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The Nation's Pulse
Pew vs. The Pill
A half-century of birth control has counter-intuitively resulted in an increase in unplanned pregnancies.
Fifty years ago this June, the Food and Drug Administration granted approval to the birth-control pill. Because the FDA had announced on May 9, 1960, that it intended to approve the drug, and because May 9 conveniently fell on Mother’s Day this year, The Pill’s celebrants seized on Mother’s Day to mark The Pill’s anniversary. In contrast to the perfect timing that links a drug to prevent motherhood with a holiday celebrating it is the bad timing that witnesses The Pill’s 50th anniversary coinciding with a study whose findings suggest birth-control pills have worked better in theory than in practice.
The Pew Research Center’s “New Demography of American Motherhood” survey reports the disturbing statistic that 41 percent of American babies enter life without their parents united in marriage. In 1960, when the FDA approved The Pill, just one in twenty births occurred to unmarried parents. Fifty years of The Pill has counter-intuitively resulted in more unplanned pregnancies, rather than less.
Just don’t tell that to retreads still fighting the sexual revolution. Upon The Pill’s half-century mark, its partisans continue to read from a five-decades-old script that has been exposed as fiction in the intervening years.
“Critics warned that The Pill would spawn generations of loose, immoral women; what it spawned was generations of empowered women who are better equipped to make rational choices about their lives,” explained Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founder of Ms. magazine, in a CNN.com symposium on the anniversary. She continued, “Since wanted children are often better cared for than unwanted children it meant that more kids were wanted, grew up healthy, supported, and loved.” Playboy’s Hugh Hefner contended that The Pill “separated sex and procreation and gave women control over their bodies.”
Did they miss the last fifty years?
The Pill was going to eradicate abortion, illegitimacy, and divorce. All of these social ills exploded in The Pill’s wake, as did several venereal diseases unknown when the FDA approved The Pill. Certainly, as countless testimonies note, The Pill enabled individual women to plan pregnancies, pursue careers, and enjoy more sex. Who’s to gainsay the belief of many American that The Pill did indeed improve their lives? But from the standpoint of reproductive responsibility, The Pill has been, in aggregate, a disaster.
Like so many social panaceas, The Pill unleashed a slew of unintended consequences. More so than Playboy, The Kinsey Reports, Roe v. Wade, or any other postwar development, The Pill offered the Faustian bargain of more sex, fewer children; more partners, less heartbreak; promiscuity without disease. But rather than the theoretic dreamworld for women, The Pill has spawned an adolescent male’s fantasy made real: easy sex, pleasure minus the responsibility, and the cad replacing the gentleman as the social ideal.
The Pill provoked men and women to partake in an act of permanent consequences with the most transient of acquaintances. The result, predictably, was generations of children unwanted by their parents, who in many cases demonstrated this sad reality by abandoning or aborting them. The Pill reduced a serious act to frivolity.
When surveyed on why they had children, 51 percent of women responded to Pew: “It wasn’t a decision; it just happened.” In other words, The Pill may have thwarted nature but it did not repeal human nature. Unlike The Pill, which performs close to perfection in laboratory studies, people living in the real world remained imperfect, prone to temptation, and sometimes unable to weigh instant gratification with long-term consequences. And even the champions of contraception admit shortcomings. According to the Planned Parenthood spinoff, the Guttmacher Institute, “Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant.”
Further complicating The Pill’s legacy is the dramatic rise in births among older women — aided by fertility rather than anti-fertility drugs — that the Pew survey documents. Since 1990, Pew notes that births to women 35 and older jumped from 9 percent to 14 percent. Ironically, birth control delaying pregnancy, or unleashing promiscuity leading to infertility, has more women reaching for pills working at cross purposes from The Pill.
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (107) | Leave a comment
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vb| 5.11.10 @ 6:53AM
One quibble: You cannot equate the number of out-of-wedlock births with unwanted pregnancies. Some teens and older women do want to have a child outside marriage because they've been told that fathers aren't important.
Dan Hirsch| 5.11.10 @ 9:15AM
Yes, the ones sadly addled enough to believe that two parents are a superfluous luxury. How's that Hopey Changey Sex Ed thing working out for you'all?
canuckistani| 5.12.10 @ 3:32PM
It's working fine....just not in the governor's household apparently. Start there dummy.
Freedom to procreate did not create a panacea for women, but it did give them a right to make mistakes just like us guys have always exploited. Messy pseudo-equality is much better than the proven failed moral code advocacy that is underpinning this article.
The responsibility is with men to a) step up to be accountible when a "mistake" occurs and b) to provide the environment for a woman to rationally choose to bear children and to look at being a mother as not a consolation prize for an alternative career.
If you want to retro-engineer our society, start with men and enforce responsibility. The Arabs do it with the power of the sword when men whore it up, what's your solution?
Women changed because they wanted to and had to, men are slow on the uptake, and are the reason true equality has not occurred in this nation.
I think an old feminist suggested true equality will happen when the Pill is made in a male version...shared responsibility is the key.
Mark| 5.14.10 @ 10:23PM
You are missing the point! God created us, male and female, for each other! Children are the sweet fruit of this love and union. You miss the point when love is replaced by a discussion of equality. It is in our love for each other that we find true happiness...but our love of God must precede this human love. Pope Paul VI prophetically predicted in Humana Vitae the outcome of the "pill" would be death and destruction. The world belongs to those who are open to life because they are the ones willing to accept God's gift of life.
maverick muse| 5.11.10 @ 10:11AM
"Some teens and older women do want to have a child outside marriage because they've been told that fathers aren't important."
Presently, there aren't enough of the "older women" outside of marriage wanting a child to be much more of a statistic than news-making self-important career women ready to use socialized childcare while they complete their careers with a "pet baby" to come home to in the evenings.
Generally, older women realize their physical limitations, no longer the spritely young things able to run about chasing baby getting into everything, nor in old age looking forward to coming home to a wailing baby after a long day at work. No wonder the huge pharmaceutical drug induced population, the pills popped to "tame the unruly" children and adults.
Any TEENS who "want to have a child" in or out of marriage don't know what they're getting themselves into.
Regardless of teen ignorance or gullibility for "wanting" a baby "so that someone will love them," the teen will come to find their baby-child so burdensome to forever and always parent--having "wanted" their own baby so that they could somehow "fix" what's wrong between themselves and their own parents. Just great, a double whammy with a baby another victim subjected to socialized childcare, and the mother's education and training that much more difficult to attain while being a parent of a baby-child.
KyMouse| 5.11.10 @ 12:07PM
I'm trying to find my copy of an amazing article that National Review ran a few years ago. It was about the many young women, poor and single, who *want* to have babies outside of marriage. Far from disparaging marriage, they think that it is far too important to rush into -- but they want to go ahead and have a baby (or more) in the meantime. No matter how poor and self-esteem-impaired the young mother is, she will take great pride in keeping her baby clean, well-dressed, etc., which will elevate her opinion of herself (and perhaps earn her compliments from others).
The author pointed out that so many adults and agencies try to tell teenagers how to avoid pregnancy by using the Pill, but so many of the girls want to have babies. The girls' reasoning was upside down and disheartening, because of its effect on the girls' and babies' lives (as well as the consequences for society), but the article was fascinating. If I can find it, I'll let TAS readers know.
KyMouse| 5.11.10 @ 12:17PM
I can't find the National Review article I mentioned above, but I know that the author discussed the book "Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage," by sociologists Kathryn Eden and Maria Kefalas. They spent five years living in the same neighborhoods with poor unwed mothers.
They wrote that "While the poor women we interviewed saw marriage as a luxury, something they aspired to but feared they might never achieve, they judged children to be a necessity, an absolutely essential part of a young woman’s life, the chief source of identity and meaning."
Pingback| 5.11.10 @ 7:22AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Pew vs. The Pill [spectator.org] on links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
JP| 5.11.10 @ 7:23AM
We've been told we can have it all. Besides plenty of gult-free sex, we've come to expect very generous entitlements. The only problem is the simple fact that there are not enough younger workers to pay for them. The federal budget defecits are a symptom of our excesses -both moral and economic.
When Bismark instituted the first modern social insurance state, the Second Reich had a fertility rate of about 5 children per female. Today, with an entitlement state that would make any 19th century socialist blush, the US has a fertility rate of 1.8 children per female. The projected unfunded mandates of Medicare and Social Security (over $65 trillion through 2080) are a direct result of the Pill.
A nation can have a generous social safety net if and only if it is willing to provide enough young taxpayers to support it. But, how many young mothers and fathers are willing to sacrifice thier life style and income to raising 5-6 children?
maverick muse| 5.11.10 @ 9:51AM
I would agree.
Your final paragraph takes fiscal responsibility for granted. If it were part of the equation, which is not the case nationally, nor internationally, there'd be reason for hope.
Your last point stuffs today's young adult generation exactly to the crybaby adult materialism piñata . But the first adult generation tailing the baby-boomers now entered middle age mid-50s were the first to swallow hook, line and sinker this drivel that the biggest house and most expensive cars are the most important things in life--that babies follow AFTER and ONLY when "wanted" by career employed wives--to be raised by socialist childcare and fed formula for life.
Your second paragraph does not take into account the demographics of who is having babies and large families. Aside from the ultra-religious of all faiths, mostly the undereducated and underemployed "minorities" which populations combined sum total consist of the greater majority of the American residents (legal or not) and citizens who actually believe that they are "entitled" to take tax funds for producing NOTHING but more uneducated babies from PARENTS not seeing to their children practicing assignments until lessons are accurately learned--including the lesson of being responsible citizens. Rather, to grow up in gangs and increase organized crime is their status quo.
LaneyB| 5.11.10 @ 8:03AM
The glut of single motherhood has nothing to do with the invention of The Pill. It did not increase promiscuity in those who maintain long-term goals and have a firm grip on being an adult with honed decision-making skills. The lack of using The Pill is the culprit. Those who eschew protecting themselves from pregnancy do so willingly. This blatant foolishness usually condemns women to a life of poverty, stress and loneliness. I bet were the statistics of the strata of society that engages in bringing children into this world sans husbands would not surprise us. It surely cannot be the upwardly striving and those women with solid senses of how marriage benefits not only themselves, but their offspring. Let's see the statistics on the layer of the population whose view of themselves and the world is adolescent at best, destructive at worse.
Mark| 5.11.10 @ 1:41PM
Sorry, Laney, but the pill DID lead to promiscuity. That was the whole point of the pill, sex without consequences.
canuckistani| 5.12.10 @ 3:43PM
I am curious to see the comparisons between unwanted pregnancy stats in OECD countries, especially if there's a correlation in the comparison between education levels of young men and women.
The US is notoriously fickle when providing data for young people to use to gain information. The media here is immature when dealing with women and sexuality, young men are not educated on their roles and impacts on young women, and are typically unfettered to do as they please with limited consequences.
"Back in the day", a young man either had to have a shotgun wedding or run for the hills as the young woman spent her pregancy with cousins out of state, but the driver was the same - sexual desire.
As a fiscal conservative, fathers of unwanted births should be tailed for 18 years and forced to provide for the child's well-being. Welfare to support should be a garnishee standard. It will be interesting to see the chilling effect that has on young men.
IW| 5.11.10 @ 8:04AM
I have seen no linkage between the pill and breast cancer in any of the articles, and yet, when one has breast cancer, it is one of the first questions asked by the physician. In addition, links have been found between abortion and breast cancer. These facts are always conveniently omitted.
Alert1201| 5.11.10 @ 8:23AM
Yes, my wife hand advanced breast cancer when she was 27 years old and the first question she was asked by every doctor she saw was, do you take birth control? She did not take it, so it was not a contributing factor to her but she was asked. The drs know something we do not.
KyMouse| 5.11.10 @ 9:48AM
Information about the Pill and breast cancer is available in a Mayo Clinic article at www.MayoClinicProceedings.com (access the October 2006 archives). Also through pro-life sites such as OMSoul.com, I believe.
Most of the young people in my extended family are shacking up and see nothing wrong with it. God's warnings against fornication (what a silly old word!) don't worry them; and if the girl becomes pregnant, there is always death-by-abortion.
I tried to get one of my nieces to ponder the old question, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" but her reasoning powers didn't take her any further than "Are you calling me a cow?" I guess some people just have to learn the hard way.
PolishKnight| 5.11.10 @ 3:51PM
You didn't "call" your niece a "cow", you called her something else.
Figure it out. What else "sells" "milk?"
james wilson| 5.11.10 @ 8:31AM
There is the kind of dissonance in this article which comes of forcing opinions on facts.
Tony in Central PA| 5.11.10 @ 8:56AM
A noted Australian demographer once described oral contraceptives as " a suicide pill for the West ".
As the article pointed out, it was a deal with the devil if there ever was. People usually don't want to hear about consequences, especially unintended ones. They want what they want and they want it now. When the morality of oral contraception was being debated, there were a few voices warning that it would inevitably lead to abortion. Those voices were drowned out by a chorus of reassurances guaranteeing that " Oh no, that could never happen ".
We hear the same empty reassurances nowadays about things like human cloning, stem cell research and same - sex marriage. The voices making these reassurances are banking that in the future people won't care about the things they require reassurance for today. They believe the world will be a rougher, meaner place. Sadly, they've been proven right all too often.
mejamom| 5.11.10 @ 9:39AM
There's evidence that some birth control pills cause abortions from time to time, not just working as prevention. Prolifers need to look into this as many are convinced that chemical intervention is okay, that the benefits outweigh the negatives like unwanted children and/or abortion.
maverick muse| 5.11.10 @ 10:22AM
Randy Alcorn's 1998 book titled "Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?"
http://www.prolife.com/BIRTHCNT.html
What is Breakthrough Ovulation?
quote:
While using the Pill and other chemical "birth control" products, many women's ovaries continue to release eggs. This is called "Breakthrough Ovulation" and it occurs in millions of women each year. Once an egg has been released via ovulation, a woman can become pregnant.
You can still conceive a child . . .
If you're using "birth control" products and you have a breakthrough ovulation that releases an egg, sperm can then reach and fertilize your egg. At that moment -- you would be pregnant! Fertilization means conception has taken place and you now have a brand new son or daughter who is as complete genetically as he or she will ever be throughout life. ...
Sometimes, the Pill suppresses ovulation. When this happens, an egg is not released and conception cannot occur. (It's important to read on and find out about the high rates of breakthrough ovulation. When ovulation is not suppressed, pregnancy can occur.) ...
This means that in almost every case, your new child will not be able to attach to the wall of your womb where he or she would normally live, grow and receive nourishment for 9 months. This means your tiny baby will starve to death and his or her remains will be passed along in your next bleeding cycle. (The "Study of Abortion Deaths Commission" estimates that this happens in women in America who use the Pill approximately 1 to 4 million times each year.)
end quote
maverick muse| 5.11.10 @ 9:55AM
Ace of Spades HQ made a succinct point regarding The Pill having induced emotional upheavals by those taking it, never adequately admitted by manufacturers as negative side effects. That emotional high pitch, along with the sexual revolution of promiscuity with repercussions in marital relations, marked the huge increase in the American divorce rate.
Pingback| 5.11.10 @ 10:18AM
Executive Jobs » Blog Archive » Grumpy dad a megastar even if he doesn’t give a hoot links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
PolishKnight| 5.11.10 @ 11:09AM
The current social policy can be summed up as follows: Women should be able to do whatever they please and get high paying jobs and even if they don't, still find a traditional 1950's breadwinner man to support them. Many conservatives even agere with this and send their daughters off for marxist brainwashing to become lawyers and doctors.
While it's obvious that poor and impovershed women have the welfare state as a substitute husband, conservatives don't address the group of women above that THEY are producing in droves who are angry when "slacker" "loser" men don't keep up with them. When a suitor comes to visit, the chivalrous father grills him to make sure he's "good enough" for his "little girl" and drives him away. Then such women either wind up as childless spinsters or getting knocked up often by a slacker since conservative endorsed social policy has rewarded such behavior in women and punished responsible men.
Responsible men avoid such women like the plague.
It's ironic that in the post feminist era, women's FERTILITY and ability to find 1950's era breadwinning men is the main complaint among such women.
Seek| 5.11.10 @ 11:49AM
The reason why black and Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rates are so high has nothing to do with The Pill and everything to do with their "baby mama" cultures. I wish there was more responsible contraception (e.g., The Pill) in their irresponsible worlds.
Henry Plantagenet| 5.11.10 @ 1:36PM
On the rural Eastern Shore, white underclass women have out-of-wedlock children at high rates. Of course, with the decline of old social taboos, many of them have illegitimate children by black males. The black fathers rarely marry these women and white men will have nothing to do with them. Social dysfunction is reinforced generationally, a cycle that seems likely to be perpetual. People permanently bastardized.
Seek| 5.11.10 @ 6:56PM
What you're describing is a disaster of a separate sort -- stupid young white women (Are we white guys not good enough for them?).
In any event, the prime consumers of the Pill in the Sixties were not "promiscuous" single women, but married women with children. This is a historical fact. It was a mom with three kids not wanting a fourth who was more likely to go to the doctor's office for a prescription.
Julianne Wiley| 5.11.10 @ 1:53PM
Laney says "The lack of taking the Pill is the culprit."
What you're saying is a perfectly reasonable inference from pharmacological evidence, but not a reasonable inference from societal evidence. Your conclusion is obvious, common-sensical, and factually incorrect.
Why is it not quite so simple? Because the Pill has had two principal results, one intended and one unintended; and the second overwhelming the first.
(1)The Pill reduces the odds of any particular act of intercourse resulting in pregrancy.
(2)The Pill has spawned a contraceptive mentality which holds that intercourse, once intended for procreation and for pleasure, is now intended for pleasure tout court.
The first (intended) consequence has resulted in fewer births per x number of acts of intercourse, albeit with a 9% typical-use failure rate (Link)(an offensive term, but its meaning is "pregnancy rate.") The second (unintended) consequence has been a massive increase in the frequency of intercourse between people who are not married to each other, are not building a life together, and/or, even if married, have no intention of having a (or "another") baby together.
Altogether, 53% of unplanned pregnancies occur to women who are using contraceptives
Link : http://womenshealth.about.com/.....nessbc.htm
(that includes the Pill, condoms, jellies, jams, and sprays), but nearly 100% of these women are surprised, affronted, feel angry, betrayed, etc. by the now-shocking fact that sex led to pregnancy.
This number is greater than the number of men who feel that way, because increasingly, men don't think about it at all. (Pregnancy? Well, whatever. That's her problem.)
This leads to promiscuity, divorces, abortion, etc. But the real problem isn't "partially ineffective contraception" or even "partial-birth abortion." The real problem is partial-love intercourse.
The Pills (and the other anti-fertility "fixes") are the paraphernalia of the Sexual Revolution. What you see around you now are the casualties.
PolishKnight| 5.11.10 @ 2:31PM
"This number is greater than the number of men who feel that way, because increasingly, men don't think about it at all. (Pregnancy? Well, whatever. That's her problem.) "
This is a perfect example of what I am talking about: Conservative and liberals both using chivalry to regard women as victims and men as exploiters. Babies don't pop out of men's penises. Even if the men are totally irresponsible and have sex with a woman without a condom and don't check to see if she's on BC, that doesn't change the fact that many women believe in legalized abortion but refuse to use it. In addition, it is the men's "problem" if the state (with many conservatives' blessing) comes after them for "child" support.
Assuming, of course, that the woman and the state is able to find the man and make him pay it. The system expects men to be stupid enough to have sex out of wedlock and impregnate women but smart enough to earn enough to pay the support.
This unintentionally rewards men who are lousy earners but good at getting sex.
Unintentional consequences are usually the result of liberal thinking...
Irish Spectre| 5.11.10 @ 2:24PM
The Protetant denominations' embrace of the pill is among the strongest pieces of evidence that they do not have the fullness of the truth; their general neutrality (at least for most of the sects) as regards homosexuality is another.
canuckistani| 5.12.10 @ 3:53PM
The use of contraception is reducing the white-protestant tribe in drastic ways. It is likely it will reach a tipping point within 50 years where fewer white-prods are being being produced than dying. (probably a fact already)
This is significant, as the whole of human history has not advanced so quickly than under an expanding white-protestant banner. I see human progress slowing down with the loss of this important demo. Innovation and strong work ethics are also at risk. North of Ireland is a perfect example of the decline of protestantism and the lessening ability of a society to advance.
Karina| 5.11.10 @ 2:31PM
"...generations of empowered women who are better equipped to make rational choices about their lives..." have made the irrational choice to have kids out of wedlock because Big-Daddy government will get them an apartment and pay all their bills. This way, the rotating Baby Daddy of the moment can live rent-free on his ho's government check and provide her with what it takes to make yet another welfare lifer.
It's not the pill that created the boom in unwed motherhood, it was the "Great Society" and the resultant buffet of welfare programs that pays women to breed instead of work.
Francis Beckwith | 5.11.10 @ 6:17PM
Why is being "wanted" better? After all, when the acquisition of something is at my absolute discretion, it becomes fully a "thing." If I say that you are only alive because I chose to keep you alive, I am saying that your existence is only valuable because I choose it to be valuable. How can that be "good" if "goodness" is never in the equation?
If I objectify to you, I cease to treat you as an equal. You are now a thing. Thing-hood is not an appropriate end for a human person. If one participates in treating a person as if she were thing, one participates in an immoral act.
Nick| 5.11.10 @ 6:27PM
Karina,
You've put the cart before the horse.
The "pill" came before the "Great Society." The welfare state exploded in the '70s.
Are you aware that all mainline Protestant denominations condemned artificial birth-control as evil, until the 1930 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican church allowed it, in certain circumstances?
This was the leak in the dyke that allowed the flood, that would come with the "pill", and eventually abortion on demand.
Pope Paul VI, in "Humanae Vitae" (1968), predicted that the evil of preventing what God intended and using your spouse as a pleasure tool, would lead to abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide.
The marital act is not simply "good" or even "great", it is Holy, and a gift from Almighty God. Our society has lost this meaning, but it is not the first to have done so.
Pingback| 5.11.10 @ 7:22PM
Fifty Years of the Pill: “Unplanned” Outcomes | Axis of Right links to this page.
Pingback| 5.11.10 @ 9:44PM
The American Spectator : Pew vs. The Pill | 7 Article links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 5.12.10 @ 5:16AM
Father of EVAT (Extended Value Added Tax) | iKUWADERNO.com | Tax Finance Wisdom links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Jacob| 5.12.10 @ 7:42AM
This is like how our politicians totally screw us over and then rub their heads about why we can't pay them to live like kings and still afford our own houses.
They can't understand why indoctrinating all kids to be shallow sex fiends will create the ills of a society made up completely of shallow sex fiends.
anonymous| 5.12.10 @ 10:07AM
One thing all you experts on women and breeding is overlooking: where are the JOBS that would enable those happy families who crank out a kid a year to live comfortably? (Not in a McMansion on razed countryside; not in a house cluttered with electronic gizmos like cell phones, computers, videogames. ) Should great big sweaty families of 12 be content to live without electricity, eating cans of dollar store beans? On what planet? I shudder to think of the life I would have in this lovely time of rampant unemployment, if I had had a great big brood!
Nick| 5.12.10 @ 4:28PM
Are you the same "anonymous" who defends child rapists, like Polanski the pervert?
anonymous| 5.13.10 @ 9:07AM
NO, I am NOT. What do child rapists like Polanski the pervert have to DO with my comment? You have no response to my comment, do you? Funny how you religious freaks spout dogma and morality until you're faced with reality. Then you splutter and spout more gobbledygook.
Nick| 5.13.10 @ 5:25PM
Hey, I was just asking a question. Calm down.
There was an "anonymous" on the thread about Polanski, who was defending the dirty, little, child rapist.
I just wanted to know if you were the same. I'm glad you're not. You might want to pick a different moniker, though.
Bryan| 5.12.10 @ 4:39PM
Many commenters here seem to be unaware that there are other ways to plan babies without the pill. Natural Family Planning is a method that has evolved a great deal over the last couple of decades. No longer merely a "Rhythm Method," modern NFP gives couples a means of planning pregnancy with 99% rate of effectiveness, if used property.
The reasons that NFP is better than the pill are numerous...
1)NFP is completely natural, unlike the pill which gives an unnatural dosage of hormones.
2) NFP has no side effects, unlike the pill which has many side effects including weight gain, increased irritability, decreased sexual drive, etc.
3) NFP leads to greater collaboration of couples, unlike the pill which taken care of by only one partner (This greater collaboration makes for better marriages because it demands that couples have frequent discussion regarding important topics such as their desires for their family and their goals).
4) NFP is pro woman, in that it values everything that a woman's body is capable of, rather than viewing fertility as an intrinsically bad thing (I know many couples who practice NFP and can say that these men typically have a sense of reverence for their wives not found int the mainstream sexual culture... their wives are very happy about this).
I could go on, but I think that provides enough food for thought.
kat| 5.13.10 @ 3:28PM
Yeah, NFP is soooo great. I use it because I'm Catholic, but what that 99% number doesn't tell you is that you can't count on being able to have sex more than about 6 times a month and you really can't have sex while you are nursing a baby until you are on a regular cycle again. I know. I have 6 children, most conceived while using NFP. I love all my children, but it is really expensive to have 6 kids today and I don't like people writing puffy, feel good, "do NFP and your marriage and life will be perfect" stats that don't mean anything.
Nick| 5.13.10 @ 5:21PM
Kat,
Bryan never wrote that your marriage will be "perfect", so that is a straw man argument.
Marriage takes trusting in God, and lots of prayer, to be successful. And the power of Christ, fully present in the Eucharist. Receive Him as often as you can, along with frequent confession.
I'll pray for you, Kat.
God Bless!
Beefalo| 5.12.10 @ 5:26PM
Absolutely true. And Pope Paul VI's predictions about the effects of contraception were right on.
Pingback| 5.13.10 @ 3:25PM
Ruth Institute Blog » Pew vs. The Pill links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 5.15.10 @ 5:35PM
Which Stars Hollow Oddball Are You? | TV drama links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
frogla| 5.25.10 @ 6:56AM
To me it's the same argument with handguns. It's not the guns that kill but the ppl who pull the trigger. To me it's not the pill to blame but the ppl who take the pill irresponsibly. I take the pill continuously for a condition called PMDD (premenstral disphoric disorder). I tried everything natural and over the counter to improve this situation but to no avail it was either too expensive or not consistent enough. The effects of PMDD are very difficult to deal with I'm a "living" testimony. The continuous BC is NOT my first choice and I really hate taking it mainly cuz it has changed my metabolism but it has literally changed my life for the better so am I doing something evil to safe my life. Maybe let's not judge or assume so quickly cuz you might be in my situation of course excluding all men. I love the Lord Jesus Christ my savior and am I any less of a Christian or spiritual cuz I take the pill for PMDD? Thanks for listening!
fjdk| 7.1.10 @ 3:09AM
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