As a society, we generally believe birth control has changed things for the better. It’s set women free!
But contraception is actually correlated with abortion, divorce, adultery, teen pregnancy, premarital sex, cohabitation, babies born out of wedlock, single mothers, domestic violence, the spread of STIs, pornography… pretty much every sad thing in society that you can think of!1
It turns out, birth control hasn’t so much freed us as made us slaves to sex.
I had a ton of great quotes of people against contraception, including old-school suffragettes and feminists, but of course now I can’t find them. I’ll try to work on that, but I’ll just throw this one out there in the meantime:
“[Contraceptive methods are] like putting a premium on vice. They make men and women reckless. Nature is relentless and will have full revenge for any such violation of her laws…If [contraceptive] methods become the order of the day, nothing but moral degradation can be the result. As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception], no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her.” Mahatma Gandhi
One more tidbit: We all know the American divorce rate hovers around 50%. The divorce rate of couples using NFP is less than 5%.
I was astounded when I discovered all this (you will be too if you read/listen to the source below). But I have to confess, I wasn’t convinced to stop the pill yet. After all, my husband and I were striving to be good, and nothing we were doing was related to all those bad things. Heck, we waited to have sex until we were married and everything! By using the pill, we were being responsible. It was good for us. Or maybe not…
1 http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0002.html (This is very interesting. There’s a free CD of this talk available, if you’d rather listen than read.)
This is part I in a series of five posts. (Yes, I might've gotten a bit carried away.) Here are the others in this series:
Introduction: "NFP - Not just because I want babies!"
Part II: "Reason #2 - Personal Health"
Part III: "Reason #3 - Spiritual Health (History and Scripture)"
Part IV: "Reason #3 - Spiritual Health (Theology and Christian Marriage)"