Hey, remember when Pope Benedict XVI said that contraception usage doesn’t lead to lower abortion rates and everyone freaked out on him. Turns out he’s right. We knew it all along but a new study is finally showing it.
And you know how certain “pro-life Democrats” say things like Barack Obama is “pro-life” because by increasing contraception use he will decrease the number of abortions. Turns out they’re wrong. And science is proving it.
LifeSiteNews reports:
A new study from Russia has revealed that, contrary to the claims of abortion advocates, Russia continues to have one of the world’s highest abortion rates despite higher contraception rates.
Researchers at Moscow State University studied changes in birth control practices in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and correlated the prevalence of “modern methods” of contraceptive use to trends in abortion.
They found that while Russian women have the highest rate of contraceptive use compared to those in Belarus and Ukraine, they also have the highest abortion rate.
Researchers were perplexed by this, calling the findings “contradictory,” “unexpected,” and “paradoxical.”
Weird, huh? If you convince people they have consequenceless sex which turns out to be not without consequence they will seek to rid themselves of that consequence.
This study will, of course, be ignored by those who claim to embrace science. and reason. Sheesh. It’s almost like they’re more interested in pushing an agenda than facts. Almost.
The thing is, they know that contraception leads to abortion. Think about who the biggest pushers of contraception are – Planned Parenthood, which makes millions performing abortions. Hmmm…
December 8, 2012 at 12:08 am
But let's remain logical. If all these people who commit abortion voluntarily sterilized themselves, though it is against Church teaching, it would drastically reduce abortions to near nothing except for the first six months after the operation on the male's side. Ergo they would be moving from murder to sterilization…from a worse sin that involves a third person to a lesser sin between two people.
December 8, 2012 at 2:15 am
Contraception necessarily involves a certain wrong attitude to sex. It generally means greater promiscuity and more casual sex, which means there is more pregnancies in situations where a baby is rejected, and therefore more abortions are carried out. Contraception has mushroomed since the sixties, and abortion alongside. They go hand-in-hand. Why do abortion mills promote contraception? – certainly not to put themselves out of business.
December 8, 2012 at 2:16 am
ps…an example: A robber holds you and your wife up in a parking lot with a 44 magnum pistol. You urge him, " Just take all our money and the car but spare our lives.". You've urged him from a worse mortal sin to a lesser mortal sin.
December 8, 2012 at 2:53 pm
But when you take the essentials of what sex is meant to be about, which is a higher purpose of the creation of life through expression of love that is pleasurable, then what does sex become- just pleasurable and focused inwards on the two involved, with no higher purpose. It becomes inwards and meaningless. So there are actually deeper repercussions to becoming sterilized. These repercussions are no different to the abortion agenda- closed to life and selfish. The mentality is no different. That's what Pope Benedict meant when he referred to an anti-life mentality that is found in Contraception, Sterilization and abortion.
December 8, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Anon,
I stated it was sin. What would you object to in the robbery scenario? Augustine and Aquinas allowed for the legality of prostitution in order to prevent worse…adultery and rape. They saw all as causing damnation but saw the least as preferable to the worst.
December 8, 2012 at 3:49 pm
bill bannon,
Until their rejection of love leads them to sin more and more. Sin doesn't protect. Sin attracts more sin.
December 8, 2012 at 4:11 pm
Charles,
The Church permitted religious rites which she saw as detrimental to salvation in her lands like the Old Testament rites of the Jews. That is the context in which Aquinas permits governments to tolerate prostitution which he gives as a like example to the Church tolerating the wrong religious rites in her lands:
Summa Theologica: Part II of book II, question 10, article 11
I answer that, Human government is derived from the Divine government, and should imitate it. Now although God is all-powerful and supremely good, nevertheless He allows certain evils to take place in the universe, which He might prevent, lest, without them, greater goods might be forfeited, or greater evils ensue. Accordingly in human government also, those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says (De Ordine ii, 4): "If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust." Hence, though unbelievers sin in their rites, they may be tolerated, either on account of some good that ensues therefrom, or because of some evil avoided. "
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Likewise how can we seem to really care about millions of deaths if we are unwilling to permit a sinful alternative that is a lesser mortal sin and which prevents millions of deaths that we say we lament? We may come across as clever debaters but not as those who would stop the deaths by permitting sterilization in the same way that Catholic lands permitted Jewish religious rites and permitted prostitution to prevent that which was worse than prostitution.
December 8, 2012 at 5:52 pm
People today have an almost superstitious faith in the efficacy of contraceptives. Here is the big news no one will tell you : Contraceptives, including the pill, have a significant failure rate. And ,no, it isn't just stupid people who get pregnant while on the pill. It really does fail all on its very own. There is nothing created by man on this earth that is perfect , and that includes contraceptives.
It's very simple, The more sex you have, the more likely you are to get pregnant, with or without contraception. (Unless you have done so many things to yourself that you have compromised your ability to have children . Which also happens a lot.) But I guess we needed a "scientific study" to prove the obvious.
December 8, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Just for clarification, I don't think people who get pregnant while using the pill or anything else are stupid because they " must not have been following the instructions" etc… I was quoting something I heard said ad nauseum back in my college days and early days of marriage whenever i tried to point out that contraceptives don't always "work".
I am just saying that young people, young women, are led astray by the myth that there is such a thing a "safe sex" which encourages them to imperil their souls and the lives of their little babies.
December 8, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Bill Bannon,
So the Church should stop teaching the moral good and allow the lesser of two evils in order to produce less net evil? This is silliness! By your reasoning it follows that a greater evil could come along that would make having abortions the prefferable path…?
So as Catholics we show more concern for the unborn by allowing less of them to be conceived…?
Maybe the Church should give out illicit drugs, too, in order to quiet the drug violence…?
Maybe the Church should encourage masterbation to porn as an alternative to the sex act – that, too, would show a serious commitment to lowering abortions, would it not?
December 8, 2012 at 11:17 pm
@Bill Bannon: You are completely misreading Aquinas. He did not say prostitution should be permitted. He said stamping it out completely would require measures that would be worse in their effects than it was—so only worry about it when it makes itself noticeable. Which is the attitude most civilized societies take toward it.
In the case of contraception, the Church could only gain full obedience by a full-blown inquisition. That certainly doesn't mean it should change its teachings, nor that it should cease to censure those who publicly flout them.
December 8, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Bill Bannon,
Your argument for contraception should be named after the Scrouge, as he said, when he was told about the many needy: "Are there no prisons?"
Scrouge's argument is, like yours, a "lesser of two evils" fallacy. That the poor should be imprisoned rather than die sounds like a solution, but it is, in fact, the thin edge of a wedge allowing us to accept an evil in itself, and thus we, ourselves promote evil and call it good
December 9, 2012 at 1:17 am
xsosdid,
Now compare your idea with Augustine's quote within Aquinas' treatise:
" Augustine says (De Ordine ii, 4): "If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust."
Augustine wants it unsuppressed regardless of the effects of suppressing measures. Augustine sees an ongoing prevention of greater evil by the non suppression of prostitution.
December 9, 2012 at 1:20 am
ps…that should have been addressed to Sophia's favorite not xsosdid.
December 9, 2012 at 2:05 am
Bill Bannon, I think I understand the quote well enough. I don't see how it changes the issue, though, since you have not addressed my objection to it: that the notion that we have to appease immorality with a lesser immorality is a disastrous approach and is impractical in the extreme. It has no bounds. We all know that what is "moral" to many was immoral only a few years ago. So what we will have to accept as a "lesser evil" in thirty or a hundred years may in fact be something appalling by today's standards. So, in my opinion, with this kind of moral appeasement strategy, you have given away the game and might as well go home.
And yes, I might even have to admit that I disagree with Sts Augustin and Aquinas.
….who knew?
December 9, 2012 at 2:51 am
xsosdid,
But you are not dealing with the reality that if all abortion prone persons steriilized themselves, the millions of abortion murders would cease. In terms of God's judgement of such persons, believing in sterilization as moral is far more plausible as a sincere erroneous conscience….than killing a pre born. Past Popes had sincere erroneous consciences on matters like burning heretics ( Pope Innocent IV and Pope Leo X) and other Popes had sincere erroneous consciences on affirming the castrati system in the papal choirs from 1585 til 1878 when Pope Leo XIII stopped it even though his 29 predecessors saw it as moral. Now we all see it as immoral but it, as a papal instance of sincere erroneous conscience, shows that it is quite plausible for non Catholics right now to see sterilization as moral but, as to judgement by God, seeing abortion as moral is less likely susceptible of a sincere erroneous conscience. In short, they seem to have a better chance of avoiding damnation through the lesser evil of sterilization.
December 9, 2012 at 3:06 am
ps….what I am suggesting is similar to Pope Benedict's condom statement regarding AIDS infected male prostitutes. Benedict was not teaching that condoms were a good but that in context, they were a lesser evil than infecting someone lethally.
December 9, 2012 at 4:21 am
There are two issues here: what the Church teaches and what God judges. What the Church teaches must always be the moral truth, and not some compromise based upon society's various states, versus what God may judge based upon particular instances, about which we can only speculate.
Issues of the past seem to be a sticking point for you, as though they mitigate the truth, somehow. But why bring these up? Is it because the moral good fluctuates with the times? Is it relative? Or is it, rather that through experience the moral truth becomes more clear, more pronounced and, especially, more well defined?
I think, if anything, bringing up the past errors of people who profess the faith makes the need for clear and sure moral teaching more necessary, not less. I think your examples argue against you.
As for Aids infected male prostitutes, you really can't mean to use this as the wedge here, do you? For this is obvious, that given two terrible choices it is easy enough for one to pick the lesser evil, but that is nothing like recommending it as being a moral good…!? You are being no more charitable here to the Holy Father than the media who love (like the Pharisees) to find an issue with which to trip him up. If that is your purpose here than I am not interested in the conversation.
December 9, 2012 at 6:09 am
Theoretically having an abortion and having a tubal ligation are equally mortal sins. This is where intense Catholics lose everybody else.
The pro-lifers make the emotional appeal that abortion = murder, but then it turns out that for intense Catholics tubal ligation = abortion, and non-intense-Catholics start backing away. They are confused. Where is the wrong? Is abortion wrong because a life is ended? Well then, why is tubal ligation wrong? Why is contraception wrong? Wow, that's a whole different hurdle, isn't it?
December 9, 2012 at 7:35 am
Of course science agrees with the Pope. Catholic churchmen invented science.