Why
Contraception Matters: How It Keeps
Us from Love and Life
Here
is an excerpt of a talk titled "Why
Contraception Matters: How It Keeps
Us from Love and Life," given by
Steve Patton, director of the Diocesan
Center for Family Life in St. Augustine.
The talk is being distributed by One
More Soul.
It
used to be, before the contraceptive
revolution, that there was a pretty
clear and firm connection between sex
and marriage. Married people had sex,
unmarried people didn’t, or if
they did, they more or less knew that
they weren’t supposed to. Most
everybody knew this.
But
over the course of the 20th century,
as contraception became more socially
accepted, more available, and more effective,
all that began to change. By the time
the sixties rolled around it was becoming
clear, to married and unmarried people
alike, that you didn’t have to
be married to have sex. Contraceptive
practice had made sex into a recreational
activity that everyone has a right to.
What
did this mean for the unmarried? Well,
you probably heard the old saying, “Why
buy the cow when you can get the milk
for free?” Widespread acceptance
and availability of contraception has
led to widespread fornication. Pre-marital
sex is now not only socially acceptable,
but socially respectable. It’s
no different among Catholics. About
90% of engaged couples in the U.S. who
come to the Catholic Church for marriage
are already sexually active -- 90%.
Yes, people do still get married, but
in fewer numbers. Why? Well, one of
the reasons a man and woman used to
get married was to start having sex,
and contraception basically removed
that as a reason.
What
did the contraceptive revolution do
to married people? There are three ways
that it led to an increase in divorce
rates.
First,
it’s the flip side of what I just
mentioned: If sex is no longer a reason
to get married, then it’s also
no longer a reason to stay married.
Anyone can have it. It’s pretty
much a commodity. But once sex is removed
from the portrait of all those things
that make marriage unique and valuable,
then a married couple at risk will have
one less reason to try to make it work.
Second,
widespread contraceptive practice in
many cases removed another reason that
has traditionally held together married
couples, namely, children. There is
something to be said for a couple trying
to make their marriage work for the
sake of the children. But what happens
when there are no children? More contraception
has led to fewer children, and in many
cases to no children at all. Divorces
naturally followed.
Third,
widespread use of contraception by married
couples also led to an increase of adultery.
Once you take away one of the greatest
fears of extra-marital sex -- which
is pregnancy -- you’re going to
see an increase of that activity. And
when there is an increase in adultery
there’s also going to be an increase
in divorce.
In
net effect, our culture of sterilized
sex has made marriage on the whole a
less attractive institution to enter
into, and an easier institution to get
out of. It’s contributed to the
demise of millions of marriages, both
those that actually took place and those
that should have taken place, but never
did.
Death
to life
How
does widespread contraception lead to
declining birth rates? Well if the life-giving
potential of sex is pervasively removed
from the picture, a cultural mindset
is gradually fostered in which children
themselves are pervasively removed from
the picture. They tend to be viewed
not as gifts but as liabilities, spoilers
of a pleasurable lifestyle. We might
have one or two, if that would be pleasurable
to us, but after that the norm is to
reject them.
How
does widespread contraception lead to
widespread abortion? I credit Dr. Jennifer
Roback Morse with summing up the motto
of our culture of sexual liberation
this way, and keep in mind that our
culture of sexual liberation was made
possible only by our culture of contraception:
She says ours is a culture in which,
“all adults are entitled to unlimited
sexual activity without a live baby
resulting.” I’ll say that
again, “all adults are entitled
to unlimited sexual activity without
a live baby resulting.”
What
Dr. Morse touches upon is our culture’s
prevailing disconnection between sex
and babies. Before contraception was
king, the prevailing assumption was
that a baby was a natural consequence
of sex. If you chose to engage in sex,
you knew it could result in a baby.
You might not have wanted that to happen,
but you assumed that it could happen.
If a baby did result, it was because
of your freely chosen action, and so
you were likely, not necessarily, but
likely, to feel a certain kind of responsibility
toward that child.
The
contraceptive revolution changed all
that. It led to the prevailing assumption
that babies really shouldn’t have
anything to do with sex. That is, not
unless you wanted a baby to have something
to do with sex, not unless you allowed
that. Or as Dr. Morse said, not unless
you’re into that kind of thing.
Now
couples who think this way do know that
keeping a baby out of the picture doesn’t
just happen by itself; you have to do
your part. You have to do something
to the sexual act to make sure that
a baby won’t be conceived. That’s
what, quote unquote, taking responsibility
for your actions now means with respects
to sexual activity.
But
if a couple has this kind of attitude,
then when the contraception fails, as
it often does, and there’s a pregnancy,
they’re not going to tend to think
the baby’s there because of their
actions. They’re going to tend
to think the baby’s there in spite
of their actions. In other words, their
mindset is not so much that this is
their child that they conceived. Rather,
they’re going to tend to think
it’s an invader that they failed
to repel. This kind of thinking is likely
to foster quite a different sense of
what’s the responsible thing to
do next.
Now,
I realize, we’re not talking about
abortion, yet. Not everyone who smokes
gets lung cancer, and not everyone who
uses contraception goes on to have an
abortion when it fails. What I’m
saying, though, is that contraception,
by its very nature, and as a broad social
phenomenon, tends to incline the heart
of a nation toward abortion. As John
Paul II put it in "Evangelium Vitae,"
Latin for the "Gospel of Life,"
the contraceptive mentality strengthens
the temptation to abort. Contraception
and abortion are not the same thing,
but as John Paul put it, they are as
closely connected as “fruits of
the same tree.”
"For
to me to live is Christ, and to die is
gain." (Phil 1:21)