Culture Of Life 101 . . . “The Birth Control Pill: Unintended Consequences”

By BRIAN CLOWES

Part 2

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For a CD containing hundreds of patient information pamphlets showing that the most common methods of birth control are abortifacient in their actions, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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We have seen that the birth control pill is so ineffective that it fails hundreds of thousands of times annually in the United States, leading to hundreds of thousands of surgical abortions. We have also covered some of the more serious physical side effects inflicted upon women by the Pill, including more than 30,000 deaths and tens of thousands seriously injured since its introduction.
The indirect impacts of the Pill are much more diffuse, but are terribly damaging to society in general. The Pill impacts not only women, but men and children.
Since its introduction, the Pill has contributed heavily toward sexual promiscuity, the increase of illegitimate births, the explosion of venereal diseases, and the degradation of marriage and the family.
Increased Promiscuity. Immediately after the Pill was introduced in the mid-1960s, pre-marital sex and cohabitation both almost doubled in only five years. Currently, 48 percent of all couples living together are not married. People of all ages (but especially teenagers) are having premarital sex more than ever before. Wife-swapping clubs, organized orgies, membership in sex addiction treatment organizations like Sexaholics Anonymous, hard-core pornography, and ‘fantasy [sex] tours’ to Far East nations have increased tremendously.
After witnessing two decades of this social carnage, the developers of the Pill admitted that its wide availability appeals strongly to those persons with little regard for sexual ethics.
Dr. Robert Kirstner of Harvard Medical School said: “About ten years ago, I declared that the Pill would not lead to promiscuity. Well, I was wrong. The birth control pill has been a major causal factor in the rapid increase in both VD and cervical cancer among adolescents by stimulating higher levels of promiscuity.”
And Dr. Min Chueh Chang acknowledged that “[young people] indulge in too much sexual activity. . . . I personally feel the Pill has rather spoiled young people. It’s made them more permissive.”
Dr. Alan Guttmacher, former medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, also drew a clear picture of the link between abortion and contraception within the context of increased promiscuity nearly fifty years ago: “When an abortion is easily obtainable, contraception is neither actively nor diligently used. If we had abortion on demand, there would be no reward for the woman who practiced effective contraception. Abortion on demand relieves the husband of all possible responsibility; he simply becomes a coital animal.”
Finally, psychologists Eugene Sandburg and Ralph Jacobs noted the obvious connection between contraception and abortion as birth control; “As legal abortion has become increasingly available, it has become evident that some women are now intentionally using abortion as a substitute for contraception.”
Doctors Kirstner and Min Chueh were certainly correct in their assessment of the situation. In 1970, only 4.6 percent of all 15-year-old girls had experienced premarital sex. By 2000, this rate had increased more than eightfold to 40 percent. Of all unmarried girls in the 15 to 19 age bracket, 28.6 percent had had premarital sex in 1970. This rate had more than doubled to 61.4 percent by 1990 and about 80 percent by 2000.
Illegitimate Births. The inevitable result of the combination of increases in premarital sex and of ‘unwanted pregnancy’ is an increase in illegitimate births and abortion. This principle is so obvious that leading “family planners” recognized it in the early 1970s.
Professor Kingsley Davis of the United States Commission on Population Growth and the American Future stated:
“The current belief that illegitimacy will be reduced if teenage girls are given an effective contraceptive is an extension of the same reasoning that created the problem in the first place. It reflects an unwillingness to face problems of social control and social discipline, while trusting some technological device to extricate society from its difficulties. The irony is that the illegitimacy rise occurred precisely while contraceptive use was becoming more, rather than less, widespread and respectable.”
The illegitimacy rate for births among teenaged girls hovered around five to seven percent for decades until about 1960. Between 1960 and 1970, it doubled as the birth control pill ushered in the “Sexual Revolution.” After 1970, the teenage illegitimacy rate exploded with the introduction of comprehensive sex education programs and school based clinics.
The overall illegitimacy rate for all children born in the United States was 5 percent in 1960. This rate had increased 700 percent to 40.7 percent by 2008.
This phenomenon is not just an ethical or religious concern, it is a profoundly practical one. Social workers know that children born into one-parent families are much more likely to be abused and abusive, to be undereducated, to be under or unemployed, to have illegitimate children themselves, and to be far more likely to become involved in criminal activity.
Degradation of Marriage and Family. In 1965, before the Pill became widely available, about 15 percent of all couples lived together before marriage. The major reason for the relatively low incidence of this arrangement was simple: Living together meant more sex, and more sex meant a greater chance of a pregnancy in a nation where abortion was still illegal.
Today, many young unmarried women are on the Pill and abortion is readily available as a backup. They feel that they have no reason not to be sexually active and “shack up” before marriage.
As a result, nearly half of all couples in the United States now live together before marriage. This in turn causes great problems because more than 75 percent of all couples who lived together before marriage eventually divorce. The Pill has also contributed greatly to our country’s exploding divorce rate, which was about 18 percent in 1965 and now stands at about 50 percent.
Predictably, the innocent children of divorced couples are always those who suffer the most. But the gender feminists and sexologists simply write them off as a sort of necessary “collateral damage,” inevitable victims of the Sexual Revolution and the war against one’s own sexuality.

Silent Abortions

Implications for Pro-Lifers. Millions of women in the USA and all over the world use the Pill. Many women who would never consider a surgical abortion now use low-dose pills that cause them to abort a new life an average of once or twice every year. A large number of women who claim to be pro-life use these pills, many at the urging of their husbands. These are usually women who are ignorant of the Pill’s abortifacient mode of action, those who think that their way of life requires that they use the Pill, or those who cannot mentally make the connection between contraception and abortion.
Pro-abortionists play upon this theme constantly. For example, “Catholic” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed that “98 percent of Catholic women use birth control to determine the size and timing of their families.” The reality is that 83 percent of Catholic women use artificial birth control (32 percent have been sterilized), and only 31 percent of Catholic women use the Pill.
Researchers have calculated that the birth control pill directly causes between 1.53 and 4.15 million chemical abortions per year in the United States — up to four times the total number of surgical and medical abortions committed every year! We can calculate that about 750 million “silent abortions” have occurred in the United States since the birth control pill began to come into wide use in 1965.
To put this into perspective, for every surgical and RU 486 abortion that has been performed in this country, a dozen “silent abortions” have taken place.
This means that otherwise pro-life women who are using the Pill or some other means of abortifacient birth control are committing abortions themselves on a frequent basis. These abortions are “silent” and unseen, but they are no less abortions than are gruesome third trimester D&X abortions. There are many pro-lifers who are using these pills and who are involved in their promotion and distribution. These people must consider whether they can, in good conscience, criticize women whose action differs from their own only in that they have to drive to an abortion mill to commit it.
Conclusion. When Pope Paul VI overrode the recommendations of his Birth Control Commission and wrote Humanae Vitae in 1968, he was exposed to widespread criticism, dissent, and ridicule. But the four predictions he made in his great encyclical have undeniably come true. These are: 1) infidelity and moral decline; 2) loss of respect for women; 3) abuse of power by public authorities; and 4) a false sense of unlimited dominion over one’s body. Today, most women (and men) see contraception as essential to their lives, and what was once mortal sin has “evolved” in the minds of most Catholics into an absolute necessity of life, something they simply cannot do without.
The great irony in all of this is that those who follow Church teachings regarding sexual morality are not only happier, they find their lives less difficult and complicated in the long run.
This is how our Lord planned it, and this is the way we should live.