Friday, February 06, 2009
Consequences for a contraceptive culture
From the RoundTable blog
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Leigh Ann Roman
Roman, of Vinton, is a freelance writer and former newspaper reporter who writes for both Catholic and secular publications. She is a member of St. Andrew's Catholic Church.
I am writing to add some balance on the issues of family planning and abortion following the guest column by David Nova, vice president of Planned Parenthood Health Systems Inc. in Roanoke. Nova writes: "American ambivalence to sexuality and birth control results in too many abortions."
I agree that there are too many abortions -- one is too many. But I disagree with Nova's premise and his idea that "ineffectual" abstinence-only education programs are to blame for a rise in teen pregnancy rates.
Nova ignores some significant issues in his column. He focuses on a recent spike in teen pregnancies but doesn't mention the skyrocketing rate of out-of-wedlock births since contraception became legal. In 2005, 44 percent of first births were to unwed mothers, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Births to unwed mothers have increased dramatically since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965 struck down state laws prohibiting the use of birth control by married couples.
If better birth control and sex education would help prevent unwanted teen pregnancies, as Nova asserts, why is it that 54 percent of women who have abortions reported using a contraceptive during the month they became pregnant, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute? That makes contraception look rather ineffective. In contrast, 46 percent of women who have abortions did not use contraception during the month they became pregnant, according to the institute.
It is our culture's contraceptive mentality and the pervasive idea of consequence-free sex that perpetuate the twin tragedies of increasing numbers of fatherless children in America and the more than 45 million legal abortions from 1973 through 2005.
The U.S. Supreme Court made it legal for unmarried people to use contraception in 1972. And, of course, in 1973, the Supreme Court gave women the right to choose abortion. The number of out-ofwedlock births has risen accordingly:
In 1970, 10.7 percent of live births occurred to unmarried mothers. In 1980, that had increased to 18.4 percent; in 1990, it was 28 percent. Pregnancies to unmarried women have increased every single year, rising to 36.9 percent of all pregnancies in 2005, according to the CDC. If we are to assume that out-of-wedlock pregnancies are most often unintended, it doesn't look like contraception is working to prevent unintended pregnancy.
For the record, I do not use artificial contraception. I use natural family planning and have two children. As a Roman Catholic, I have read with interest the church's teaching on artificial contraception. In 1968, Pope Paul VI wrote the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reiterated the church's teaching against artificial birth control. In the document, the pope predicted that widespread use of birth control would promote a lowering of moral standards in the culture, a disregard for the physical and psychological well-being of females by males, and a tendency for humans to treat their bodies as machines. Rather prophetic, wasn't it?
Leaders today are doing our children a grave disservice in continuing to pursue the failed policies of the past by expecting easy access to birth control and sex education to prevent unintended pregnancy.
Instead, we need to place our idea of sex in its proper context. It is not recreation. It is an act of love that sometimes results in a new human being. No matter how hard we try, we cannot exert complete control over this act of creation. We did not create creation. We did not even create ourselves. And the sooner we recognize that and treat the sexual act with the respect it deserves, the better off we will be.
