrates marriage” is contraception. To reduce the marital act to pleasure alone is to denigrate marriage to a contracted agreement for regular pleasure. That is what gay “marriage” is as well. It is no different. Tell me, Kel, in your heart of hearts, how contracepted sex, which is ordered toward pleasure, is any different from any other form of sex, homosexual or otherwise, which is ordered toward pleasure. At its most primary and substantial level, Kel, it is no different. The only form of truly authentic and ordered sexual activity is non-contracepted sexual intercourse between one man and one woman. It is the comprehensive bodily union of man and woman ordered toward procreation, whether conception occurs or not. THAT IS SEX. To purposely divide the unitive from the procreative (the pleasure from the life) is to render it something other than sex – it is to distort and disorder it to an activity NO DIFFERENT IN SUBSTANCE than homosexual activity.
And yes, disorder should shock us, Kel. It should shock you to know that contracepted sex is no different in substance than homosexual activity. And a marriage that is exclusively contraceptive is no different than a homosexual “marriage.”
Bruce, are you consistent with this concern? What do you think of artificial colors? Do you avert your eyes from glancing at paint in a bucket, inasmuch as it’s nor properly ordered to the eyes until it’s on a wall (I mean, what’s the telos of paint, Bruce?)? Do you consider it a travesty when veterinarians remove a porpoise from the water for surgery, inasmuch as it’s out of its element?
I’m just wondering whether this is a sex thing for you, or whether you’re as sincerely committed to this as your remarks suggest.
Personally, I’m not as interested in whether you’re right or wrong (I think you’re mostly right), as in whether you lack all sense of proportion and this lack leads you to say things that aren’t strictly true. Which is interesting. When some truths are magnified beyond the proportion due them the result can be faithless to truth in emergent ways.
Just a thought.
To purposely divide the unitive from the procreative (the pleasure from the life) is to render it something other than sex – it is to distort and disorder it to an activity NO DIFFERENT IN SUBSTANCE than homosexual activity.
NFP divides unitive from procreative except for the 3-5 fertile days of the month.
As for the rest, Bruce, please see Rasqual’s comments. He, as usual, sums it up nicely.
Now I’m done, Bruce. My husband is home and I am going to go spend some time with him. I’m sure he’ll be as thrilled as I am to know how sexually immoral and non pro-life we are – we and our 3 beautiful children.
LaLa, I like your point about a false sense of control.
While I think responsibility is important, our culture has a fixation with control. Not self control, which reminds me of GK Chesterton’s quip about birth control, and it’s curious name, “birth control: no birth, and no control”.
Olivia, I get it that you don’t want kids. But it’s kinda weird to call you and your husband a family. You probably love eachother a lot, super. But you’re a couple, not a family. For those of us who put in the work and love having kids, I believe you have no right to a term you haven’t earned. And it’s not like you’re infertile (at least not that you know of) you just reject raising kids.
Bruce: “Kel, what ‘denigrates marriage’ is contraception. To reduce the marital act to pleasure alone is to denigrate marriage to a contracted agreement for regular pleasure. That is what gay ‘marriage’ is as well. It is no different.”
So you’re OK with legal gay marriage, then, inasmuch as you’re not an advocate of outlawing heterosexual use of condoms? They’re no different, right?
But how about this — it “denigrates” the confectionery arts to stare at a sucker, then set it aside without eating it. After all, its telos is consumption and aesthetic pleasure on the palate. By merely staring at it — a tertiary function at best, inasmuch as its consumption is generally not visible to the one enjoying it — you’re engaging in a perverse shortfall of its proper order to human pleasure. You’re demeaning it, and making much less of it than you ought.
How about this — contraceptive sex is somewhere between abstention and properly ordered sex. That is, abstention is not fulfilling any of the purposes for sex. Right? Properly ordered non-contraceptive sex is open to the full range of sexual potential. Right? So contraceptive sex is somewhere in between. If it’s not wrong to not engage at all in sex, and it’s not wrong to engage in all purposes of sex, then what’s wrong with engaging in only some purposes of sex at any given time? If you can’t argue that it’s wrong to abstain, and you can’t argue that it’s wrong to engage in two things, how can you argue that it’s wrong to engage in just one of the two things? The simple reply is that a person is merely abstaining in one way, and not the other. And what’s wrong with that?
Isn’t it selfish to just stare at a candy and enjoy its color, and then pass on actually tasting it? You’re obviously denying it its due on your palate. Pervert. ;-)
On the birth control issue, I really don’t get people calling it a religious issue, especially prolifers. That’s a dismissive way to get out of arguing for birth control. If it was really only a religious issue, negative effects of birth control wouldn’t have such an effect on the general population. People wouldn’t see abortion as a back up plan if it weren’t for the thinking that goes into birth control use.
And for everyone who spouts about what the Catholic Church does or doesn’t teach on this issue, I would only respond to people who have read Humanae Vitae. Otherwise, the argument isn’t well enough understood for dialog to be productive.
How about those of us who last read it so long ago that we’ve forgotten most of it — despite the fact that it affected us deeply and changed how we think about life? ;-)
But to your point: Most pro-lifers are concerned with the fundamental issue — that the unborn should be welcome in life and protected by law. For many of us, other pro-lifers interrupting the fundamentals, as it were, with chatter of subsidiary matters, is a lot like having a mad aunt in the attic to apologize for. She may be dead right about her doilies being stained, but our metropolitan interlocutors have only so much time they’re willing to give us — and less credence — and we’d really like to get on with the urgent stuff.
Remember the show Pushing Daisies? Remember when Chuck would always interrupt the all-too-brief resurrections with questions like “any last wishes?” while Ned and Emerson panicked at the second hand ticking?
Yeah. Nice. But in the zero sum game that persuasion often is, the mad aunt really needs to stay in the attic.
Perhaps this thread is confusing two issues — first, the sense in which contraception is a pro-life issue intramurally, and second whether it ought to be one publicly, in pro-life apologetics as it were.
I’m not sure anyone’s made the case that it’s a pro-life issue even intramurally. Certainly not Bruce, who’s made no connection between properly ordered sex and actual living children at risk of abortion (he’s congratulating himself on well representing natural law while forgetting to establish the connection between his representation and the fundamental interest in welcoming the unborn in life and protecting them in law — a classic forest/trees problem).
And I haven’t seen anyone actually rebut my own concern — nor even try — which is whether contraception should occupy a second front burner in the public conversation, along with abortion. I guess I take that as a tacit “no” answer.
I am surprised to find out I’m gay. My wife will be shocked.
The wife is always the last to find out. . . . . . . .
But it’s kinda weird to call you and your husband a family. You probably love eachother a lot, super. But you’re a couple, not a family.
What if they have 3 cats and a goldfish?
2370 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses some of the contraception issue.
“Bruce says:
July 25, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Jack said, “people like Bruce who sit around and tell people they are disordered because they use non-abortive contraception” Well, Jack, all people are disordered, for we are not perfect. But that aside, I was referring to the act of contracepted sex as being disordered, which it is. If my language was not as precise as it should have been, my apologies. “”But as for the act of contracepted sex, like homosexual activity, it is indeed disordered and anti-life.”
What about elderly couples that can’t conceive, should they get married and have sex if the sex doesn’t result in making babies?
Should I be having sex with my husband, when I can’t conceive due to a NATURALLY inhospitable uterus due to reproductive and bodily developmental delays? Or should I have stayed single? Is the sex I have with my husband Anti-Life.
See, this is why, even in a far off when I would actually oppose abortion itself, I would still not align and label myself as Pro-Life, because my sex life with my husband is anti-life. I would just be an anti-abort. I agree with the people above that run away from the Pro-Life side. Because it’s not just, “oh we want to save the unborn,” it’s also we don’t want you using contraception and we want you to be married, but we don’t want you to be gay either. It all goes hand in hand.
I would love to hear if you think I’m anti-life since my husband and I have sex, I’m a woman, when I can’t conceive.
Look.Pro-choicers like myself are not at all opposed to married couples raising children and staying married in a monogamous relationship. This is certainly a good thing. It’s good for children. But unfortunately,because of complex social and economic reasons,it’s just not possible for every child to be brought up this way.
Conditions in society make this impossible. But what the Catholic church insists on is just not realistic. In fact,it’s totally impractical,and an impossible goal. The notion that contraception has caused so many ills in society in ridiculous. The causes are far more complex.
The claims of Dr. Janet E. Smith were just pain ludicrous.Her statistics were completely skewed and the result of her obvious biases. It should have been clear to any one listening to her speech,and her other appearances on EWTN. Her claim that abortion was rare in America before Roe v Wade is just plain laughable. It most certainly was not.
What proves this is the fact that the birth rate in America did not decline after 1973,when Roe v Wade was decided. Abortion won’t “end” if Roe v Wade is overturned and women lose the right to reproductive choice. It will just become much more dangerous.
The Catholic church does not even come remotely close to offering enough help for poor pregnant women so they would be able to provide decent care for their children. No private organization does. If the U.S. government did the right thing and subsidized poor pregnant women,married or single so they would be able to provide for their children, born or unborn, there would be far fewer abortions here. But conservatives don’t want this,because it would be “socialism”.
This would also cost billions of dollars. Anti-choicers say that children are helpless in the womb .Yes they are, but they are also helpless after they are born. Anti-choicers don’t think further and realize this. You have to provide for children after they are out of the womb in order to prevent abortions. But this is more easily said than done.
Another ridiculous claim which is made by anti-choicers is that abortion has led to increased rates of child abuse. Hogwash..In fact, is has PREVENTED an enormous amount of child abuse, because those aborted fetuses never had to grow up in abject poverty, which greatly increases a child’s chance of being abused. Sad, but true.
Ally: Being unable to round out an experience on account of some matter beyond your control doesn’t impugn that experience. Being unwilling to let that experience be all nature (or God) intends it to be, on Bruce’s reading, would be the problem.
Bruce is arguing from a sound place, he really is. But he’s not tempering how things may properly be ordered, with the relative importance of different things in life. Some things are more important than others, and he’s not really free to pretend that in saying this I’m claiming that they’re less true.
Kel, I respect your prolife work to help Moms and save babies. I respect that immensely.
It seems you cant see the difference between barrier contraceptives and NFP. I’ll try to answer that from a Christian perspective. God gives married couples the gift of sexual intimacy. There are two parts to this gift to make it whole. 1) procreative (babies) AND 2) unitive (bonding).
Barrier methods only accept half of the gift, while erecting a barrier to the other half. They use the gift for their own purposes.
NFP, which is used sucessfully to avoid getting pregnant for serious reasons, as well as for achieving pregnancy, accepts God’s plan without any barriers to fertility.
Fertility is not utilized, which is a different choice than fertility being specifically rejected. NFP uses the information from a women’s cycles to practice self-denial, responsiblility, and generosity.
With all this said, what finally opened my eyes to contraception as a bad thing was the divorce rate for couples contracepting (Christian and otherwise) vs. couples using NFP. That alone is a huge indicator of the sinful fruit of contraception.
Again, I mean all this with the utmost respect for you and your prolife work. I’m even typing this during my one chance at rest today (I have four boys under seven, so I value my rest) because I think you have a heart for God. :)
“Mary Ann says:
July 25, 2011 at 5:33 pm
LaLa, I like your point about a false sense of control.
While I think responsibility is important, our culture has a fixation with control. Not self control, which reminds me of GK Chesterton’s quip about birth control, and it’s curious name, “birth control: no birth, and no control”.
Olivia, I get it that you don’t want kids. But it’s kinda weird to call you and your husband a family. You probably love eachother a lot, super. But you’re a couple, not a family. For those of us who put in the work and love having kids, I believe you have no right to a term you haven’t earned. And it’s not like you’re infertile (at least not that you know of) you just reject raising kids.”
Okay Mary Ann, I’ll ask you the same question I did bruce. So because I’m underdeveloped and have a Naturally inhospitable uterus, my husband and I and our 2 pet cats and the mother in law we take care of and that I left outside the home work to take care of are not a family, just because I’ve never carried another human in my body and am currently not raising kids and never will?
Should I have gotten married? I’ve never gotten people that are against marriages where children are not involved.
Robert: “Anti-choicers say that children are helpless in the womb .Yes they are, but they are also helpless after they are born. Anti-choicers don’t think further and realize this. ”
Wow! I’d never thought of that before! Golly! Thanks for the insight, Bob! It’s a darned good thing you showed up in these parts.
As for abortion preventing child abuse, well then. I presume you’ll argue that abortion should be safe, legal and the more frequent the better — especially in poor communities. In wanting it rare, Obama is clearly in favor of the increased child abuse that would result were his ideology fully realized. The bastard!
Mary Ann: “With all this said, what finally opened my eyes to contraception as a bad thing was the divorce rate for couples contracepting (Christian and otherwise) vs. couples using NFP. That alone is a huge indicator of the sinful fruit of contraception.”
Um… causality versus correlation?
How do you know the use of contraception isn’t sometimes the effect of a prior moral capitulation of some kind that also predisposes a couple to divorce? And that use of NFP isn’t the result of present virtues that also de-dispose persons toward divorce?
I’m sincerely asking — how do you know?
In short, contraception could be the fruit of sin, not the sin that other things are the fruit of.
Of course, if contraception is sometimes the fruit of sin, this does not argue that it is always the fruit of sin. Nor, if other things are the fruit of contraception, is it obvious that contraception is a sin.
I might just as well say that though my wife and I used contraception back in the day, our not being divorced argues that contraception was a wonderful virtue that has ensured a fruitful life of married bliss.
I’d be just as at risk of fallacy as you. Eh?
NFP, which is used sucessfully to avoid getting pregnant for serious reasons, as well as for achieving pregnancy, accepts God’s plan without any barriers to fertility.
Hi Mary Ann,
Condoms are not a barrier to fertility. My fertility is intact.
I would argue that those couples using NFP are largely religious and largely Catholic as well, which means it’s more likely that religion plays a part in the low divorce rate.
I am anti-hormonal contraception. And I have 3 children. My husband is the only partner I’ve ever been with, and vice versa. And we were virgins when we got married.
So, I understand the sanctity of sex and of life. I also use NFP along with barrier methods. I do this because I do not believe it would be healthy for me, at this time, to get pregnant. I don’t believe this is a rejection of my fertility, but a postponement of conception until the health issues can be resolved. My husband and I are unified in this decision.
“If the other Catholics on this board agree with this – that marital sex using birth control is just like homosexual sex – then you all need help.”
The Catholic Church does NOT teach that “marital sex using birth control is just like homosexual sex”. Homosexual acts are disordered in ways that heterosexual sex using artificial contraception is not. All heterosexual sex is naturally ordered. Use of artificial contraception may violate a part of natural law like Bruce says, but should be considered on it own terms.
Lets all just calm down here! The RCC is not running around advocating for the legal abolition of contraception. Just abortion.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The term “prolife” is truly a large umbrella term that can rightly be used to refer to all manor of things…anti-contraception, anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-euthanasia, anti-IVF, anti-poverty, etc. Not all anti-abortionists are going to get on board with the whole seamless garment thing, but that is okay. All anti-abortionists ought to be regarded as legitimate prolifers. Who is perfect?…nobody. We can work together. We really need each other. Right now the greatest tragedy is abortion. Let’s all agree to work on that together. In harmony.
Right now the greatest tragedy is abortion.Let’s all agree to work on that together. In harmony.
Here, here Tommy! No one can alienate me without my permission. United with friends to save the unborn.
Robert, lay off the abortion = less child abuse arguments, seriously. They are just about a weak of an argument you can make for legal abortion.
Rasqual, to clarify, I didn’t mean that Christians cannot talk to or convince secularists to be anti-abortion without referring to religion. I just meant, and don’t take this as insulting because it isn’t meant to be at all, that many non-religious people view Christians with a lot of suspicion and discount what they say. That is their bad, but sometimes it is a lot easier for someone isn’t religious to reach those who are secular.
“The term “prolife” is truly a large umbrella term that can rightly be used to refer to all manor of things…anti-contraception, anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-euthanasia, anti-IVF, anti-poverty, etc. Not all anti-abortionists are going to get on board with the whole seamless garment thing, but that is okay. All anti-abortionists ought to be regarded as legitimate prolifers. ”
True. I mean, some other pro-lifers hold beliefs I find very contradictory to anti-abortion views. I am just not going to harp on about it and make people mad while trying to fight abortion. Protecting children should be the most important thing on everyone’s agenda.
Olivia Dunham: I personally don’t think a clump of cells is the same as an 8 week old fetus. And doctors and scientists don’t consider a woman pregnant until the egg implants. Plus, even those practicing NFP may conceive and never know it, because the zygote gets flushed out with menstruation. This happens more than you realize. I don’t want children, so I will continue to use contraception until my husband gets fixed.
Nicely said.
Dear Jack Borsch and rasqual,
Do not even waste any of your precious time or energy typing anything to Robert Berger.
He will never answer a direct question and only comes here to make unsubstantiated claims.
Kel: Therefore, you must believe that all non-procreative sex is the same as homosexual sex.
Hmm… Well, could be, and kudos, anyway.
By *far,* most sexual occurrences are not with an eye to starting a pregnancy, so no matter what your comment is most appropriate.
Good grief, Bruce.
Give it a rest will ya??
Kel,
I guess we are in the same boat my dear. Let us paddle on together.
Jack: Robert, lay off the abortion = less child abuse arguments, seriously. They are just about a weak of an argument you can make for legal abortion.
Jack, there’s no “putting the genie back in the bottle.” Can’t sensibly just pretend we could turn the clock back to when there was less abortion or less contraception. The fact is that we’ve had both a decline in fertility *and* mortality.
Looking at how many children would have resulted from the absence of legal abortion, and a reasonable expectation of the rate of abuse within that group, “less child abuse” certain applies to the way we have it now.
Once again, you cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception. It is an inconsistency.
Bruce, that’s wrong – you’re not even removing the question from the theoretical. Being for contraception can and does often mean being against conceiving lives that aren’t wanted and that would likely be aborted.
Similarly, when a baseball team throws a game, they are no longer playing baseball, but engaging in a different activity, since they are no longer engaged in an act ordered toward winning.
No, they’re still playing baseball, even if they’re intentionally playing badly.
Doug, that argument is ridiculous to me for a couple reasons. One, because if you accept the fetus as a child, just in an earlier form of development, then abortion is really the most prevalent form of child abuse there is. Two, basically, people who make this arguments are stating that death is preferable to a hard life. Those type of value judgments are awful to me. I had a horrifically abusive childhood, and it doesn’t mean that my life has any less or any more value than anyone else. Third, all the stats I have seen show child abuse skyrocketing after Roe. Now, this doesn’t mean legal abortion increased child abuse, but it does mean that there isn’t an obvious connection to reduction of child abuse and legal abortion.
But it’s kinda weird to call you and your husband a family. You probably love each other a lot, super. But you’re a couple, not a family.
How dismissive, alienating, and high and mighty can you be, Mary Ann? I am happy to be on the side that accepts that a family is what you make of it – married, unmarried, with children or without. What’s important is love and stability – not dismissing others life choices (or, in the case of infertility – unfortunate circumstances) and telling people they are only worthy if they fit into a very specific mold.
“I am happy to be on the side that accepts that a family is what you make of it – married, unmarried, with children or without.”
Not everyone makes those value judgments, derrr. I personally don’t care who wants to be a family, good for them.
OK, so I skipped most of the comments. This should have been said a while ago.
I finally figured out what was bothering me about this discussion. We are not supposed to judge one another in this way. No one knows what is in another’s heart. Bruce, the degree of sin that one commits by any action is limited by that person’s understanding of that action. You can’t condemn someone without knowing the extent of their understanding.
Ally asked, “What about elderly couples that can’t conceive, should they get married and have sex if the sex doesn’t result in making babies?” The marital act, in order to be authentic, must be unitive and ordered toward procreation. Whether or not procreation occurs does not change the nature of the marital act. The ends do not make or break the very nature of the act. An analogy helps: A baseball team plays baseball to win. They are still playing baseball and are still a baseball team if they lose. Now, if the baseball team PURPOSELY TRIES to lose, they are no longer playing baseball. The act has changed in nature, and is disordered from playing baseball. This is a subtle difference, but one that has enormous consequences. Marriages fail far more often in contracepting couples. Abortions result more often from contraception failures. The contraceptive mentality, that puts pleasure before all responsibility and before the life of a child, is at the heart of the abortion issue.
“No, they’re still playing baseball, even if they’re intentionally playing badly.” Actually, that isn’t true. The point of playing a baseball game is to win. Teams are ORDERED toward winning. If a team is not ordered toward winning, they are not playing a baseball game, but rather are performing an activity ordered toward a different (and contradictory) end. That is reality. In the same way, a couple who contracepts is not “playing the game of marital coitus” any longer, since the act is ordered toward a different end than union and procreation (whether procreation occurs or not). Once the end is deliberately changed, the act changes in substance, and is disordered.
You cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception/pro-homosexual “marriage.” Being pro-life demands consistency.
“Ally asked, “What about elderly couples that can’t conceive, should they get married and have sex if the sex doesn’t result in making babies?” The marital act, in order to be authentic, must be unitive and ordered toward procreation. Whether or not procreation occurs does not change the nature of the marital act. The ends do not make or break the very nature of the act. An analogy helps: A baseball team plays baseball to win. They are still playing baseball and are still a baseball team if they lose. Now, if the baseball team PURPOSELY TRIES to lose, they are no longer playing baseball. The act has changed in nature, and is disordered from playing baseball. This is a subtle difference, but one that has enormous consequences. Marriages fail far more often in contracepting couples. Abortions result more often from contraception failures. The contraceptive mentality, that puts pleasure before all responsibility and before the life of a child, is at the heart of the abortion issue.”
Congrats, you completely failed to answer my question.
I was not talking about couples using contraception, I was asking ” “What about elderly couples that can’t conceive, should they get married and have sex if the sex doesn’t result in making babies?”
Additionally, what about my situation? Please answer me head on, Should I be married to my husband and be having sex with him when I CAN’T CONCEIVE NATURALLY. Yes or No.
So my Marriage is going to fail because my husband and I can’t “make babies?” Is that what you’re saying. Please don’t copy and paste some irrelevant thing in the sense that my husband I don’t use contraception, my reproductive system is naturally infertile? Therefore, I’m putting pleasure before the life of a child that I can’t create?
What about married elderly couples where the woman is post-menopausal and they enjoy sex is their marriage just going to fail because the woman isn’t ovulating anymore?
Rasqual: “I’m not sure anyone’s made the case that it’s a pro-life issue even intramurally.”
I think bmmg attempted to make that case. I don’t know if you didn’t see it or just didn’t find it persuasive (I should have looked back, but I’m too lazy now that I started writing). I also think it becomes a topic of conversation b/c at least some pro-lifers/pro-contraception folks think contraception should be supported as a means of reducing unwanted pregnancy (not that they would advocate abortion as a backup), but they would probably take the stance that proper contraception use should be encouraged.
All your points about prioritizing are good, but this topic is pretty hard to completely divorce from pro-life conversation, especially given that right now it HAS to come up so long as abortifacients are still widely viewed as contraceptives. Maybe it will/would be easier if that ever ceases to be the case.
The point of playing a baseball game is to win. Teams are ORDERED toward winning. If a team is not ordered toward winning, they are not playing a baseball game, but rather are performing an activity ordered toward a different (and contradictory) end. That is reality.
Then explain the Mets.
Bruce, you are beating a dead horse. You have said your piece. Let it rest already.
Now forgive me, I must get back to my homosexual drug orgy. Disorder is awesome!
Now forgive me, I must get back to my homosexual drug orgy.
Heh.
CT says:
July 25, 2011 at 8:41 pm
All your points about prioritizing are good, but this topic is pretty hard to completely divorce from pro-life conversation, especially given that right now it HAS to come up so long as abortifacients are still widely viewed as contraceptives. Maybe it will/would be easier if that ever ceases to be the case.
I’m not sure it isn’t the other way around. See the following links:
The_Colorado_Personhood_Amendment_would_not_ban_hormonal_contraceptives
An editorial by Patrick Johnston written a few years ago.
Hormone Contraceptives Controversies and Clarifications
Focus on the Family’s position
OK,_seriously,_folks,_what’s_the_beef_with_contraception? look for references to “placenta accreta” in this thread
And if you want to see a thread which goes almost as far left-field as the comments equating contraceptive sex with gay sex, see this thread comparing the pill w/breastfeeding
Birth control pills have been culturally entrenched to the extent that many people who claim religious adherence are unable to believe their actual mechanisms of action.
They have been branded as contraceptives by a fraudulent FDA, though their mechanisms are numerous, and some are interceptive (cause death of an early embryo).
A fraudulent education system has disconnected the reproductive act and reproduction, thus further confusing the general public.
Are you wondering about the new morning after pill: Ella? Here’s a brief collection of info on this new pill, and other drugs used for chemical abortion: http://themorningafter.us/chemical_abortion
From today’s email (I am a pharmacist) is some material explaining a new recommendation to delay the use of birth control after delivery due to the increased incidence of thromboembolism.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2011;60:878-883. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6026a3.htm
The CDC and FDA are forced to admit that the pill is associated with an increased risk of thromboembolism- since health care practitioners, including yours truly, observe this on a regular basis.
Since most cases of thromboembolism in birth control hormone users are not reported to the FDA, (we’ve got more immediately pressing matters to deal with at work), the data from the FDA and CDC do not reflect the actual frequency. There is zero incentive and only extra work and possible risk of reprisal for making such reports to an OBVIOUSLY DISINTERESTED government entity.
****
pharmer, the link you provided on ella doesn’t work. Here are some links on emergency contraception–
Effectiveness of levonorgestrel emergency contraception given before or after ovulation–a pilot study.
Postcoital treatment with levonorgestrel does not disrupt postfertilization events in the rat.
Ulipristal no better than levonorgestrel.
Emergency_Contraception:_A_Last_Chance_to_Prevent_Unintended_Pregnancy
This paper allows for the possibility that both Ella and Plan B work prior to fertilization, then admits the IUD is almost certainly abortifacient when used as emergency contraception. In fact, some people are so confident of this that they are recommending the IUD be used 7-12 days after unprotected sex, which is abortifacient even if you define pregnancy as starting at implantation.
Jack: “Rasqual, to clarify…”
— no need. I understood you, but perhaps I’m the one needing to clarify. I argue the secular way myself, with abortion. It’s simply more effective. Intramurally, among Christians, conversations are obviously likely to range more broadly and tap other assets. But I’ve gained an additional, entertainment motive for never raising a religious objection — it’s become just too fun to wait for the non-theists in the crowd to be the first to raise religion. It happens every time. ;-)
I tend to prefer arguing on other people’s ground. I learned that far more deeply than I ever suspected I would, from Francis Schaeffer. His signature method of dialog was both Socratic and, basically, reductio ad absurdum. Truthfully, when it comes to reductios, I can’t help myself. I don’t try to do them, I simply find myself identifying opportunities everywhere I turn. Hopefully it’s not akin to the pattern-spotting in A Beautiful Mind. ;-)
Hope your gay sex orgy is going well. LOL
RCJC: “We are not supposed to judge one another in this way. No one knows what is in another’s heart. ”
Um…what if they tell you? Do you insult them by implying they’re being dishonest? Do you feign stupidity or deafness? (“I can’t hear/understand you, man!”) ;-)
Bruce: In order to win, baseball teams must practice. In doing so, they’re not engaging in winnable activity (practice work is not scored). Ergo, their practice is a disordered heretical activity destined to result in a failed season because they’re obliged to avoid such “practice”. They’re probably gay, too. ;-)
CT: I assume for purposes of discussion that abortifacients are off the table when discussing whether contraception is a pro-life issue (because, to my mind, they’re abortions). I forgot to say as much, though.
Pharmer: Did you really mean “disinterested,” or “uninterested?” I tried to infer but the context didn’t really help me.
I completely agree with secularists raising religion first, if not every time than nearly so. Notice I did it this very thread when arguing with Bruce. Not sure where the impulse comes from, maybe some elitist assumption that religious people can’t really argue from a secular standpoint. ;)
I think your reductio arguments are ridiculously funny.
The orgy went very well, thank you. I’m off to do many more immoral things, with my mutable moral code anything is possible. :D
CT: Yeah, I checked her (?) note. Brief, to that point — but not compelling. Her retort to Robert, though, was amusing. She obviously loves language, and uses it well.
Kel– The less fertile days doesn’t mean pregnancy is IMPOSSIBLE, just LESS likely. Surprise pregnancies can happen even with using NFP–although generally they can be explained.
What I said was being open to the possibility of conception. It doesn’t mean it will everytime regardless of when the couple is having sexual relations. It means being open to the fact that it COULD happen and willing to bring up those children IF it was to. Conception might not even happen even with the woman in the most fertile time of her cycle since the percentages is only around 40-41 percent (My parents are NFP teachers. I’ll double check the numbers with them, but I’m pretty sure it’s 40 or 41 percent even in the most fertile time of a woman’s cycle).
Some women are more fertile than others. There are times a couple has serious reasons for avoiding pregnancy–therefore abstaining from sexual intercourse during the most fertile time–but with all this, if conception DOES somehow happen, the couple welcomes the child lovingly into their lives, hearts and home. That’s how NFP fulfills the procreative side of the 2 main purposes of the martial sexual union. Just plain old being willing to love and care for a child IF conception DOES happen.
Here’s what I was told: It doesn’t always mean that you’re TRYING to get pregnant, but that if you DO you would not end the child’s life.
Good grief, I missed at least one of Bruce’s replies. I thought he was ignoring me.
“Do you believe in objective truth and reality, or is there no such thing? I know that objective truth and reality exists, and the only freedom that exists is recognizing truth and reality. I am not free to define truth and reality as something which they are not.”
But you are free to be fallible in identifying what’s objective and what’s not. And you are clearly free to lack a sense of proportion and relative importance of true truths. As I said, you don’t berate your kid’s poor grammar when he’s answering the policeman’s questions while under arrest.
There’s a “who’re you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?” quality to your remarks to Jack. He knows he’s pro-life. Remarkably, you know he’s not.
The rationalist Hegel, it is said, once welcomed a friend who had just returned from the Australian outback. From the comfort of his armchair, so the story goes, Hegel told the friend all about his (the friend’s) trip.
Applicable.
And no, the braces analogy does not obviously fail. It fails in the case that chewing may be impaired. But I’ll press you to be consistent and assert that obtaining braces for only cosmetic purposes would be improperly ordered to an objective dental metaphysic. Your remarks about IVF imply that an iron lung would be disordered. So would a dialysis machine. Friend, you not only lack proportion — you’re wrong.
Of course I believe in objective reality. And in this objective reality, millions of contracepting Christians are heaven-bound while you count angels on the head of a pin while millions more unborn die while Jack is having gay orgies with his wife.
xalisae says:
July 25, 2011 at 8:46 pm
The point of playing a baseball game is to win. Teams are ORDERED toward winning. If a team is not ordered toward winning, they are not playing a baseball game, but rather are performing an activity ordered toward a different (and contradictory) end. That is reality.
Then explain the Mets.
Xalisae–The Mets have GOT to be better than the Astros. I don’t know of too many people have a rougher season than them.
I really can’t stop lol’ing at your last sentence, rasqual. This is possibly one of the oddest conversations I have ever seen.
Just a small comment. The other readers may already realize it, but there are two Roberts on this thread.
“Yeah, there is actually a huge difference between not getting pregnant and killing a helpless unborn child.”
Except when “not getting pregnant” = “killing a helpless unborn child.” That’s contraception.
Contraception has led to abortion.
Here in the third world, pro-contraception bills (aka “reproductive health”) bills are paving the way for legalized abortion.
Somebody please listen.
Margie, the street I park my car on “leads to” strip clubs and drug dealers. That doesn’t mean driving on the road is an evil. The highway crews weren’t “paving the way for” trips to the adult film store. Yet people drive there.
Mere liberty of citizens “leads to” all kinds of misery. That doesn’t mean liberty is to blame.
It’s a monstrous leap from preventing conception to destroying conceived life. Those who love life don’t make that leap. Those who make that leap already do not love life.
Honestly, it just seems to me like some folks make a naive effort to externalize into a single public policy issue what’s actually a problem of sin in myriad people. If we can isolate it that way we can control it! That’s illusory. It’s a Flip Wilson approach (I’m showing my age): “Contraceptives made me pro-choice!”
Margie, if contraceptives are actually of a kind with abortion, then only someone who’s not pro-life would choose to use them. Right? That makes logical sense, given what you’re saying. And yet it doesn’t work out that way; people who are against abortion use contraception. And in doing so, they’re not destroying human life — they’re merely engaging in activity which, in broader society, has you fretful about where it leads. But it doesn’t lead. It follows. It serves the purposes of those who use it. For some people, those purposes include abortion because they don’t rule it out. For others, those purposes end with preventing conception because…they’re pro-life!
Untold swarms of humanity who have used contraception would never abort. Untold swarms of humanity who have used contraception have indeed aborted. Kind of makes ya think, then, that the issue might be what’s going on in the people — not whether they use contraception.
“Except when ‘not getting pregnant’ = ‘killing a helpless unborn child.’ That’s contraception.”
And that’s dishonest, Margie. With the obvious exception of abortifacients, contraception does not kill a helpless unborn child.
If you wish to be on the side of righteousness, you need to start with honesty.
That makes listening easier.
Brucesays:
You cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception/pro-homosexual “marriage.” Being pro-life demands consistency.
Bruce, your method of proclaiming truth is not bearing fruit. Please stop it. You are accountable for the love (or lack thereof) with which you operate. Beating the ground rock hard while sowing seed is not effective.
How does pro-life expect to be seen as helping pregnant women when they can’t–or won’t–be civil to their own people?
As prolifers, we must all be honest about the general view of contraception. Abortifacients are considered contraception by the population at large. I hope this changes. But all the ‘I don’t/ didn’t use abortifacients and true contraception is ok’ comments are totally unrealistic until the general population recognizes how abortifacients work and reject them.
Barrier methods do not destroy life- we all know this.
BUT
It’s pretty clear that the desire/goal of barrier methods over time led directly to more ‘secure’ hormonal contraception with abortifacient properties. And it’s very clear that, outside the bubble of prolifers who use barrier methods and would never abort, there are hundreds of thousands of babies in utero who die in the US each year because their parents use abortion as backup for failed contraception of whatever kind, barrier methods included.
And that reality should concern anyone who loves in utero babies and their mothers and fathers.
While it is important to distinguish between birth control that destroys life and that which doesn’t, we must ask why the general population doesn’t make this distinction. Yes, they are lied to by those who sell and advocate hormonal ‘contraception’. BUT why do so many buy this lie? Partly because the goal of all that is considered contraception– abortifacients AND barrier methods– is the same, namely not to have a child.
Those who love life don’t make that leap. Those who make that leap already do not love life.
I disagree with this. I think many that loved life were deceived and/or pressured. Contraception gives a false sense of security and therefore many have sex with people they wouldn’t want to have a child with. Many children have low self-control and are irresponsible and disrespectful of self and others.
Sex was promoted as free love rather than something to be cherished and saved for marriage and I believe that many that love life were deceived (and may no longer love life as a result). Now we have preteens who have friends with benefits and other ills.
I agree with Fr. Klee’s post way up where. If you get a chance rasqual, I would be interested in seeing your response to the claims he makes in his post. Apologies if you did already and I just missed it.
Mods, if you get a chance, could you delete my post above?
Ally, I honestly don’t see what your case has to do with contraception. You have a medical problem. You are not contracepting, right? You are not thwarting a healthy system, your fertility has a medical obstacle over which you have no control. Don’t you see the difference?
This doesn’t mean sex with your husband is bad or wrong. No prolifer would claim that.
You are certainly able to love and care for people and be part of a larger family, regardless of whether you can have children and start your own family. And you could also adopt and start your own family that way.
Your situation is totally different from someone like Olivia who probably could get carry a child and just doesn’t want kids at all ever.
Derrr wrote:
How does Ken turn every argument into a birther argument?!? Seriously, his delusional harping is hilarious.
I see. You seem, at least, to have abandoned any last pretense of “trying to hold the Christian high ground” (as per your cheap shots and disingenuous “complaints” toward Xalisae, and others).
As for the main point of the thread (and I’ve not come close to reading all the replies; my apologies if I repeat what someone else has already said, and perhaps better):
1) there’s no reason to hurl insults at one another, and there’s also no reason to assume the worst about those with whom we disagree. Case in point: I am adamantly against any use or promotion of artificial contraceptives by anyone, whatsoever, but I harbor no hatred toward those who currently use them, nor do I attribute stupidity or malice to them. I’m hardly alone in my ability to do this… and debates/discussions are SO much more pleasant and efficient without such emotion/hysterics-ridden static!
2) I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that artificial contraceptives, by their very nature, seek to allow people to have sex while trying to avoid conceiving a child; that is the definition, yes? As such, it’s also not a stretch to say that artificial contraception, as opposed to NFP (when rightly used), does not encourage the same fullness of self-restraint self-discipline, and mutual growth in self-sacrificial love than does NFP (i.e. sex when you want it, regardless of most circumstances). Since healthy and holy (forgive me, those who are not religious!) marriages depend on such self-sacrificial love, I fail to see (aside from a zeal for “satisfying the sexual itch of the moment”) why anyone would choose the lesser way.
3) As many have already pointed out: there is not a single type of chemical contraceptive that does not have negative (and sometimes lethal) side effects for mother and/or child. (Don’t even get me started on male chemical contraceptives, or on the self-mutilation of voluntary sterilization.) If a married couple (I’m not even considering extramarital sex, here) is that desperate to have sex on demand that they’d be willing to jeopardize mental/physical/marital health with hormonal contraceptives, IUD’s, and other physical dangers, then I must wonder what their sexual life (aside from “scratching mutual sexual itches”… which is [forgive me] little removed from mutual masturbation) really means.
4) In reply to those who who suggest that opposition to contraception will somehow taint the “popularity” or “credibility” of the pro-life movement (and in this, I include the occasional trolls and snark-users who effect glee at the prospect), I have but one word: balderdash. Not only is morality not a popularity contest, but (with no prejudice against those who sincerely approve of contraceptives while being pro-life) I challenge anyone of the pro-life camp to show me, in clear language, how opposition to artificial contraception (and the arguments against it, including Humanae Vitae, the Theology of the Body, and the like) is in any way “less credible” than its contraception-tolerant counterparts. The only people who could think so, in my mind, are the same people who find it unthinkable to say “no to sex on demand”; and I really don’t think that’s an attitude to which we aspire… is it?
I don’t think opposition to contraception necessarily has to taint the pro-life movement. But I think it can taint the pro-life movement. It’s all in how it’s expressed.
I used to be a contraceptive-using pro-choice Catholic. I am now an orthodox Catholic. My conversion was not the result of being brow-beaten with the truth. I hate to see truth used as a weapon to divide instead of an invitation to conversion.
One of the things I dislike the most about the pro-life movement is that faction that cannot/will not compromise in order to save innocent lives. The faction that believes it must be all or nothing, that we cannot baby step our way to the fullness of truth. Sometimes it seems to me that that mentality does more harm than good.
The reality is very clear, and does not require one to be Roman Catholic to believe, that contraception and abortion are directly linked and that contraception is an issue of the pro-life cause.
All one needs to do is to look at Casey v. PP. in 1992. The Supreme Court’s argument (well one of them) for the defense of the abortion practice is precisely to be an alternative if contraception fails. The linkage is right there in common sense, and has been codified in law. The two are absolutely linked.
You cannot be pro-life and support contraception. It is a complete contradiction in terms. Contraception rejects the dignity of human life, the dignity of human persons, and turns them into objects solely for pleasure and use. And should that search for unihibited pleasure fail, the fault lies not with the selfish (or used) person(s) but with the contraception, and since it was the failure of contraception’s fault in the first place one should not only not feel guilty about procuring an abortion, but should have the opportunity to have one completely protected.
If we are going to argue that we are “pro-life” we actually have to be for life. We cannot be for the degredation that the linkage between contraception and abortion does to the human person. We must continue the fight, taking every opportunity to save even a single life, but we must also accept the reality that abortion will never end so long as contraception is a normal way of life.
Josh, what if by saying this “You cannot be pro-life and support contraception” here on this blog where there are pro-life people that support contraception, you are not “taking every opportunity to save even a single life”?
Which is more important, getting agreement that “you cannot be pro-life and support contraception” or stopping abortion?
There is a PRC near me that supports contraception. Because of that, my parish cannot support them with fundraisers, which I totally understand. However, the life-saving work they do is definitely pro-life! Or do the lives of the babies they’ve saved not count?
Oh my goodness, Bruce, do you understand the concept of fun? Your comment about the point of baseball is to win, and your assertion that contracepted sex between man and wife is the same as homosexuality is patently absurd. Didn’t you even play just to have fun, Bruce? Do you realize that it’s okay to enjoy sex with your spouse?
I’m with Jack and all the others who are saying as long as we believe that life begins at conception and we fight to save those lives, we are pro-life. Stay out of my sexual relationship with my husband. It’s between us and God, not you.
I understand that you’re trying to convince us of something you believe in strongly, but seriously, dude, give it a rest already! Learn to lighten up a bit. Laugh! Smile! Life is fun – God created pleasure too, you know, and not just sexual pleasure. It’s okay to lighten up, shrug at other people’s beliefs and enjoy your life.
Saying that sex within marriage needs to be fun/enjoyable/tender OR open to life misrepresents the position of those opposed to contraception. We believe, accept, and honor BOTH parts of the gift. Whether we’re older or younger, whether our fertility is impaired or not, and if we have serious reason to avoid pregnancy. Those of us using NFP also have better knowledge of how to achieve pregnancy if possible.
I’m just thankful I’m at a point in my life where I don’t have to be defensive. My asthma docs have told me in no uncertain terms not to get pregnant again, and I’m listening. Armed with the truth of how my body works, working with a supportive husband, and God’s love and care for me, my husband and I do our best to balance generosity of heart and responsibility to our children. I can’t control it all, but I can choose to learn, to act on what I know, and trust in God.
I am going to have to semi-agree with Bruce
From a non-theological perspective there isn’t a lot wrong with gay sex other than it doesn’t produce children and is merely for pleasure. The reason people like myself aren’t against gay unions are because there is no difference between wants gay people wanted to do: have been a couple and have sex because sex is fun and what most other heterosexual couples do. We can’t criticize the Gays when we do the exact same thing, which is precisely why I think all things Gay are a-okay.
This thread continues to remind me that pro-life is indeed part of a religious ideology and not a stand-alone position. If pro-life were really only about protecting unborn babies from conception, and didn’t want to impose any other moral structure you could do it.
For instance
If pro-life were JUST about saving babies you would LOVE gay unions. I hear talk of how our promiscuous culture/contraceptives have led to epidemic pregnancy and STD’s, this is true but this is mostly due to sex with men. Objectively speaking Sex between women is the safest there is. Zero aborted babies and no HIV transmission.
If you were willing to think a little taboo you could win over the most liberal of feminists on their own territory. We had a hippie pro-women pro-life group on campus they were super pro-sex (use your imagination) just anti-intercourse. They focused on how men have the most to gain form intercourse while women have the most to loose (fact) Women get more STD’s, birth control is bad for you and the environment birth control failures, ect. Pro-pleasure, anti-abortion very effective in getting liberal women to the cause
Shannon,
“This thread continues to remind me that pro-life is indeed part of a religious ideology and not a stand-alone position.”
This is an easy way to blow off any position without really interacting substantive with the arguments. Chalk it up to religious ideology, and you are intellectually off the hook. However, any sophisticated argument against abortion does not at all rely on any sort of religious premise. The best books against abortion and h-ESCR are Beckwith’s “Defending Life”, George’s “Embryo”, and Kaczor’s “The Ethics of Abortion.” All three of those books are very careful to mention on the outset that they in no way will use religious arguments or employ dogma of any kind to argue their case. While most supporters of the pro-life position may be religious, all the intellectual arguments against abortion are secular.
“If pro-life were really only about protecting unborn babies from conception, and didn’t want to impose any other moral structure you could do it.”
So what if there are people who are anti-abortion but also [insert something else here]? How does that affect their arguments? How does that change the moral status of the embryo? How does it make any sense for someone to support abortion based solely on the fact that some pro-lifers have other views that they don’t agree with? The fact that some pro-lifers are anti-contraception is the only reason that some people are not anti-abortion makes no sense intellectually. Again, it makes for an easy way to blow off a position and not have to intellectually grapple with the other side.
“If pro-life were JUST about saving babies you would LOVE gay unions.”
This simply does not follow. If person endorses position A, he does not necessarily support every single position that would somehow bring about position A. I want to save babies, but I do not condone locking pregnant women up in a dungeon so that they can’t obtain an abortion or harm their baby. I don’t condone forced sterilization so that every sexual act is sterile, won’t produce any children, and hence no children will be killed. The question of same sex actions needs to be looked at given its own merits, not evaluated in terms whether or not it produces something beneficial with respect to some other good.
Nah, pro-life is a stand-alone position that happens to be held by people that primarily subscribe to various religious ideologies and by some with no religious ideology. Hence, some pro-life people are against homosexual unions and some are for them.
My comment above was directed to Shannon.
First, I agree with derrr that the comment made about Olivia’s family was out of line. One’s spouse IS ONE’S FAMILY, children or not. That was a horrible thing to say. I have family members whom I have adopted and are not blood relations. My cat and my dog are also my family. Good grief. I was angry on Olivia’s behalf when I read that.
Second, pro-abortion activists claim pro-lifers are a narrow-minded set of religious fanatics. I tell them that it isn’t true, but this thread proves them right. A sperm and an egg are not a human being. All day, I’ve had Monty Python’s “Every sperm is Sacred” playing on a loop in my head. How is it not enough that pro-lifers like me and Jack fight for the rights of the unborn, respect these lives, recognize their value and try to protect them, but we’re told by many of you that since we don’t reject gay marriage and/or contraception, our opinion doesn’t count? We are not truly pro-life? That’s disgusting. That’s alienating. It’s untrue, it’s nasty, it’s judgmental and IT DOES NOT HELP SAVE THE BABIES.
“Every Sperm is Sacred” lol, I totally want to watch The Meaning of Life now.
I agree with you, Mary Lee. Apparently you and I are secretly pro-choice. And I’m gay. Whatever. :(
I’ve found that liberal pro-lifers can be just as bad as their conservative colleagues about making fellow pro-lifers feel unwelcome where they need most to feel welcome. And for me they’ve often been worse. It lead to my dropping out of pro-life quite a few years ago, and during my absence the liberal component seemed to have practically disappeared.
Mary Lee says:
Second, pro-abortion activists claim pro-lifers are a narrow-minded set of religious fanatics. I tell them that it isn’t true, but this thread proves them right.
I hope you mean that this thread only proves that some pro-lifers are narrow-minded religious fanatics.
Kel– The less fertile days doesn’t mean pregnancy is IMPOSSIBLE, just LESS likely. Surprise pregnancies can happen even with using NFP–although generally they can be explained.
MIT, I’m not sure what you mean by this – I think we’re talking about the same thing, but maybe not. (Are you saying that a woman is fertile at any time of the month?) Every woman has days that are fertile days – days leading up to and following ovulation – which are potential days for conception.
The other days out of the month are not fertile days.
Surprise pregnancies can definitely happen if your cycle is irregular or if it happens to be off by a few days during the cycle. That’s why attention to the types of cervical mucus is so important. I happen to be one of the extremely irregular people, which is why NFP is difficult for me to trust all the time. Or should I say, it’s difficult for me to trust myself to identify the fertile mucus properly so as to avoid possible conception.
Yes, lrning! Not all. They will use this against us. Not all pro-lifers are Christian conservatives, and we must be welcome in the movement because we can really, really help. The biggest issue is preventing the slaughter of the unborn;, there is nothing more egregious, and we need to focus on that. We cannot say “Don’t abort your children…..and also, you must live as we tell you.” That is unreasonable and insane.
One does not need to cite religion to know that it is a logical fallacy to claim to be pro-life, while simultaneously using and promoting contraception (and the cultural mindset that accompanies it). Such a stance is akin to being opposed to strip clubs while simultaneously viewing pornography at home. It is hypocritical and nonsensical.
Mary Lee,
I have to second Lrning’s comment: I hope you’re not painting with such a broad brush as you seemed to be, at first reading (i.e. dismissing those who refuse to accept artificial contraception as morally licit, and as liabilities to the pro-life cause).
Those who say that you (and others who view contraception as morally licit) are “not adequately pro-life” are guilty of a significant lack of tact, at very least… and I (even speaking as one who rejects artificial contraception utterly, and who certainly thinks that it’s intimately linked to the abortion pandemic) will go further, and say that such comments, of the flavour that you mention, are both illogical and scurrilous. Please understand: I certainly DO think that any support of artificial contraception cuts much of the ground out from under one’s fight against abortion, on many levels (moral, biological, tactical, etc.)… but I also believe that the vast majority of people who support A.C. use are a million miles from wanting that. It’s possible to be sincere, while still maintaining a tactical error. So no, it’s not right at all to say that contraception-users (or supporters) are “less pro-life”, any more than it’d be true to say that I’m “less of a human” because I have a malfunctioning immune system.
Perhaps this would help clarify what I want to say: I want to reject (and resist with all my strength) the nonsensical idea that “the pro-life movement must divest itself of all other moral concerns, especially those which smack of religion, or else it is doomed to hypocrisy and destruction”. Balderdash. The very idea that the pro-life movement must be reduced to (as C.S. Lewis would say) “a bloodless Least Common Denominator” in order to succeed is absurd on its very face, and it’s quite impossible, anyway. We’re quite capable of uniting on this front, quite solidly, while disagreeing (hopefully with civility, logic and charity) in other venues… and this site itself is more than ample evidence of that! Look about you, and see the diversity of opinions of those who are still solidly pro-life!
As for “them” using any “in-house” disagreements against us: what of it? So long as we unite on this cause, and keep cool heads about it all, why not let them rave? Whom will they convince, who wouldn’t already be disposed to be convinced, anyway?
All right Bruce. We got it. I am a hedonistic immoral hypocritical sinner. I am supporting abortion and I secretly work at Planned Parenthood. All because don’t think I don’t think condoms and gays are bad.
Kel, coitus without contraception is substantially different than coitus with contraception. The two are mutually exclusive because they have different ends. A comprehensive bodily union (unitive) is not formed unless the organ system is created and functioning (whether a conception results or not). In NFP, infertile couples, and the aged, the organ system can be formed and functional even though it does not “win” every time (or ever). An analogy helps: You have a digestive system made up of organs. It functions, but is not always successful at digesting every morsel of food. You would not claim that your digestive system does not exist, only that it does not always fulfill its ordered purpose. If you were to block your GI tract, it would not succeed in functioning, nor would it work toward its ordered end any longer. It would be fundamentally and substantially different, and eating would not be for nutrition and pleasure, but pleasure alone. In the same way, when a man and woman unite in coitus and ejaculation occurs, the reproductive system is produced and is functional – even if conception does not occur through no fault of their own. Contraceptive coitus does not allow the organ system to form nor fully function – it prevents the system from functioning and is NOT ordered toward its intended purpose. Therefore, it is different and disordered.
Now, I used NO religious argumentation here. Just reason. I may not convince you, yet, but keep thinking about what you are doing with your husband, Kel. Ask why you don’t trust him or yourself. Ask why you don’t trust God. Ask why you refuse to fully unite with him, and he with you. Ask why contracepted marriages fail far more often than non-contracepted marriages. Ask these questions.
Yes Paladin, I didn’t mean “all”….it’s difficult to type on my phone while battling a migraine!
Bruce, I get it. But how dare you claim I am not truly pro-life? How DARE you? You should be thanking the heavens that Jack and I are on your side. I would never, ever make such haughty pronouncement. To fight for the life of unborn is all you need to do in order to be pro-life. When I die, I answer to God, not you. If He calls me out because I supported gay marriage and didn’t follow the dogma of the Catholic Church, I suspect He will also commend me for fighting in the war against the unborn. Get off your high horse.
Mary Lee, you’re inconsistent in your pro-life stance, and this is far too important a topic to waffle on. Contraception and abortion are not only intimately related, the latter stems directly from the culture that supports contraception. The two are united, and to be for one and against the other is not possible. You can think so, but it is not true. You cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception. It is not possible. Likewise, you cannot support homosexual activity and remain pro-life either. Those two are mutually exclusive as well.
Once again, I shall note that nowhere do I reference religion. It is rather interesting how everyone quickly jumps on Catholicism whenever this topic comes up. I have not referenced the Church yet.
So, Bruce, would your solution be to have Mary Lee and me not aid in the fight for the unborn? Only good Catholics and Protestants (maybe a couple secular anti-contraception believers) can try to stop abortion?
Mary Lee,
Gotcha. And my sympathies for you with your migraine! Ouch! :(
Bruce: if I might offer a gentle reminder of the past…
https://www.jillstanek.com/2011/04/feminists-fume-about-euphoric-properties-of-semen/comment-page-1/#comment-324518
…and a gentle suggestion that you may be falling into the same problem, here? Some of the information that you’re conveying has some basis in fact… but you really do come across as one wielding a sledge-hammer, swinging indiscriminately against friend or foe (something like Mr. Magoo with a shotgun, if you’ll forgive the reference!). Could you consider rewording your positions so that those who disagree about A.C. don’t get the impression that you regard them as implacable foes?
Jack, did I mention religion? It is rather interesting that you keep bringing it up. Only reason is required to know that one cannot claim to be pro-life while supporting anti-life cultures of contraception and homosexuality. Anyhoo, sure, you can help the pro-life movement, but so can Obama. That doesn’t mean you are pro-life, but you’re on the right track. To become consistent, you have to do a bit more work.
Paladin, of course. I’m trying to keep this strictly on a philosophical level, and it is challenging – because it challenges all of us. It comes off as prickish, but that is because I’m trying to get to the heart of the matter and it is going to offend. Truth always does. I know what I am getting into here, and I see it everyday.
Praxedes: But do you see what you’re doing? You think you’re blaming contraception, but you can’t do it without language that raises other issues of sin in human life. NFP could also give a false sense of security. It doesn’t escape your logic. It’s merely the least likely method for people to use. If other methods were not available, loose morality would still motivate some to have sex with people they wouldn’t want to have a child with, and NFP would be the method of choice. In other words, their desire for sex is stronger than their concern that contraception be failsafe. The particular method they’d use to control conception simply isn’t the issue.
Fr. Klee:
“Contraception is indeed the premiere Pro-life issue – if it weren’t for the widespread use of contraception, abortion would never have come out of the “back alley” and onto Main Street. ”
You can’t be serious. That’s patently absurd, the way you used the definite article, followed by “premiere”.
Refutation in this case only requires the merest contradiction with no argument whatsoever: no — the premiere pro-life issue is abortion.
“Contraception has become such an ‘American Way of Life’, so established as a bedrock foundation to the often obscene levels of American consumerism and suburban materialism, that even many Pro-lifers aren’t able to see this ‘forest for the trees’.”
Which is a tacit admission that contraception is not a sufficient cause of abortion, or they would no longer be pro-life. AGAIN, people, we see that something other than contraception is required to result in abortion — something in the judgment of the woman who eventually chooses to abort. Might contraception play a role in the evolution of a person’s thinking? Certainly. But that’s like saying that the road underneath me plays a role in my decision to go to a strip club. “Hey, this road will get me there!” And what — everyone’s supposed to assent that roads, therefore, are “the premiere pro-decency issue?”
“Fr. Paul Marx (R.I.P.), who established the world’s largest and most expansive Pro-life organization (HLI – Human Life International), and who had visited and established HLI affiliates in nearly (90) countries worldwide, used to be tireless in publicizing what he’d seen the world over – that there is an inseparable link between contraception and abortion.”
There’s an inseparable link between my house and a porn shop. It’s called a road. Roads are the premier pro-decency issue!
Fact: not everyone drives that route to that end. Same with contraception. What explains this? What differentiates the two cohorts? What they share in common — use of contraception — is not a sufficient explanation for why some end up willing to abort, yet others don’t.
Meanwhile, pro-choice folk think you’re nuts. I don’t think your concerns about contraception are nuts. But if contraception is important enough to you to alienate people to the secondary issue of conceived unborn life, I think THAT is crazy.
“Why has divorce skyrocketed since the introduction of the oral contraceptive pill? This should be most obvious.”
No, it shouldn’t be. Causation and correlation are commonly confused, and encouraging people to see your causality assertion as “obvious” is irresponsible. You’re discouraging critical thinking. Why would you do that?
“…and any other forms still function in causing egocentric selfishness between spouses.”
Good grief. This is a priori rationalization, not evidence-based thinking. And the moment you read that, I’ll wager your mind trots back to your varied “paves the way for” rationalizations as if THEY constituted “evidence.”
“Contraception says ‘We don’t want a child’ – making an excellent segue to abortion.”
A priori rationalization, utterly ignoring those whose convictions about life make it no segue at all. You’re cherry-picking your cohorts.
“To claim to be in favor of contraception but against abortion is tantamount to jumping-out of an airplane without a parachute, and so doing because you promised the pilot not to get hurt or killed when you reach solid earth..”
Dude. That’s insane.
People who use contraception work in CPCs. They’ve done sidewalk counseling of women in crisis. And so forth. All they’re guilty of is preventing conception by means you happen to disagree with. Even if you’re right that conception is ill-advised (or “evil,” as the catechism has it — a word which needs to be put in context for laity in terms of privation of good), where you’re taking this is even more ill-advised and gratuitous.
Have you ever done that thing with cards, where you put as many of them out as far over the edge of a table as you can without ’em falling? That’s what you’re doing rationally. You’re reasoning — rationalizing, actually — well out beyond the edge of the facts, to the point where your assertions don’t square with real-world people. Oh they describe some people, sure. But you’re posing them as generalizations, and as generalizations they fail because they don’t describe people who just stubbornly don’t assume the contours of your rational cookie cutter.
Furthermore, sir, when Catholic mothers stop aborting babies, it’d be a fine time to urge non-Catholics to consider discontinuing contraception. Until then, this assertion of contraception’s status as THE “premiere” pro-life issue is just ridiculous on the face of it. You stress out about third world countries and mere prevention of conception, while millions are killed at home. You can opine all you wish about the historical path that led us to where we are — but ranting about contraception when the killing fields are bloody, well, it’s just ridiculous.
I understand your points. I’m sympathetic to many. I agree with most. But you lack proportion and you’re not thinking clearly. Your premiere assertion is ridiculous on the face of it. If you would like to amend it, I might consider you a more reasonable interlocutor.
“Of course contraception is a Pro-life issue – it’s why were drowning in this Culture of Death today.”
Then you must explain why so many pro-life people use contraception and would not think to abort — and are active in the pro-life movement. More active than pro-choice Catholics. I know, I know — a contradiction in terms. But guess what — they receive the mass every day in Catholic parishes worldwide.
What do you propose to do with this “premiere” issue? Outlaw contraception? Clearly not, or you’d be a deulusional madman. Change minds? Well now, there you’d be on to something. And I’d agree with you. And we’d be operating where the problem actually lies — in human minds, not in little latex-filled packets.
Oh — and also, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. To go with causation/correlation issues.
Bruce, not only are you wrong….You are DANGEROUSLY, DANGEROUSLY wrong. If I recall correctly, the worst sin of all is pride, which you seem to have in spades. Don’t you DARE lecture me about my pro-life beliefs. I’ve been raped and beaten, I’ve been a single mother, I’ve seen everything you can see. I love the unborn and will fight and fight and fight until they are recognized and respected by the law. That is all that is needed to be pro-life. I’m not “consistent” you say? Well, I eat fish, too, so I’m not a consistent vegetarian. I’m a human being and I’m not perfect. But for the love of all that is good and holy, Bruce: STEP OFF. I might be “inconsistent” in my pro-life beliefs (whatever the hell that means)(because evidently YOU are the one who decides these things, right, Bruce?)…. but you’ve been more than consistent in being obnoxious. And I can guarantee you I’ve converted more people from “pro-choice” to pro-life than you ever will. To be sure, I’ll bet my last dollar you’ve never converted anyone, and you NEVER WILL. Just stop it already. You’re hurting the movement, you’re insulting your own, and you sound ridiculous. Enough already.
I’m off to dinner with my gay best friend. We’re having sushi because I”m a vegetarian who eats fish and fraternizes with sinners.
Jeez Louise.
Bruce, you are coming across as comparing those of us who don’t have a problem with contraception to people who support abortion. Do you have any idea how offensive that is? You made your point. I get it. Mary Lee gets it. Kel gets it. You think sex is disordered if it doesn’t happen on the terms you stated. Okay. Cool. Hammering in the same exact point using the same exact words isn’t going to make us agree with you, it is only going to irritate me at least, probably the others.
I have no idea why I keep bringing up religion. Probably because I am thoroughly sick of hearing snide comments about how non-religious people have no set moral code. Sorry to take it out on you, since you haven’t said anything like that. But really, the liberal and secular bashing on this blog is really annoying sometimes.
Mary Lee <3
Those who claim to be aiding the pro-life cause, and yet use and promote contraception, are actually handicapping the pro-life cause. Robbing Mike to pay Mark.
Mary Lee, as much as your story is sad, it is still sadder that you buy the lie that homosexuality and contraception are consistent with a pro-life view. It is like being against murder but not strangulation. It does not make sense, and it is not consistent. You cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception/pro-homosexuality. It is not possible.
So, being raped and beaten is not as bad as being cool with condoms and gays?
Bruce, could you be more of a jerk?
But Jack, that is not the end of the story. There is no such thing as “truth for you and truth for me.” There is only truth and fallacy. I don’t have a “definition” of sexual intercourse that has to meet “my” terms. I simply appeal to THE definition of sexual intercourse, which has its OWN terms – none of it is up to me. I simply report what is there. You have chosen to ignore the truth, and that is the heart of the argument, and it cannot be left alone. To suggest that one can hold one truth while another holds an opposite truth is silly. There is only one truth – and it is not up to you or me.
Bruce, don’t ever, EVER reply to me again.
Jack, I challenge you to point out where I made that statement. What you have there is a strawman, not an argument. You can do better than that.
Well, Mary Lee, these are not my ideas, but simply the truth. I empathize with your story. I really do. But I challenge you to rise up out of the lies you are surrounding yourself with. You are a survivor – that is wonderful. But you still cling to the deadly culture of contraception and homosexuality – which are not only related to abortion, they help spawn it. Perhaps I love you enough to tell you the truth.
Once again, you cannot be pro-life and support contraception and homosexual activity. It is not possible. We need to be consistent in order to make a difference. Abortion stems directly from the culture that supports contraception and homosexuality. It is the logical conclusion.
It actually makes a lot of sense to see the passion this argument creates. It hits close to home for many. But that is just like truth, isn’t it? The same was the case with those who came out against abortion decades ago. Abortion supporters responded in much the same manner as those who support contraception do here. It makes sense, but this fight is worth the lumps. Decades from now, I fully expect contraception to be as anathema as abortion is now. But it will take a lot of this type of debate to wake folks up.
Bruce, you just said that her story wasn’t as sad as the fact she believes that contraception and homosexuality isn’t wrong! I am not throwing up a strawman, I am reporting your own flipping words back to you!!! That was just out of line to say that to her. I have had similar things happen to me. I was abused as a kid and teen, I had sex before marriage. Are you seriously going to claim that those things are not as sad as some beliefs that you don’t share?
I don’t care about the “purpose” of sexuality, you are right. Fine, I will believe fallaciously. I also think that God hates me. I believe a lot of things that you won’t agree with. Constantly hammering on someone is NOT the way to change their mind on subjects like this. You are repeating the same thing over and over again.
Actually no, Jack, I never said “being raped and beaten is not as bad as being cool with condoms and gays.” You said it, precisely to put up a straw man. I said that while her story is sad, it is even sadder that she cannot let go of the very things that coincide and lend themselves to create a culture that supports such abuse. Contraception creates a culture that accepts abuse and abortion. It is not too hard to understand, if you actually read what I have written.
This brings up a good point, though. When challenged on contraception and homosexuality, those who support it fall back on case histories of abuse or domestic violence. Why would that be relevant to the discussion? The answer is that it is not relevant at all. It is an excuse for behavior that one KNOWS is wrong. It is precisely what we saw from abortion supporters as well. It is very sad that those with such terrible life experiences are still hooked on the very culture that creates those experiences. Contraception, abortion, homosexuality, abuse, etc – they all stem from the SAME CULTURE. There is nothing good in any of them, and it is a logical fallacy to claim that one can be pro-life while supporting the very things that are leading to abuse and abortion to begin with. It is not possible.
Jack said, “I don’t care about the “purpose” of sexuality” Then you cannot claim to care about the fruits of sexuality either – including life.
Are you seriously claiming that abuse stems from contraception. Where is the link? I am pretty sure that rape, domestic violence, child abuse, and a host of other evils existed long before our liberal culture.
Maybe those of us with horrible experiences can see that the things you are complaining about are not a big deal. Getting abused, getting raped, getting killed ARE a big deal. Consenting adults having sex with the same gender or with contraceptives? Not a big deal. Are you and the others right that it is “wrong”? Possibly. Does it matter all that much, is it something to concentrate on while children are being raped, beaten and killed? NO. Whatever you think is so sacred about the sex act, it doesn’t matter to me. Sex is sex. When it is used to hurt someone, then I care. When it is used with informed consent? I couldn’t care less.
Don’t dare tell me I don’t care about life. There isn’t anything I care about more than protecting the innocent that cannot defend themselves. What I have no interest in is telling other adults what they can do with their bodies.
Jack, you are neck-deep in the same culture that supports abortion. Like you, they claim “sex is sex” and they do not care for its purpose – so long as it feels good and everyone is on board. This attitude is not only related directly to abortion, it is what spawns it. You can’t see it, because you’re inside it. It is the pro-death culture, and it is anything but pro-life.
Kel,
Let me email my folks (NFP teachers) and get back to you. I may have gotten confused. Sometimes that happens when I’m trying to sort out my thoughts. Please bear with me. Thanks for your patience so far.
P.S. Okay just sent the email. I’ll give the answers once I get them.
“I also think that God hates me.”
God doesn’t hate anyone. It may not always feel like it if we’ve had a heavy load to bear, but He does in fact love us.
And Jack, who decides what is a “big deal” and what is not a “big deal”? Since you do not believe in objective truth or reality, what constitutes right and wrong? Is there such a thing as right and wrong? Your worldview would not allow such questions to be answered, unless it were inconsistent. And that is the heart of this argument. To be pro-contraception is to be inconsistent on life. You cannot be pro-life and for contraception and homosexual activity. Not possible. And for the record, life is not restricted to the unborn either. How can you claim to be pro-life and not care what happens to adults? That is quite inconsistent.
Perhaps, at the end of the day, it is a control thing. The desire to have control over sexual activity – even the fruits of sexual activity such as the unborn. The trouble is, one cannot have full control over sexual activity, or its fruits, unless one either chooses to engage in such behavior authentically (uncontracepted coitus) or abstains. There is no middle ground – it is a fallacy. To believe that one can control sexual activity through contraception is to be as fooled as those who believe that they can control the fruits of sexual activity through abortion. It stems from the same frame of mind, and it is ultimately a destructive lie.
Eric: If God exists I am sure he flat out despises me or doesn’t care about me.
Bruce: I give up. You don’t seem to see that I can care about adults being harmed, and not give a rip if consenting fully informed adults screw. I am not pro-death, the very accusation is just sickening. You are a bunch of words I can’t write on this blog. Good day.
Thanks, MIT! :) I will be interested to hear from some longtime NFP teachers. I never had the opportunity to receive any teaching on the subject – just books on the method.
Bruce, you’re talking borderline insane. Remarks like this:
“Jack said, ‘I don’t care about the purpose of sexuality’ Then you cannot claim to care about the fruits of sexuality either – including life. ”
…are nuts. He does claim. That’s empirically evident. You’ve made no argument that defeats his claim on the grounds you’ve merely asserted. Despite what you think, you’re not arguing from first principles. Actually, you probably know you’re not — but you’re certainly talking as if you are.
No one is rationally obliged to accept assertions you haven’t actually argued. You’re not speaking with reference to any commonly accepted authority, and you’re not grounding your assertions in the least. Insanely, though I generally hate generalizations, that one holds.
I could assert that a third purpose of sex is to summon aliens from Venus, and I’d have presented exactly as much a rational case as you have — none. Nada. Zilch.
So you might begin by offering Jack some genuine bases for your assertions. Then you won’t come off as a pretentious ass.
I understand what you’re saying, I understand why you’re saying it, and I actually don’t disagree with the fundamentals you’re driving at. But your lack of proportion is hubristic.
If you’re standing in rational judgment of someone — as you are — it seems incumbent upon you to make the case — not merely assert. To merely assert is to suggest that someone is in jeopardy without telling them why, while simultaneously expecting them to gratuitously accept your mere assertions as a given.
That’s uncharitable, Bruce — which is also disordered. There’s more to truth-telling than telling. You need to demonstrate warrant or accept that your remarks compel no consent whatsoever — which calls into question why you say what you have to say at all.
Bruce: Last example — this is a series of assertions, not an argument. No one is rationally obliged to accept such remarks: “To believe that one can control sexual activity through contraception is to be as fooled as those who believe that they can control the fruits of sexual activity through abortion. It stems from the same frame of mind, and it is ultimately a destructive lie.”
Are you here merely to congratulate yourself on discharging some obligation to “speak the truth,” or are you here more valuably to persuade those who stand in need of moral redemption? If the latter, you’re a stellar FAIL. If the former, you have grounds for congratulating yourself on a wonderful success.
Just reason. I may not convince you, yet, but keep thinking about what you are doing with your husband, Kel. Ask why you don’t trust him or yourself. Ask why you don’t trust God. Ask why you refuse to fully unite with him, and he with you.
I trust my husband. But due to certain circumstances right now with my health, and from discussion with my physicians, my husband and I have made this decision.
My husband and I have fully united, as is evidenced by the fact that we have 3 children.
Take care, Bruce.
Kel says:
July 26, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Thanks, MIT! I will be interested to hear from some longtime NFP teachers. I never had the opportunity to receive any teaching on the subject – just books on the method.
Oh no problem. They teach the Sympo-Thermal Method.
If you have any other questions you wish me to relay to them about NFP, just let me know.
My parents have taught I think for over 20 years. My Dad’s the NFP Consultant for a diocese. So they have A LOT of experience with NFP.
Rasqual, maybe the purpose of sex IS to summon aliens from Venus! LOL you actually got a laugh out of me. Bravo!
Jack: “If God exists I am sure he flat out despises me or doesn’t care about me.”
Can you supply some warrant for that claim, or is it merely a gratuitous intuition?
If you’re don’t have enough warrant to believe he exists, doesn’t it seem improbable that you have sufficient warrant to know what he would be like if only you had sufficient warrant to be sure he existed to be like anything in particular?
;-)
If God exists but you’re not sure, presumptions about what he’s obliged to be like on the basis of what can only be described as your unfamiliarity with him (since you’re not certain he even exists, much less would be knowable) seems unscientific and incurious.
;-)
“If God exists I am sure he flat out despises me or doesn’t care about me.”
Sorry JackBorsch, but I gotta’ disagree with you on this one; but I’m glad we agree on the value of people before they’re born.
Thank you Eric.
Rasqual, if I could ever get over the problem of evil I wouldn’t have an issue believing in God, until I can figure that out I am kinda stuck. This isn’t really the blog for those kind of discussions though. ;)
Thanks rasqual for replying to me and responding to Fr. Klee’s post.
What are the odds we will get Fr. Klee back here?
Sorry JackBorsch, but I gotta’ disagree with you on this one; but I’m glad we agree on the value of people before they’re born.
I’m with Eric on this one too. God loves you more than you love that cute little girl Jack.
great fun here today. Regards to all.
Jack, I will echo Praxedes’ sentiment of “God loves you more than you love that cute little girl”.
I, too, struggled with what seemed like a schizophrenic God. Particularly hard to grasp was not understanding where this “loving God” I’d heard about was when on the receiving end of abuse when still small. We think, “If He really loved me…” Or looking at abortion, asking, “How can He allow it?”
You’re right in that this isn’t the place, but I wanted to share this with you, if you’d give it the time: The True Nature of God. I think it’s the Saturday 10 a.m. that has the story about the wild horse he bought that really struck me, but the whole thing talks about the difference of how God related to people in the Old Testament vs. the New.
Dare to hope, because when you truly know Him, He is wonderful.
Hi Hal! Interesting thread, right? Did you like the part where Bruce said he “loved” me enough to tell me the truth? GROSS.
Yeah, Hal, did you see that rape and abuse isn’t nearly as sad as being okay with contraceptives and gay people? Super fun!
Rasqual, when one doesn’t have an argument, one resorts to ridicule. It is evident that you have no argument, but are merely defensive. Its okay. We’re all hypocrites. Welcome aboard. While you’re here, know that one cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception/homosexuality. It is an impossibility using basic human reason. There is also no legal or logical difference between contracepted heterosexual activity and homosexual activity – none that would hold up in court or logically. So, if you were to have contracepted sex, you are engaging in something no different than what two, four, or eight men or women could engage in.
Actually Jack, that is something you said, not I. But since you do not recognize truth or reality, I suppose it should not come as a surprise. Remember, however, that ridicule is the surest sign that one does not have a rational leg to stand upon.
Mary Lee – You cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception/homosexuality. It is impossible and to think otherwise is to lie to oneself.
No, Bruce, YOU SAID IT and you can’t take it back. I am just as pro-life….if not more pro-life than you are. Put a sock in it. I asked you not to reply to me. What do you not understand? What is the matter with you?!
Don’t take his insanity seriously, and it is much easier to chuckle about it.
FU to my July 26, 2011 at 9:00 pm post:
Oops, I was wrong it was the Friday 7 p.m. one where he talks about the horse named El Shaddai. ANYWAY, everyone without understanding the difference between Grace & Law needs to understand these truths. My brother, when he saw this, compared this to the answers in the back of the math book. Knowing the answer & then looking back at the problem suddenly brought it all into focus.
As far as the question goes, I had an answer but this poor thread is so derailed all I can say is the infighting among prolifers delights the enemy (& no, I don’t mean pro-“choice”rs, they’re merely POWs & don’t know it).
I feel the need to repeat myself:
Bruce, your method of proclaiming truth is not bearing fruit. Please stop it! You are accountable for the love (or lack thereof) with which you operate. Beating the ground rock hard while sowing seed is not effective.
Tell that to the person who is telling other pro-lifers that they aren’t pro-life, klynn73.
Thank you for the link, I will check it out. :)
Hal, I don’t normally take people so seriously. For some reason he struck a nerve. You don’t tell someone their abusive past isn’t as bad as some opinions that you don’t agree with. And you don’t tell people that they aren’t pro-life when they are.
Thanks, Hal. I must say, he didn’t really get to me until he claimed my rape wasn’t as bad as homosexuality ….It took me SEVEN YEARS to heal from it. That crossed a line. His comments are borderline sociopathic. His comments made me cry. They also made me throw up in my mouth.
But thanks for your good humor! Rasqual has been in rare form and has won a million pints from me, btw.
I’m sorry he got to you guys. We all have areas that are a bit more sensitive (and that’s not a reference to using sex for “pleasure” — the horror).
Jack,
There are two books that might help you. “Mere Christianity” and “The Problem of Pain.” Both are written by C.S. Lewis.
Oops, I meant “points” not “pints.” Though I’m sure Rasqual would accept pints too, yeah?
Heck, I’m anti-abortion and anti-contraception and reading Bruce’s repeated assertions still makes me want to scratch my eyes out. He’s so entrenched in his personal definition of pro-life that he can’t see that he’s asserting opinion as fact.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pro-life?region=us
Jack: For what it’s worth, the problem of evil is something I’ve plumbed at depth. But oddly, not because of but in spite of my studies, I’ve come to the place where the very fact that it’s such an apparent problem has dramatically strengthened my faith.
On one or two levels, the problem isn’t as problematic as some think. Irritatingly, it’s often most a problem where you least expect it. Which is, of course, weird.
At any rate, the worse problem if you think about it is the problem of good. Because it’s by some standard that you judge evil evil, such that you mark out a problem. The problem is this: by what authority do you determine whether a just God could possibly exist by your own standard of good? For your sense of good and evil to be “large enough” to do so, you end up needing to explain how it can be that large, or foundational, or correspondent with reality in an uncannily accurate way. But if you realize that your own epistemic problems make such correspondence unlikely (that is, if you have the healthy agnostic humility we should all have in some measaure), and that it’s improbable that you know the question to the answer of life, the universe and everything — well then, you can’t be as serious about the problem of evil as you thought.
So really, we’re stuck between two problems — that of good, and that of evil. And there’s no way out — and I mean that this is true whether we’re Christians or not. Christianity doesn’t offer all the answers in this world — not a chance. It merely claims that God has reached out to us, because we’re too clueless and sinful to reach out to him for who he is. It more specifically claims that he’s reconciled our alienation from him in the work of Jesus.
Anyway, I’m facing a lot of evil myself lately — both in me, and directed toward me. By “evil” I don’t mean that some craven demon is leaping about my psyche, tormenting me. Evil is privation of good. Where an intended good is not, there is evil. Where an intended good is, in that respect there is no evil. So in my case, I’m noting an absence of specific intended goods (by God and, frankly, by me) in me, and in my life situation generally. Some of these evils I’ve brought on myself. Others are gratuitous — they’re part of that problem of evil in a serious way. And in fact, on the latter point, there are so many ironies and ludicrous juxtapositions that it’s almost impossible to resist the temptation to consider that God is tormenting me. Which, translated through my theology, is not so much a hint that he might be a cunning imp as a radical affirmation that he is entirely good and intends nothing but good for me.
Weird, I know. But all that just say that academically and existentially, I’m sympathetic with anyone who has struggled or is struggling with the problem of evil.
Frankly, the “privations of good” in my life are small relative to what many in this world suffer. So I can appreciate that many have more profound concerns about the problem of evil than I. I wish you well in your ruminations, but don’t be surprised if the answers you find are to other questions you may deem more important when the time comes.
Bruce: “know that one cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception/homosexuality. It is an impossibility using basic human reason.”
Well then you might want to get about using “basic human reason,” because you’re becoming almost comically bot-like in your capacity to assert without argument, without grounding your remarks in the least, without turning over so much as one turtle.
I don’t need an argument, Bruce. You’re making the positive assertions. Your assertions are yours to demonstrate. You’re engaging in some of the most sparsely enthymematic crap I’ve ever seen, and you’re being silly if you imagine that your mere assertions compel rational assent. They don’t, because you offer no one warrant for adopting your propositions as their own. It would be against reason for them to agree with you unless they already have reasons for doing so.
“if you were to have contracepted sex, you are engaging in something no different than what two, four, or eight men or women could engage in.”
:-/
If anyone wishes for some therapy to remedy the headache Bruce’s remarks induce, I can think of no better antidote — though truthfully it would do better as an innoculation — than some Chesterton: http://goo.gl/O58Jk You’ll find Bruce explained in that chapter.
Mary Lee: “Though I’m sure Rasqual would accept pints too, yeah?”
IPA for most of them, please. An occasional doppelbock. ;-)
Kel,
Email me so we can talk in private about this. Thanks, you’re wonderful.
Bruce,
Jesus says He will not quench the smoldering wick, or break the bruised reed. You need to bear that in mind when you deal with people.
My wife and I adhere to the Magisterium completely on all matters pertaining to God’s wise design for sex and how the Church teaches it ought to be rightly used. That said, your assertion that one cannot be pro-life and pro-contraception is at the least stridently narrow, if not altogether absurd.
There are degrees to which people are pro-life, and degrees to which people act on their pro-life orientation. Many Catholics and our Protestant brethren do not fully grasp what and why the Magisterium teaches about birth control. To say that Kel is not pro-life is asinine and presumptuous.
Perhaps many don’t see the potential abortifacient properties of oral contraceptives. Your argument is not here with the pro-lifers who may not have read Humanae Vitae. Your argument is with the cowardly Bishop Lori of Connecticut, who along with the other bishops there approved Plan B for use in Catholic Hospitals in cases of rape and incest. Start there by thundering at him, asking him who died and made him Pope, and where he gets off dispensing certain people from Humanae Vitae.
We have a growing mess with our own bishops, so let’s start by addressing the mess in our own house, shall we?
Rasqual: Disinterested FDA – with a lack of investment in the health or well being of women.
Thinking from another point of view (implying that they have investment in selling the pill) ‘uninterested’ would be better way to express how they’d treat the data on incidence of thromboembolism in pill users.
Corrected link on abortive chemicals including the morning after pill, Ella- http://themorningafter.us/chemical-abortion. It is searchable on the blog.
Robert: Extrapolating from the rat estrus model to the human menstrual cycle to imply that levonorgestrel does not have post fertilization effects in humans is not valid.
The most amusing trend is for articles to imply that the morning after pills are very ineffective during the most fertile time after the luteal peak, in order to suggest that they have no post fertilization effects. At this time, some apologists are trumpeting that the morning after pills are less effective than the withdrawal method.
Probably women should be told about that. ;-)
from this article
“In a non-comparative trial in 1533 women who took ulipristal on the third, fourth or fifth day after intercourse, the pregnancy rate was 2.1%. This is lower than would be expected without contraception (about 5.5%) but an indirect comparison, providing only a low level of evidence, did not show superiority over levonorgestrel. Ulipristal, like levonorgestrel, can cause nausea and vomiting, and menstrual disorders. A few cases of ovarian cysts were observed with ulipristal, two of which required surgery.”
If you think I’m all gung-ho on emergency contraception, think again. The 2.1 % pregnancy rate shown in the above article suggests ulipristal (ella) is 98% effective at preventing pregnancy until you look at the 5.5% rate for a single unprotected act of intercourse. At this point the pill’s effectiveness is revealed to be 62%. You’d have better luck with the old calender method. And if a woman takes Plan B or Ella thinking she’s safe, and then it turns out she wasn’t, what’s she likely to do at that point?
Jerry: The most fundamental of questions man (meaning men and women) has wrestled with is why we are here and what is this thing called life all about. Is it a matter of “forcing religious beliefs into the debate” (Tony @ 9:31) when for millennia the world’s major religions and ancient to modern day philosophers have proposed answers to these questions within the framework of religious experience?
It is impossible to separate questions of life and our reason for existence from the question of preventing or eliminating life. They are really two sides to the same coin. Ergo contraception is a “life” issue and contextually a “pro-life” issue.
Jerry, good post, and if anything I’d just say that you are giving “pro-life” a wider scope beyond the common anti-abortion ingredient.
Kel,
I finally got an answer from the NFP teachers about the fertility questions and the percentages. Here’s the answer (I’m copying and pasting from the email):
“Since no system is perfect, there is a slight possibility for an unintended pregnancy on days which are thought to be infertile. (Note that “technically” you can only get pregnant on fertile days, and not on infertile days–that’s why I worded that statement carefully, saying “thought to be infertile.” In our particular system, almost all the unintended pregnancies would happen in the pre-ovulation time. The percentage of the time a fertile couple would get pregnant on their most fertile day of the cycle depends on the couple–it varies from couple to couple. The AVERAGE for fertile couples is only about 30%.”
Anyway, so that’s what I know from the answer I got. Hope this helps!
A recent study showed women who have an abortion are less likely to have a repeat abortion if they have an IUD put in than when they go on the pill. Do they know what kind of health problems pop up when the IUD is put in right after an abortion?
CT: So I agree that contraceptive sex takes a disordered view of sexuality
CT, apologies for just picking that part out, but really – most sex is not for procreating, but for pleasure.
Hi, Kel,
Sorry to be late to the “party”… but in answer to the question, “How could someone get pregnant on infertile days? Isn’t the probability for pregnancy 0%, on those days?”: it starts becoming a matter of philosophy and semantics. The short answer is, “Mathematically, the probability is not zero; functionally and practically speaking, there’e no chance of getting pregnant using the most conservative NFP methods.” (Or, if you like: the chances of getting pregnant during those infertile days are about the same as the probability of successfully flapping your arms and flying to the moon! :) It’s mathematically possible, but the necessary combination of circumstances would be outrageous! For example: some catastrophe would have to stop the eath from spinning and knock a good portion of the atmosphere loose, just at the exact instant when you started flapping your arms; you’d have to survive the cataclysm, you’d have to float away from earth’s surface at the same speed as the layer of oxygen that’s floating away (so that you stay in the layer of oxygen, and don’t suffocate en route), some bizarre set of circumstances would need to allow you to survive the lack of air pressure and temperature extremes (maybe you put on a protective suit, beforehand? That would help the oxygen, too, I suppose…), and you’d have to have been directed exactly toward the moon, by the cataclysm! :) Get the idea?
Biologically: the human ovum is usually capable of living about 24 hours without fertilization, whereupon it usually dies… but some extraordinary cells might hypothetically last a bit longer. The human sperm cell is usually capable of living 24-48 hours in an unsupportive (though moist) environment, but in the presence of cervical mucous (which is present during the fertile period–the days immediately preceding ovulation), it’s capable of living far longer (up to 7 days, by most optimistic estimates). That accounts for some of the “surprise babies” which occur when couples have sex 3-7 days before ovulation, by the way. But if a couple waits until, say, the 5th day after “peak day” (the day on which the body shows evidence of ovulation), the books say that there are no recorded instances of “surprise births” in the years since they’ve started collecting data. It takes self-discipline to do that, certainly… but for those who have grave reasons to delay/avoid pregnancy, NFP gives a realistic option above and beyond total abstinence.