From The Obvious File

Contraception can't halt abortion's rise

It's weird that folks still argue this, but they do. If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that, if the Church was really serious about getting rid of abortions, it would ok contraception. The problem is that both are poisonous fruits from the same corrupt weed. It was neat to see somebody actually pointing this out to people, though.

Contraception actually increases the abortion rate. This has been known for decades. In 1970, Malcolm Potts, a former medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said, "Abortion and contraception are inextricably intertwined in their use. As the idea of family planning spreads through a community there appears to be a rise in the incidence of induced abortion at the point where the community begins to initiate the use of contraceptives."

Ms. Camp said it was clear that black and Hispanic women continued to account for a disproportionate share of abortions because they had relatively high rates of unintended pregnancies. Since the 1970s, Planned Parenthood has targeted blacks and Hispanics by placing its facilities in urban areas, making contraception readily available to them. Sixty percent of black pregnancies and 40 percent of Hispanic pregnancies in New York City end in abortion, clearly showing that abortion is being used as the ultimate contraceptive. Even the Supreme Court in the 1992 Casey decision recognized that surgical abortion is a necessary backup for contraception because Americans "for two decades organized intimate relationships ... on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail."

Here's a second item I've seen thrown around recently but still very much from the Obvious File. Pope Paul VI made three predictions in Humanae Vitae of what would happen if contraception ever really caught on. They are:

A. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards.

B. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

C. [C]areful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.

Does anybody want to even try to argue that he was wrong? I haven't found anyone. The rationale now seems to be that all these things were worthwhile societal sacrifices so that folks could bang freely.