Abortion & contraception

It seems I'm really good at picking activities that not very many other people want to do. A lot of times when we go to stand outside the abortion clinic to pray and plead, I'm thinking....where is everyone else? Is this handful of people we're out here with the only ones who care about the death sentence handed daily to so many unborn children? The people who stand out there regularly are all wonderful, but there should be more of us. Where is Christian America on this one?

Maybe this is coming totally from left field, but I've been wondering for some time if our society, including faithful Christians who are pro-life, is numb to the horror of abortion because of the practice in their own life of using contraception.The phrase "Planned Parenthood" should be an affront to Catholics, who are blessed to belong to a church that has failed to 'modernize' and still condemns contraception, although most Catholics sadly ignore this. The vast majority of Catholics and Protestants are using artificial contraception, and thus are full believers in 'planned parenthood' as a way of life.

It's almost a knee-jerk reaction amongst Christians: when you get married, you get on birth control. Then you wait a few years until-um, I don't know what exactly is supposed to happen during those years, but they seem pretty mandatory, and then you have a child. Then you go back on birth control until you are ready to have your next child, and then after that you are probably done. Maybe you get sterilized, because you are just really, positively done with gifts from God. Getting back to normal life as soon as possible is priority number one.

The sad thing about birth control, okay, one of the sad things about birth control, is that you cannot deny its link to abortion. How did we as a society get to the point where we abort one out of every four live births? We got here by becoming a contracepting society-- contraception has created the mentality that pregnancies should be 100% planned. What enabled the free-wheeling "love" lives of young people in the 60's? The newly available birth control pill. The premier early promoter of birth control, Margaret Sanger, created the organization that has become Planned Parenthood. If birth control did not exist, the numbers of people having sex before marriage, having affairs, and the number of women getting burned by men who only want sex, and the number of children getting burned by their daddies who only wanted sex, would be hugely reduced. That's just a no-brainer. Today we have a society full of people who believe themselves to not be prepared for parenthood who are having sex. Nearly half of US pregnancies are unplanned. Half! Sex has become disassociated with babies, and when an 'unplanned' baby happens, often it is aborted (42% of unplanned pregnancies in the US are aborted). It's just taking the next step in the contraception mentality. Buying fully into the idea that parenthood should be planned. (Stats from the Guttmacher Institute)

So, are Christians, or people who wait until marriage to have sex, the people who know the "right" way to use birth control? Is this thing that has been so detrimental to society as a whole a good thing for married couples? A lot of people think birth control is a 'grace' for married couples, and would argue that the sin of society is not using birth control, it's having sex outside of marriage. So, how to fix this problem? Propose a ban on unmarried persons obtaining birth control? The problem that happens when we embrace contraception is that we remove the stumbling block to unmarried sex. Society is confused about sex, and often rightly so. If sex doesn't equal babies, then what is the reason to wait until marriage? Sexually transmitted diseases are also a clue, but they are not such a deterrent as babies are. And isn't it ironic that the most popular solution to STD's is contraception, rather than abstinence.

Um, aren't Christians called to be counter-cultural in the ways that culture is evil? Why do we buy into the contraception mentality hook, line and sinker? Some words from Jesus come to mind: "And he said to his disciples, "Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin." Luke 17:1-2.

I've come to the conclusion recently that I would not be able to stand outside the abortion clinic like I do with a completely clear conscious if I myself were artificially contracepting. How could I beg these women to have their babies if my own personal attitude was 'but certainly none for me, thank you very much'. I could not, I think I would be a hypocrite. Consenting to the death of your child is not the same as preventing one in the first place, but the mentality of being completely closed to children is very often one and the same.

And to use a phrase of an old friend, Whoa Nelly, do I have more to say on this one, so please sit tight for my next post on birth control. I realize that if you are not Catholic, this may be confusing or offensive material, so I will further explain the strong reasons against using contraception.