Take a long, hard look at these videos. These children are going to crush you under their heels, grind your movement to dust.
You’re finished.
It’s all over.
For forty years you have visited on this nation a bloodbath that makes the word “holocaust” seem too inadequate, too impotent to address the dimensions of your vicious and destructive evil. You perverted my generation with your lies, with your denial of what was well-established scientific fact. You made it easy for us to abort and contraceive the children that we would need to sustain us in our old age, and now the wildfire is catching up to us. STD’s have risen steadily since your ascendency. No doubt about it, we wanted to be lied to in order to have life our way, on our terms.
You willingly obliged, and made billions of dollars for your efforts.
But the rising tide of blood and misery has caught the nation’s attention, and now the slumbering giant of the inner-city has been awakened to your genocidal presence in communities of color. Your guardians in the halls of power, the Democrats and liberal Republicans will now answer to an increasingly aware and disgusted black and Hispanic electorate, without whom they cannot survive.
It’s too late for you now. You are going to increasingly be regarded as the lepers that you are. Your Democrat patrons will need to distance themselves from you, or face the music at the ballot box.
These children all have sonograms of themselves in their mother’s wombs and have ample access to 4D sonogram videos and embryoscopies as well. It’s getting harder to market that little lie about a blob of tissue. The truth of science exposes your lies on every front, and these children have access to all of that information.
Unable to compete with the truth of science, the truth revealed by ultrasonography, the data from CDC, the documentary evidence of Sanger and her fellow Eugenists, you’ve turned in your desperation to attacking pregnancy resource centers, trying to cripple them and shut them down. May I offer you some strategic advice?
It’s a losing hand, and it betrays your desperation. I would back away from it, as it leaves you vulnerable on the issue of “choice”. Also, operating 78% of Planned Parenthood “clinics” in inner-city neighborhoods (while blacks are only 12.3% of the population) where the options are more limited for women and pregnancy centers not only offer the greatest hope to many, but also the only other viable option that makes real choice a reality…
Well you get the point don’t you? You really do look genocidal.
Back to the youth. Thanks to your efforts, they will be forced to either pay most of their salaries as adults in order to support Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, or accept health care rationing (the new euphemism for your forte: murder).
28,000 young people enthusiastically welcomed their bishops, priests and deacons. Take note, they’re on to your buddies in the media trying to portray our clergy as all being potential predators. They’ve rejected that one too, yielding as they do to the truth.
Now, I’m not saying that you don’t have a good deal of fight left in you, and I’m sure you’ll rack up a few more Pyrrhic victories before you implode. But the reality is that these children and their peers will come to see that large families are the only security they will have for their futures, having learned a bitter lesson with the cost of caring for the Boomers.
They see you for who you truly are. They know your lies. They know their science. They hunger for authentic love and intact families for themselves when they marry, and are far more willing than my generation to live with self-control.
They also see the news blackout of well over 200,000 youth, and over 100,000 adults marching on the nation’s capital. That’s why the mainstream media are losing increasing market share to alternative media. They’re posting on YouTube.
You are no longer the radical youth. You are the establishment, and the children are coming for you.
You’ve had quite a run, but these young ones know more than we ever did, and are filled with disgust at the mention of your name.
Get used to being lepers, and know that God stands ready to forgive and heal you.
If you decide to join us, we’d be happy to have you. If you remain recalcitrant, you’re looking at the generation who are going to put you out of business.
God bless the youth. They really get it, even though many, no doubt, have been educated about “choice,” they know it’s not just a bad choice: it’s a wrong choice.
Is “contraconcieve” a word?
And wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where everyone who didn’t opt for abstinence used contraception, and abortions really were RARE? That’s the world I’m willing to strive for.
Written to the theme of Rocky !
St. Padre Pio, pray for us !
Fr. Paul Marx, pray for us !
Bishop Fulton Sheen, pray for us!
Msgr William Smith, pray for us !
Pope John Paul II, pray for us !
All the saints in heaven, pray for us !
Contraception doesn’t lower abortion #’s. I used to think that too. But the data clearly shows that failed contraception directly leads to higher abortion #’s. Contraception has led to an increase of std’s. Not just cases, but actual diseases. Contraception creates an environment where women are not using good judgement choosing healthy relationships with men that care about them.
The old “Every child a wanted child”, never takes into account that this is not the fault of the child, but of their will. So many errors flow from the promotion of sex as being divorced from procreation and the marital act because when this attitude is taken then when a child naturally results, it must be suppressed for the sin of inconvenience. Once the contraception mentality is accepted it will then go on to excuse any evil act because children must be prevented by any means. Let’s not delude ourselves that 50+ million babies murdered in the womb was a result of not using contraception, but the attitude that pregnancy is no longer a serious moral matter when legal abortion is available as an alternative. Abortion is a consequence of the contraception mentality. The two cannot be separated because one feeds the other.
First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
and then you win.
Ghandi
This brought me to tears. I hope, I hope, I hope you are right. I have my doubts, but I also know that of the many girls I know who have gotten pregnant out of wedlock, only one child was lost through abortion. The rest of us never gave it a thought, and some of us have managed to build happy, faithful Catholic families out of that wreckage. So I do think the tide is turning. I just hope it turns quickly enough.
Thanks for writing a wonderful letter.
I don’t believe contraception “creates an environment where women are not using good judgement choosing healthy relationships with men that care about them.” I think the kind of people who seek such an environment have always found it — contraception made it easier, sure, but it was a tool rather than a catalyst.
I agree that failed contraception use directly leads to a higher number of abortions. And I think that while my side has suceeded in making contraception more available, we have failed in getting people to actually use it diligently and correctly. What happens when you don’t bother to put in that diaphragm, or put on that condom, or miss taking a birth-control pill or two or five? We all know what happens.
I think contraception use became widespread around the time women started entering the work force, and a lot of the problems caused by women working en masse outside the home (mainly divorce, when the women gained the economic means to leave their husbands — and many states introduced no-fault divorce laws around the same time, too) were blamed on the sexual revolution and contraception.
I said on another blog, I think contraception is just a tool, not a catalyst — it can used wisely, or it can be used irresponsibly and even harmfully.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. I am never going to oppose abortion, but I agree it’s worth trying to bring the high numbers down by addressing the problem before the unwanted pregnancies are conceived inthe first place.
First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
and then you win.
Forgot the last line:
“Then you pay alimony and child support.”
wonderful writing. it sounds like a roaring wave, from God through your soul.
we are lucky to know you through your writing and speaking.
you and your family are in my prayers.
“I agree that failed contraception use directly leads to a higher number of abortions.”
The thing is, L., every method of birth control ever invented has a non-zero failure rate, even when it is used “diligently and correctly”. You can look these up. Now estimate the number of sexually active fertile couples in your country and multiply that by a representative failure rate (use 1% for the sake of argument, although this is probably an underestimate); and now you have an estimate for the abortion rate implied by the contraceptive mentality. Don’t be too surprised if it turns out to be close to the actual abortion rate in your country.
[…] Coming Home comments on the rise of pro-life youth in an open letter to NARAL and Planned Parenthood. […]
“And I think that while my side has suceeded in making contraception more available, we have failed in getting people to actually use it diligently and correctly.”
L,
Expecting a certain population to reach a perfect understanding and use of contraceptives is like expecting a certain population to get 100% scores in high school Algebra or Geometry. We accept that not everybody is going to get it perfect no matter how much effort goes into teaching it; but the pro-contraceptive/pro-choice group continues to promote it as a way to reduce abortion. It doesn’t make sense. I agree with others here who have said that the contraceptive mentality creates a false “sense of security” among people who are sexually active. Many see abortion as their safety net to solve their “problems” with a baby and a relationship that isn’t ready to raise a child.
Contraception can REDUCE the abortion rate, but I agree it won’t bring it to zero — and nothing will, not even criminalizing abortion. I think we are both realistically talking about reducing rates as low as possible.
And multiple forms of contraception can bring the rates close to zero (a condom used in combination with another barrier method, for example).
I am a stalwart proponent of contraception, so we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. It’s not the magical answer to everything, but I think it does help — and can help even more — rather than harm. (And those who don’t believe in premarital sex, or in artificial contraception at all, are going to disagree with me.)
Do seat belts promote a false sense of security, that contributes to more reckless driving, or do they save some people from serious injury in accidents? Perhaps a bit of both, but it’s better that cars have them than not.
By the way, I think teens should be shown graphic pictures of aborted fetuses exactly the way they’re show graphic pictures of car accidents in drivers’ ed classes. I think our society — on both sides — is far too squeamish when it comes to talking about abortion — we get bogged down in the politics or the broader moral implications, and just conveniently ignore the yucky parts that make us uncomfortable.
L.,
Theft, Rape and Murder seem to be pretty popular with people. Thousands of years of positive law, accompanied by brutal and lethal punishment have done nothing to eradicate these crimes; yet we do not throw our hands up and yield to the persistent will of people to rob others of their unalienable human rights.
Okay, I get it — I understand that you want to make laws to keep me from killing my babies inside me — I GET that, even if I don’t agree with you that my unborn babies have an inalienable right to life. (And I don’t think any criminal punishment would change my mind, or be a deterrent for me.)
But I also agree that abortion is undesirable, and is worth preventing, by preventing those unwanted pregancies in the first place — either by abstinence outside marriage for those who choose it, and diligent and correct use of contraception for those who don’t.
So that makes me a “thief, rapist and murder” who thinks theft, rape and murder are undesirable and should be prevented, by preventing the situations in which people choose to steal, rape and murder.
When I see the high abortion numbers, I don’t think, “Those babies should have been born,” I think, “Those pregnancies should have been prevented.”
How to prevent them in the first place?
Look at me, a stalwart “pro-abort” — and yet, despite my lack of moral qualms about it, have I ever WANTED to do it? No, I have actively avoided abortions even more actively than I avoided pregnancies.
I trace it back to my Catholic education, and the fact that I was shown those aborted fetus photos. The “ick factor” was a great deterrent.
//How to prevent them in the first place?//
You can’t. Women’s bodies come with wombs.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kathryn Hudson and Lorraine Johnson, Gerard M. Nadal. Gerard M. Nadal said: An Open Letter to NARAL and Planned Parenthood: http://wp.me/pJSAY-18k […]
Sperm can be prevented from entering wombs.
People can use contraception, or have sexual relations that don’t involve intercourse, or even abstain from sex completely.
People CAN prevent unwanted pregnancies. “You can’t” is a defeatist answer.
You see fifty million babies who should have been born. I also see fifty million women who should have avoided pregnancy.
L., With all due respect, I disagree. Fifty million abortions tells me that “you can’t” is a biological reality and more contraception is not the answer.
Malcolm Potts, former medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, foresaw: “As people turn more and more to contraception, there will be a rise, not a fall in the abortion rate.” vol.4 no.4 Winter 1980 p.298
“You can’t” is NOT a biological inevitability. People have more self-control than that — either to abstain, or to use contraception correctly.
And as for more people who turn to contraception — I used to know women who seemed to think their diaphragms were like good luck charms. Somehow, even if they forgot to put them in, or forgot to use them them with spermicide, their magical presence was going to protect them. I knew people who used a condom correctly, “except it fell off.”
The saddest cases I knew were the people who got pregnant using no contraception at all, because they didn’t intend to have sex but succombed in a moment of human weakness — and preparing for the possibility would have made it a premeditated sinful act, which somehow would have been less forgivable than sin in a moment of passion.
I agree with Kathy. So long as women have wombs there will always be unplanned pregnancies. We all know stories of women with unplanned pregnancies, regardless of how it happened, but the real sad cases are the ones who turn into dead fetuses. Having an unplanned pregnancy doesn’t mean you can’t be open to life.
“We all know stories of women with unplanned pregnancies, regardless of how it happened, but the real sad cases are the ones who turn into dead fetuses.” —>
Here I will get personal, and say that my own unplanned, wanted pregnancy ended in a dead embryo, and there was nothing sad about it from my point of view. My partner was sad, though, so I wish it hadn’t happened, and I deeply regretted my impulsive decision to have unprotected relations with him.
I do agree, though, that lots of unplanned pregnancies result in babies who are indeed welcomed and loved. Those are NOT the kind of pregnancies I’m talking about here.
People who don’t want babies and are absolutely closed to life should NOT get pregnant. Period.
If we do decide to have sex, we owe it to ourselves to do all we can to prevent conception.
Oh, in the second paragraph, I mean UNwanted, not wanted — by me, that is. Thought I’d better clarify that!
An unplanned or an unwanted pregnancy makes no difference either way. They both produce the same species. An unwanted pregnancy is not the end of the world, except for the murdered child. One can still chose life, followed by adoption.
Since everyone has passed through the fetal stage of development, it is false to imagine oneself in this state (or any state) and be sacrificed to the will of another. Abortion unleashes the worst aspect of anarchy and the worst aspects of totalitarianism with the benefits of neither. If you rationalize your power or rights over the unborn, then you will continue to believe that all have rights but only as long as you want to. That’s been done throughout history. Any inequalities inherent in a society’s practice may rebound upon you in the worst conceivable way.
As Bonhoeffer wrote: “They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Gypsies and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Gypsy. Then they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for me and there was no one to speak up for me.”
“If you rationalize your power or rights over the unborn, then you will continue to believe that all have rights but only as long as you want to.” —>
My children’s legal rights begin only when they’re outside my body. Some see a slippery slope there, but I never have. And I was once a fetus, too.
I should also add, women who choose to give their babies life, who put babies up for adoption, who choose to carry to term even pregnancies that result from rape or that gravely endanger their health, or babies with conditions incompatible with life outside their wombs — I think these choices are heroic. I genuinely admire the women who make them, and think they deserve nothing less than full support and encouragement.
A sacrifice, when freely chosen, is a beautiful thing. But when legally mandated in ALL situations, it’s something else entirely.
The pro-abortion side never sees the slippery slope or they just don’t want to. I know, I was once pro-abort myself. It’s so easy too. Even though we knew that every child being aborted was cut to pieces, burned and poisoned, or crushed to death, all we had to do to justify this horror was to draw an imaginary line and decide who has rights and when, and who are considered persons. Pro-abortion draws the line at unborn children. The KKK drew the line at race. The Nazis drew the line at Jews and of course when no one saw the slippery slope, it was even easier to expand the line to include whole new groups of people, including the old and persons with disabilities. Slippery slope? Definitely there. And even more dangerous when people don’t see it and start drawing a line, which only serves to make me a stronger pro-lifer and brings even more people to the pro-life side.
Funny, Kathy, I was once pro-life.
And then I realized I was living a lie, and supporting laws that would prevent women from doing what I would do myself.
“Sperm can be prevented from entering wombs.”
absolutely. It’s called being chaste. No sex unless you are ready to have a baby.
“People CAN prevent unwanted pregnancies.”
absolutely. It’s called being chaste. No sex unless you are ready to have a baby.
“You see fifty million babies who should have been born. I also see fifty million women who should have avoided pregnancy.”
I see fifty million babies who would have contributed immensely to this world – discoverers of new things, ideas and possibilities, parents of children who will now never be born….a future wiped out through murder.
Every one of those babies was WANTED by God.
Chastity — absolutely. Those who choose it should be encouraged and supported.
And for those who don’t, there are LOTS of other ways to keep sperm out of wombs (which I won’t describe here, in deference to Dr. Nadal’s sensibilities).
the responsible mature way is chastity. Chastity is the choice mature responsible adults with self control make.
the other ways demonstrate moral weakness and lead inevitably to abortion – which is murder.
To murder another human being simply because they don’t fit into the parent’s lifestyle at that moment is pure evil and nothing less.
“But I also agree that abortion is undesirable, and is worth preventing, by preventing those unwanted pregancies in the first place — either by abstinence outside marriage for those who choose it, and diligent and correct use of contraception for those who don’t.”
L., the two options you give for preventing unwanted pregnancies are far from being equivalent. Abstinence works. “Diligent and correct use of contraception” produces unwanted pregnancies at a predictable rate (as I mentioned above) and therefore leads directly to an *increase* in the number of abortions. If you really believe (as you have stated) that abortion is undesirable, then you should avoid promoting contraception and the mentality that goes with it. What mentality? The one that says that sex can be separated from procreation. The fact is that children are a natural outcome of sexual intercourse, with or without contraception. Until people can wrap their heads around this very simple fact, they simply aren’t mature enough to have sex.
If someone is mature and responsible and has self control, they have it in their power to use contraception.
Diligent and correct use of contraception prevents unwanted pregnancies. Incorrect use does indeed produce unwanted pregnancies.
Dan, if you think the only people “mature enough to have sex” are those who don’t believe “sex can be separated from procreation,” that makes ME too immature to have relations with my partner, ha ha. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one!
Sex CAN be separared from procreation. And it SHOULD be, unless the couple is open to life.
“Incorrect use does indeed produce unwanted pregnancies.”
So does “correct use”. Why do you insist on denying this simple and easily demonstrated fact? This kind of denial is the reason we have abortion on demand.
No, Dan — correct use prevents MOST unwanted pregnancies. And sexual relations that don’t involve actual intercourse prevent them, too.
The problem is that people don’t use contraception correctly or consistently. There is no point to being able to separate sex from procreation, if people who are closed to life don’t actively seek to avoid conceiving it.
People who are closed to life, and have unprotected (or only partially protected) sex — that’s the reason the abortion rates are so high. People always think it can’t happen to them — they’re wrong.
Also, the U.S. doesn’t have “abortion on demand,” past the first trimester.
“Also, the U.S. doesn’t have “abortion on demand,” past the first trimester.”
Actually…
Yes we do. If you spent less time defending it and more time reading about what’s going on here, then you would have heard of people such as George Tiller, Kermit Gosnell, Leroy Carhart, etc… It’s legal up until the moment of delivery, but needs a doctor’s justification in the third trimester.
Perhaps we don’t agree on what “on demand” means.
I don’t define “needs a doctor’s justification” as meaning the same thing as “on demand.”
Understood, L. But that still leaves the entire second trimester open for what you did mean by “on-demand”.
It’s radical and barbaric.
Not quite — state laws differ, and some restrict abortions beyond a certain number of weeks in the second trimester. And some have laws restricting minors from getting them “on demand” without parental (or judicial) permission.
“Barbaric” — yes, certainly. I would never argue that abortion is gentle or pretty or desirable. It’s worth avoiding.
L.,
First you say:
“Also, the U.S. doesn’t have “abortion on demand,” past the first trimester.”
Then I point out that it does. Now you counter with:
“Not quite — state laws differ, and some restrict abortions beyond a certain number of weeks in the second trimester. And some have laws restricting minors from getting them “on demand” without parental (or judicial) permission.”
Which is a weak retreat by looking for a few scattered exceptions to the rule.
Again, you made a blanket statement about the U.S., and you were wrong. Also, the physician exemption is pure BS. No woman has ever been denied an abortion in the third trimester since Roe and Doe. So, abortion on demand exists in fact in all three trimesters.
“No, Dan — correct use prevents MOST unwanted pregnancies.”
So what. It doesn’t prevent all of them. The number it fails to prevent is a very large number (go ahead and do the calculation I suggested in my first comment above). Therefore your claim that it is possible to separate sexual intercourse from procreation is wrong. And that means that you are depending on abortion as a backup.
“I would never argue that abortion is gentle or pretty or desirable. It’s worth avoiding.”
This statement is disingenuous, given that you willingly choose a course of action that requires abortion as a backup, and you proclaim that sex “CAN” and “SHOULD” be separated from procreation, a position that cannot be sustained over a large population without a large number of abortions. If you truly believed that abortion is worth avoiding, you would choose a different course of action, and you would acknowledge that sex cannot be separated from procreation (ie., even if you use contraception to alter the probability distribution, the range of possible outcomes remains exactly the same).
Dan, I have no moral qualms about killing the unborn, and I myself would kill even a perfectly healthy baby of mine in some circumstances (e.g., rape) — so therefore, indeed, abortion has always been, and will always be, my own personal back-up form of birth control. I think I have clearly established this point of view here!
So since this is my attitude, why would I use contraception at all? Why not just have sex freely, and then kill my babies whenever I’m cursed with a pregnancy? Because abortion is risky, invasive minor surgery (and very icky, too), and is best avoided in the first place — abstinence for those who choose it, contraception for those of us who don’t.
“Go ahead and do the calculation?” Okay! Use of condom/withdrawal, together WITH the pill, IUD or diaphragm — using mutiple forms of contraception can bring failure rates down from one in a hundred to one in several thousand. I will take those odds.
There’s also sexual relations that don’t involve actual intercourse. These remove the procreative aspect with no risk of pregnancy.
L.,
I hate to trash comments, but this is crossing into trolling behavior, and it’s unwelcome here. You made a definitive statement about abortion on demand being unavailable past the first trimester. You were wrong. Very wrong.
I proved it, and am not wasting time and energy on word games.
Let’s move on.
“I have no moral qualms about killing the unborn”
L., why did you even bother to comment on this piece in the first place?
Your original comment was:
“And wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where everyone who didn’t opt for abstinence used contraception, and abortions really were RARE? That’s the world I’m willing to strive for.”
The fact is that your attitude can never lead to a world in which abortions are “RARE”. If you had bothered to complete the calculation, this would be obvious even to you. Let’s suppose you really can bring the odds down to, say 1 in 2000 per year. Maybe you can, but of course this is not even remotely realistic as an average for a large population. Nevertheless, let’s use 1 in 2000 and apply it to the U.S. with a population of 312 million. Available demographic data indicate that this population includes roughly 50 million women between the ages of 20 and 44. If most of them are sexually active and use contraception and we use your odds of 1 in 2000 per year, that would lead to 25,000 unwanted pregnancies per year. Are you really willing to call that “RARE”?? Here on this blog??
Besides, a more realistic failure probability for contraception use in a large population is going to be a lot higher. Even the 1% I suggested earlier is too low, and yet it implies a staggering 500,000 unwanted pregnancies per year. If you raise it to just 2% (still too low, in my view) it’s not hard to see how the contraceptive mentality accounts for most of the 1.2 million abortions that are performed in the U.S. every year.
The important take-away message is that widespread use of contraception will never make abortion rare. On the contrary, it fuels the demand for abortion by generating unwanted pregnancies at a staggeringly high rate.
Yes, Dan, I personally would be pretty gosh-darn happy if only 1 in 2,000 pregnancies resulted in an abortion — or even 1 in 1,000.
I understand, though, that pro-life people want the number to be not just lower, but zero. We’re not ever going to agree on that.
“What mentality? The one that says that sex can be separated from procreation. The fact is that children are a natural outcome of sexual intercourse, with or without contraception. Until people can wrap their heads around this very simple fact, they simply aren’t mature enough to have sex.”
Ah my friend, people CAN wrap their heads around this fact. They simply choose not to accept it. People today want to be sexually promiscuous (let’s call the behaviour exactly what it is) without any consequences (formerly known as “baby”).
At first these people were willing to possibly accept the baby (they would have the baby and give it up for adoption) but now even that’s such a bother) .
Now they have no tolerance for babies as selfishness as increased dramatically (it’s called self-actualization or bodily autonomy – sounds like a really technical term for something that is quite poisonous). So babies die.
“Because abortion is risky, invasive minor surgery (and very icky, too),”
ah yes. It is quite “icky” killing babies. such a messy business.
Lord have mercy. 😦
Mary Catherine, I believe Dr. Nadal’s term for it was “radical autonomy.”
Yes, abortion is indeed icky, barbaric, gross, etc. — I’m not going to argue there — I never wanted to have one myself. I have quite actively avoided it.
Yes, children are a natural outcome of sexual intercourse, but if they’re an undesirable outcome, there are plenty of steps we can take to avoid creating them — including, as I said above, sexual relations that don’t involve the man’s sperm even entering the woman at all.
I also think voluntary sterilization is a good option for people who are closed to life, and want to avoid abortion.
“Yes, children are a natural outcome of sexual intercourse, but if they’re an undesirable outcome, there are plenty of steps we can take to avoid creating them ”
This entire idea is completely antithetical to what it means to be a human being, a woman and to what it means to be a mother.
No child is or should EVER be an undesirable outcome. Both biologically and theologically, a child is the natural and expected outcome of sexual intercourse. It is the design of nature and God.
The child is only an “undesirable outcome” when the hearts of his/her parents are not big enough to encompass such a profound gift of love.
“Yes, Dan, I personally would be pretty gosh-darn happy if only 1 in 2,000 pregnancies resulted in an abortion — or even 1 in 1,000.”
L., that’s a gross misrepresentation of what these numbers mean. These numbers signify the probability of getting pregnant (per year) using your preferred method of contraception. Equivalently, they can be regarded as the rate at which pregnancies occur (per couple per year) for those using your preferred method of contraception. My hypothesis (which seems to be well supported by your comments) is that close to 100% of *these* pregnancies are aborted.
I have not attempted to make a statement about the number of *wanted* pregnancies, and therefore I have not made any claims about what fraction of all pregancies result in abortion. There are, of course, statistics on this very topic that anyone may look up. It is something like one third for the entire U.S. and quite a bit higher in NYC.
Dan, I know that not all unplanned pregnancies are unwanted.
The 2009 New York City figures Dr. Nadal recently quoted were 41% of all pregnancies aborted — and 60% for African Americans.
And yes, I would be very happy indeed if that number changed to one in 2,000, or even 1,000.
“And yes, I would be very happy indeed if that number changed to one in 2,000, or even 1,000.”
First of all, as I have taken great pains to explain above, the 1 in 2000 figure we have been discussing as a hypothetical contraceptive failure rate is very different from the fraction of all pregnancies that would be aborted if everyone used this form of contraception.
Secondly, as I have also taken great pains to explain, it is impossible to make the abortion rate in the U.S. much lower than it is currently by promoting contraception and the mentality that goes with it. Once again, this is because contraceptive failure leads to unwanted pregnancies at a rate that is roughly equal to the rate at which abortions currently take place.
Dan, I think we’re talking around/at each other, and not TO each other here. You are saying that people need to change their whole attitudes toward sex, and I am saying that people need to change their whole attitudes toward contraception. The fact that failure rates are so high mean people who think they’re using it correctly aren’t — and perhaps even need to look into other ways of avoiding conception.
You say it’s “impossible,” but I believe it is possible — even from this “pro-abort’s” point of view, facing an abortion decision is undesirable, and worth avoiding.
Why would a woman — even one with a “perverted” view of marriage and sex (like, ahem, me) — want to have risky, invasive, expensive minor gynocological surgery, when there are easier things she can do, to greatly improve her odds of avoiding the pregnancy in the first place?
“The fact that failure rates are so high mean people who think they’re using it correctly aren’t ”
No, the failure rates are inherently high enough to generate unwanted pregnancies at a rate of 500,000+ per year in the U.S. (probably quite a bit higher than that). As I have taken great pains to demonstrate, using a quantitative argument, even if we could bring the failure rate for everyone down to your hypothetical 1 in 2000 per couple per year, we would still have an unacceptably high 25,000 unwanted pregnancies per year in the U.S. that would most likely result in as many abortions.
Why do you continue to deny these facts that are so easily demonstrated in a quantitative manner? Is it because you are unwilling to accept the conclusions that follow logically from them?
Dan, I am not willing to accept them because I don’t buy your “quantitative analysis” — they have low failure rates iof used correctly, and much lower rates if used in combination. Also, what you inisst is true is contrary to what I personally know is possible.
I myself am highly fertile — literally, almost every unprotected encounter of mine resulted in a pregnancy. And yet, because I have been closed to life the vast majority of the time, I managed to avoid unwanted conception. I daresay I have no more willpower or self-discipline than the average person on the street — the difference is, I truly think abortion is worth avoiding.
So I will continue to work hard to push contraception, since it has been an important tool in my own personal life. I would even go so far as to call it a blessing for my marriage, and I am not being hyperbolic or saracstic when I say that.
Also, Dan, a pet peeve of mine is that the insurance I had for years wouldn’t pay for tubal ligations. I would never argue that sterilization is licit from a Catholic point of view, but for those of us who are not living according to Church principles on sexuality and are closed to life and yet strongly desire to avoid abortion, it is another possibility.
“Dan, I am not willing to accept them because I don’t buy your “quantitative analysis” — they have low failure rates iof used correctly, and much lower rates if used in combination.”
L., I showed you that even the lowest failure rate that you can imagine still leads to a very large number of abortions. What part of that do you not buy?
Of course, a more realistic failure rate leads to a much larger number of abortions. We could argue about exactly what that number is. But that isn’t the point. The point is that, even accounting for the uncertainty (eg., by using the lowest failure rate imaginable), we still get a very bad outcome. The implication is very clear: abortions will never become “rare” while the contraceptive mentality prevails.
“Also, what you inisst is true is contrary to what I personally know is possible.”
What you have personally experienced is irrelevant to my argument, because the odds clearly favour any one couple selected at random. It’s the cumulative probability over a large population that matters, because that is what determines how many babies get sacrificed through abortion. It is also unwise to manage risk on the basis of one person’s experience. Your statement is similar to the following statements:
– “I know smoking is not bad for your health, because I’ve smoked my whole life and I’ve never been sick.”
– “I know that helmets do not increase bicycle safety, because I’ve ridden a bike my whole life without a helmet and I’ve never been injured.”
– “I know drunk driving is safe because I’ve done it many times without hurting anyone.”
By the way, sterilization is not 100% effective, so it has similar issues to contraception. However, this is a bit of a side issue and not really worth arguing over, since the vast majority would not choose sterilization.
L., your persistent denial of straightforward facts reminds me of an article by Mary Eberstadt entitled “The Will to Disbelieve”:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/01/002-the-will-to-disbelieve-20
Dan, thanks, fascinating article — I do love Mary Eberstadt for a good laugh (and she correctly gives credit to Jeane Kirkpatrick for coining the phrase, “will to disbelieve”).
I would be the first to agree that the sexual revolution came at a price, but as you would expect, I am personally grateful that I grew up in a world after it, not before it, and that I’m raising my children now, not then.
Dan, your math failed to convince me that if the odds of conception dropped to one in 1,000, it would still result in “a very large number of abortions” — compared the incredibly high number of abortions performed today.
L., I’m not sure what you find funny about Eberstadt’s article. Perhaps you could enlighten us.
“Dan, your math failed to convince me that if the odds of conception dropped to one in 1,000, it would still result in “a very large number of abortions” — compared the incredibly high number of abortions performed today.”
L., well yes, it would have to be a lot less than the number performed today, since 1 in 1000 is a hypothetical and unrealistically low failure rate. I only used it as a deliberately exaggerated lower limit, just for argument’s sake. If that is your only counter-argument, you might as well concede the point that contraception will never make abortion rare.
Now, we can argue about more realistic numbers if you wish. It is very easy to show that the “incredibly high number of abortions performed today” is a direct result of the contraceptive mentality (“sex can and should be separated from procreation”) coupled with real failure rates of real contraceptives being used in real-world conditions.
First of all, CDC data (see http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad350.pdf) indicates that:
“Contraceptive use in the United States is virtually universal among women of reproductive age: 98 percent of all women who had ever had intercourse had used at least one contraceptive method.”
We will need the distribution of contraceptive usage by method in the United States:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5925a6.htm?s_cid=mm5925a6_e
We will also need data on the failure rates of various methods of contraception:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_methods
(these numbers mostly agree with the numbers listed by the CDC, but the CDC web site gives wider ranges, and they seem to err on the side of higher failure rates).
Combining the data from the above sources to obtain a weighted average failure rate, I obtain 5.9% for “typical use” and 0.7% for “perfect use”. This means, if all women in the U.S. were using contraception, “typical use” would result in close to 3 million unwanted pregnancies per year, but “perfect use” would still result in 350,000 unwanted pregnancies per year.
Interestingly, data published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute (see http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/psrh/full/3809006.pdf) says that:
“In 2001, 49% of pregnancies in the United States were unintended. The unintended pregnancy rate was 51 per 1,000 women aged 15–44, meaning that 5% of this group had an unintended pregnancy.”
This lines up pretty well with my quick estimate above.
The same paper lists the number of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. as 3.1 million in 2001, which again lines up pretty well with my estimate above.
Dan, “perfect use” is good enough for me — and the figure would be even lower, as I say, with MULTIPLE forms of contraception used. And if 51 per 1,000 women could be brought down to 1 per 1,000, that would be great. The problem is that “typical use” isn’t “perfect use” — and it could be. That gap could be closed considerably.
And I find Eberstadt to be hilarious because she rants against societal changes that I believe were for the better, overall — and she always (and the article you linked was no exception) manages to get in some anti-gay words, too. Hey, at least gay people don’t need to worry about unwanted pregnancies!
L., merely “closing the gap” is not good enough for me, because the gap can never be closed using your approach. One can never even hope to make it a small number. The conditions you hope for cannot be fulfilled, not even in principle, without killing large numbers of children. With all due respect, that tells me that your approach is inherently wrong.
Furthermore, to even get close 1 in 1000 would require that every woman uses hormonal contraceptives. I don’t know how you could ever hope to achieve that without coercion. That would be problematic on many levels, not the least of which are the very nasty side effects that hormonal contraceptives have on many women.
Regarding Eberstadt, she is objecting to changes that have had the collective effect of undermining marriage, the family, and ultimately all of society: millions of abortions, millions of babies born outside of marriage, millions of divorces, and tens of thousands dying from incurable diseases. The personal, social, and economic costs are truly staggering. How can that be for the better?
I wouldn’t want to live in the world Eberstadt longs for, and I wouldn’t want my children to live in it, either. She seems to want to go back to a time when sex was shameful (and people like me were social degenerates who often weren’t allowed to raise their own kids). Modern times have their share of problems, but I vastly prefer them to what I’ve read of even the recent past, and the stories I’ve heard from my grandparents.
And would you believe, I’m not a great fan of hormonal birth control? We can remove the pill from the equation, and promote use of condoms/withdrawal, together WITH an IUD or diaphragm — and also really push sterlization, with inventives. We CAN reduce the number of babies, if we want to — we have the technology and the means are in our grasp.
You keep insisting about abortion, ” One can never even hope to make it a small number,” and I keep disagreeing. Maybe I alone can’t solve society’s problems, but at the very least, I can teach my own children how to prevent babies.
“I wouldn’t want to live in the world Eberstadt longs for, and I wouldn’t want my children to live in it, either. She seems to want to go back to a time when sex was shameful”
Where did you ever get that idea? There is absolutely nothing shameful about marital sex in the Catholic view of human sexuality. Have you ever read JPII’s “Love and Responsibility” and “Theology of the Body”? More importantly, will you encourage your children to read them, when they reach the appropriate age?
The IUD, mainly due to its abortifacient nature, is worse than hormonal methods. If you also remove hormonal birth control, you don’t have a hope of getting the average failure rate below 2%, unless… you teach fertility awareness methods, in which case I’m not sure what the average over a large population would be. However, those using natural methods generally accept that every act of intercourse may result in a child, and that is a very important distinction.
“You keep insisting about abortion, ” One can never even hope to make it a small number,” and I keep disagreeing.”
So, I take it that you consider 350,000 abortions per year to be a small number? That would be just in the U.S. mind you. For the whole world, the number would be much larger.
“…but at the very least, I can teach my own children how to prevent babies.”
Yes, you can: if you don’t want babies, don’t have sexual intercourse. Contraception modifies the probability of conception without ever reducing it to zero. I hope you will be honest with them about this.
Eberstadt seems to long for a time when sex outside of marriage was shameful — and I don’t believe it is.
I have nothing against teaching fertility awareness — in fact, I think it’s a great idea, for avoiding even more unwanted pregnancies.
And yes, I am certainly being honest with my teenagers, that sex can lead to an abortion — but it never has to lead to a baby. But who wants an abortion? So I am telling them to use contraception carefully! (And I personally thought my IUD was pretty great, and regret having it removed.)
Dan, you and I choose to live in very different worlds, according to very different values, so there probably isn’t much point in even continuing this discussion.
L., sex outside of marriage is wrong and it is antisocial behaviour, for precisely the reasons that Eberstadt describes. As I said before: it undermines marriage, the family, and ultimately all of society. It leads to millions of abortions, millions of babies born outside of marriage, millions of divorces, and tens of thousands dying from incurable diseases. The costs are personal, social, and economic. That is why sex outside of marriage is wrong.
What is very clear is that you do not object to the killing of 350,000 (or any number, really) unborn children per year if that is what it takes to support your sexual choices, and–presumably–the sexual choices that you are going to encourage your children to make.
We don’t live in different worlds, L. We live in the same world, and some day one of my children may be dating one of your children.