In response to a June 21 op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by a Planned Parenthood community organizer, I have the below op-ed in today's MJS. Props to the MJS for printing a pro-life perspective.
Sexual freedom has not liberated women. Instead, it has made them slaves to pregnancy tests, STD tests, cancer-causing hormonal contraceptives and abortion used as backup birth control.As a 2005 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I had many opportunities to witness the havoc the "hookup" culture wreaks on women. It's a little difficult to say, "I am woman, hear me roar!" with a friend as she is hunched over at the student health center with a pregnancy test and STD test results.Contraception works to change the way people think about sex and pregnancy. Contraceptives provide a false sense of security; contraceptives not only fail to lower rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion but may increase them.
Read the rest here.
6 comments:
Lovely piece, Virginia! Here's hoping people will listen.
Thanks Kat!
Maria Peeples has a facebook fanpage. So humble.
I am sure she will have a great time in San Fran telling people all about how she escaped from Walkerstan.
Great article Virgina.
The third sentence lacks substance, but the first two are quite accurate. NOTHING in life is free, and few choices come with a price that is even cheap. I firmly support family planning and availability of a wide variety of contraceptives, but multiple partners means a high risk of STD's, no matter how many vaccinations and antibiotics are developed, pregnancy is ALWAYS a possibility from sexual contact, and the emotions are not to be played with lightly. There are practical reasons for committing to one partner, making sure they are someone you can stay committed to, and preferably even marrying them.
SJ,
Very good points. It appears that you would agree then that containing sexual activity within committed monogamous relationships relationships is the wisest of the "options".
The ancient greek philosophers would have us believe that we should lead a virtuous life just because that is what we should do. They of course understood that a good society then is a society in which it is easy to be "good".
So if we make family planning and contraceptives widely available, how does that help people to be "good"?
And finally please define "support". What do you mean when you say you support family planning and such?
Yes, I agree that containing sexual activity within a committed monogamous relationship is the wisest course, the most respectful and mutually respectful course, and even the most moral course. I'm not married, I have no children, I made a brief and unsatisfying attempt at adultery some thirty years ago (her husband was having a flagrant affair with a mutual friend), and I am currently hoping to spend the last third of my life married to a woman who hasn't yet decided if I'm worthy of her.
I believe that the points God made most consistently and persistently through the voices of the prophets, and of Jesus, are not only moral, but also practically to be recommended. As I was saying this afternoon to an acquaintance at a social agency prepared to work either in conjunction with spiritual teachings, or without them "whether there is a God or not, if you stick to one partner you will not get an STD." There are more subtle reasons marriage is the best choice.
Since I do NOT believe that marriage is solely or primarily about having babies, although that is a highly relevant and generally an essential consideration, I recognize many good reasons to use contraceptive methods, whether NFP, various pills, diaphragms, or IUD's, and that each of these has its negative effects. (So does penicillin, whether taken for an STD or for other reasons).
My mother, for example, began marriage determined to space her children out every two years, and stop after four. Today, she probably would have chosen three, or two. I also recognize that long before contraceptives were invented, a significant percentage of the human population, Christian or not, engaged in extra-marital sex. While I know that availability of contraception CAN make it easier to indulge this past-time, many would indulge it anyway, and it is good, if they do, to use contraception, with the warning that it is not by any means fool-proof.
There are many immoral choices that the criminal law has proven unable to effectively curtail. Prohibition of alcohol is one. A good deal of recreational drug use is another. The law is reasonable effective at keeping a lid on premeditated homicide, although certainly not at reducing it to zero.
Marriage is a serious commitment, not to be lightly abandoned, but the law should not put undue obstacles in the way of people intent on divorce. Better that the frivolous marry several times and take it lightly, than that one battered wife should be sent back to her husband.
Can't we promote morality within the framework that to sin carries no criminal penalty, but it will still, in the long run, make a person's life miserable? Legal means you won't go to prison. It says nothing about putting you through hell, figuratively or literally.
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