Coddling Contraception: The Exceptional Consequences Of Zealous Indifference

by Patrick Delaney
Celebrate Life
November, 2001

As destructive floods can begin with a "crack in the dam," vast social evils usually begin with a rationalized exception. Breaking with 1900 years of consistent moral teaching in all of Christianity, the 1930 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church was the first to approve the use of contraception for married couples in "extraordinary circumstances." Today, contraceptive "safe sex," with all its tragic social consequences, has risen to the cultural status of a cardinal virtue.

Possibly the most fatal problem in the pro-life movement today is the refusal to admit the connection between contraception and abortion.

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger campaigned for 51 years to accomplish a moral and legal acceptance of contraceptives. Once the Supreme Court sanctioned the full legality of birth control in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision, it took only eight more years for the 1973 Roe and Doe cases - fully sanctioning legal abortion - to logically follow.

In the 1992 Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court makes this connection clear. Very rationally the court observed "the abortion decision is of the same character as the decision to use contraception ... for two decades ... people have organized intimate relationships ... on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail."

Birth control creates a mentality of viewing babies as "unwanted," and implicitly authorizes sexual promiscuity through the abandonment of self control. Having adopted this most unnatural new and perverted ideology, sex educators continue to indoctrinate young people into believing that habitual promiscuity, controlled reproduction, and abortion are a normal way of life. When these new lifestyles happen to produce a baby, the disposition of the parents is already established to reject that child. A cultural habit of such behavior will inevitably rationalize and demand legal abortion.

Indeed, a recent study conducted by the pro-abortion British Pregnancy Advisor Service found that "almost 60% of women requesting abortion claim to have been using a method of contraception at the time they became pregnant . . . [and] almost nine of 10 women claimed that they usually used a method of contraception even if they had not on this occasion." Ian Jones, chief executive of BPAS, admits, "Abortion is an essential support to other family planning services."

This contraceptive trap is so efficient that former abortionists like Carol Everett claim to have provided free "safe sex" education, birth control pills and condoms "to increase teenage pregnancies and thus increase demand for abortions," which her clinics would perform at a minimum cost of $250 each (emphasis added).

Pro-life indifference

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the role contraceptive ideology plays in our societal demand for abortion, the National Right to Life Committee and many other alleged pro-life organizations have adopted a zealous neutrality on the issue.

The federal government, therefore, continues to massively subsidize the culture of death through "population control" efforts, "family planning" and "sex education" with no substantial resistance from the pro-life movement--and no resulting political fallout.

In fact, NRLC gives tacit approval for such funding. Addressing members of Congress in a 1997 letter, NRLC Legislative Director Doug Johnson states, "NRLC takes no position on contraception, or on federal funding of contraceptive services, whether in the U.S. or overseas; NRLC has no objection to providing increased funding to the 'population assistance' program.
The inconsistency here is obvious. To have "no objection" to massive sex education, family planning and population control funding is to have no objection to fostering a vicious cultural climate that always demands legal abortion.

These funding efforts are the toxic blood supply of the culture of death. Without the hundreds of millions of tax dollars the government provides annually to propagate this evil ideology worldwide, the culture of death just might slither back into the tabooed underworld from where it came.

Supporting this argument, law professor Charles Rice writes in his 1999 publication, The Winning Side, "Any 'pro-life' effort that temporizes on contraception will be futile because the trajectory is a straight line from the approval of contraception to the acceptance of ... abortion ... euthanasia ... pornography ... promiscuity ... divorce ... homosexual activity ... in vitro fertilization ... [and] cloning."

The 'morning-after pill' and other abortifacients

NRLC's zealous indifference on birth control causes an even greater, more immediate tragedy. Few people seem to understand that many of these taxpayer funded "contraceptives" really act as abortifacients-meaning they cause the death of an already living human being. Such abortifacients include the birth control pill, Depo-Provera, Norplant and "emergency contraception" (often called the morning-after pill).

As Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, Va., explains, "Make no mistake about it. The purpose of 'emergency contraception' is to send a dose of a very strong hormone into a woman's reproductive system solely for the purpose of preventing the implantation of a newly conceived child. It causes an early, less visible abortion."

The Food and Drug Administration and the scientists who designed this chemical recognize this scientific fact. The Vatican and several other national governments that have banned this drug recognize it as well. But the National Right to Life Committee will not recognize this scientific reality.

In fact, last February when the Virginia House of Delegates considered a bill which would allow these "emergency contraceptives" to be available over the counter, certain committed pro-life delegates could not elicit the aid of the NRLC state affiliate in Virginia. After pressing further, they were shocked at NRLC's flat refusal to even issue a statement opposing this deadly bill.

Could population controllers, sex education peddlers, and pro-abortion ideologues have ever planned a better scenario than having such a major pro-life organization in the world’s richest country take a “neutral” stand on contraceptives?

NRLC's refusal to mend this flaw in its pro-life philosophy has served to neutralize any legitimate obstacle from threatening the hundreds of millions of annual tax dollars that fund the culture of death.

While some would wish to classify the moral and cultural legitimacy of birth control on a strictly abstract religious plane, the concrete results of the contraceptive culture have been a clear disaster. Does anyone believe that we can bring an end to abortion and build a culture of life while the federal government annually pours hundreds of millions of dollars into worldwide contraceptive propaganda? Does NRLC believe it?

One of these days we are going to have to wake up and consider that maybe, just maybe, 1900 years of unified Christian moral teaching has a little wisdom to offer us sophisticated moderns.

Patrick Delaney is assistant director for education at American Life League.