Next up in our series on the Pill: how exaggerating the effectiveness of contraception causes serious problems. Read the statistics I quote in this column. If you don’t believe the stats I quote, you can go directly to the Alan Guttmacher articles where I first got them. Bottom line: contraception is least effective among women who are poor, young and unmarried. Yet these are the very groups to whom contraception is the most heavily marketed.
Over 70% of poor, cohabiting teenagers using condoms, will be pregnant within a year. By contrast, the middle-aged, middle-class married woman has a 6% chance of pregnancy after a year of condom use. Read more…
Next in our series, Fifty Years on the Pill, this article on the ideology of contraception. I call that ideology, “condomism:”
The twentieth century witnessed so much blood-shed in the name of ideology, you might think people would be ready to give it a rest. But no, we have a new ideology whose adherents believe will usher in a new heaven on earth. If only everyone would finally get on board, if only its adherents had the right combination of money and power, if only its Neanderthal opponents would surrender their squeamish-ness, well this new ideology could solve the world’s problems: poverty, environmental degradation and human health. The name of this new ideology? I call it “condom-ism.”
Its adherents believe we could solve all these problems, if only we had enough condoms. I exaggerate, of course. They actually believe that human salvation will require all sorts of birth control including abortion, not just condoms.
This article originally appeared on www.mercatornet.com on November 24, 2006.
or read it all at the Ruth Institute Marriage Library.
Dr Janet Smith is well-known in Catholic circles as a critic of contraception. In this article, she lists some of the deceptions that have been part of the history of The Pill. Dr. Janet E. Smith holds the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Mich.
some of the early research that was done circumvented laws against contraception by purporting to do research to help women with problems with infertility. Not only were some of the trials illegal, some of them involved giving women in psychiatric hospitals drugs without their knowledge or consent. Read more…
Contraception Conundrum by Political Science Professor Michael New, deals with this problem: contraception reduces the probability of pregnancy. So, if we want to reduce the number of abortions, we should increase the use of contraception. This argument in some form or another, is at the heart of the annual political crisis over federal funding of sex ed or abstinence education.
But Prof New shows that the argument is based on a misunderstanding. It is true that the birth control pill, for instance, reduces the probability that any particular act of intercourse will result in pregnancy. But it does not follow that promoting the use of The Pill will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and hence the number of abortions. Read more…
First up in our series of contrarian articles on contraception: We need Penicillin, not condoms, in Central Africa. The diversion of health care dollars and medical personel from urgent matters like sanitation and into “family planning,” is something that deeply offends many African recipients of foreign aid. This article was written by an attorney in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
No one can fail to weep at a stillborn child or the death of a mother in childbirth. But it is absurd; it is criminally irresponsible, for the United States and international aid agencies to argue that the solution to the DRC’s calamitous maternal mortality is family planning. Read more…
The Ruth Institute is collecting a series of articles with a different take on The Pill than the fawning account Time Magazine gave. The Time author assigns credit to The Pill for All Good Things, yet refuses to take the slightest responsibility for any negative consequences that may have come from the widespread use of chemical and other contraceptives.
So watch the Ruth Blog for more articles and commentary in this series. Perspectives and factors that Time can’t bring itself to consider. Most of this material has appeared elsewhere on the web. We will gather it here. Feel free to suggest additional articles!
Betsy published a story by this name yesterday. Here is more on the link between hormonal contraception and risk factors for HIV/AIDS.
The studies that demonstrate a connection between hormonal contraceptives and HIV/AIDS infection postulate a number of mechanisms at work.
First, let’s review the basics. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), is carried in warm blood or sexual fluids. It infects through fragile, inflamed, bleeding or needle-pricked tissue, attacks specific T-cells in the immune system, and causes the incurable, debilitating condition known as AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome).
Hormonal contraceptives increase almost all known risk factors for HIV infection. Read more…
There is a lot wrong with this Time article on the 50th Anniversary of The Pill. I will be talking about it on Friday at 2 PM Pacific Time on Issues Etc, the Lutheran Public Radio show I do every week.
Just to give a heads up on my contrarian perspective on The Pill, go here and here.
Interesting. Verrrrrrrrry interesting. It only makes sense that there would be consequences to putting foreign chemically junk in your body, right?
by Carolyn Moynihan
Why does HIV/AIDS strike more women than men globally? Why is sub-Saharan Africa the home of the world’s largest heterosexual HIV/Aids epidemic? Why does Thailand have an HIV infection rate of over one-in-100 adults, while Japan’s rate is 0.01 per cent and the Philippines’ 0.02 per cent? One answer to these questions can be found in an article published this week by the Population Research Institute deeply implicating hormonal contraception in the AIDS epidemic. Read more…
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