The Evils of Contraception

From Salon's Broadsheet.

More stupidity from the Holy Terrors.

Abortion foes' new rallying point
Conservatives take on contraception

By Judith Graham
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 24, 2006


Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it's time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.

Their voices were raised in Rosemont on Friday and Saturday at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.

Some of the thoughts of the so-called "Experts."

"Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else," Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion veteran whose Pro-Life Action League sponsored the conference, said in an interview.

"I think it's great that more pro-life people are finally speaking up about it," said Helen Mazur, 27, who flew in from Philadelphia with her husband for the conference, called "Contraception is Not the Answer."

"It's always been a touchy subject, but you have to stand strong on your beliefs. Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world," Mazur said.

"It's new to some aspects of the pro-life world, and it's old news in other parts of the pro-life world. It's just beginning to be embraced more fully by the whole pro-life world," said Mary Turner, 42, of La Crosse, Wis.

Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, opened Saturday's session with a clear tactical agenda for the budding movement: "It's time to get serious about denying Planned Parenthood funding for birth control or sex education and abortion. We need to hold them accountable for this contraceptive welfare. We have to work very carefully to keep that sword away from Planned Parenthood."

Euteneuer believes a single argument holds the greatest potential for changing how the anti-abortion community thinks about birth control.

"Chemical contraception doesn't prevent abortions, it causes abortion," he said in an interview. "If we believe life begins at the moment of conception, we have to defend it against [this] chemical attack."

Another line of argument against contraception, that it harms relationships between men and women, is advanced by Janet Smith, professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

"When people use contraception, they're not asking themselves, do I want a lifetime relationship with this person or would this person be a good parent," Smith explains. "They're simply hooking up, typically because of sex, and sliding into marriage."
The result, Smith says, is disappointment and divorce.

Damon Clarke Owens, another speaker and president of New Jersey Natural Family Planning, believes contraception changes sex from a "unconditional gift of self" to a conditional act that turns away from "God's gift of children."

"If the sex act has nothing to do with a child, then what happens if contraception fails?" he asked. "Abortion becomes a backup for failed contraception, another way of getting rid of the unwanted and devalued child."
"It's not just a side issue from pro-life, it's the core issue," Libby Gray Macke, director of Project Reality, an abstinence program in Illinois, told the crowd Friday evening. "Abstinence is the way to prevent abortion."

I wish I could say I haven't seen anything more stupid, but I've been reading a lot lately about the Bush Administration's justifications for the Iraq war.

There's no more clearly set forth evidence for the Holy Terrors' agenda. Sex for fun is bad. Sex that prevents the making of babies is bad. It's not about pleasure or feeling good about oneself or sharing an intimate connection with another human being. It's all about propagating the species. (Sorry, that's a biological reference. The Holy Terrors don't want anything to do with science. Let's make a more Biblically oriented reference.) It's about following the command to "be fruitful and multiply upon the earth," (Gen. 8-17).

What strikes me most about the Holy Terror's movement is how much they must hate women. I suppose it relates back to Eve and Original Sin and all that bullshit. A woman's purpose is simply to bear children, and anything that hinders that or enables a woman to have sexual pleasure or that empowers her or enables her to live life on her own terms is bad.