What do Pro-Lifers think about contraception?
As a club, Students for Life doesn’t take a stance on contraception. Opponents often (smugly) question why pro-lifers wouldn’t add their unconditional support to contraceptives in order to reduce unwanted pregnancies, but the issue is really more complicated than that (even ignoring contraceptives that act as abortifacients).
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the [1992] Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade, stated, “in some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”
The Supreme Court decision has made completely unnecessary any efforts to “expose” what is really behind the attachment of the modern age to abortion. As the Supreme Court candidly states, we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles. [emphasis (and link) mine]
The smug assumption that more contraception means less abortion is really a sloppy simplification of the relationship between contraception and abortion. When our society attempts to separate sex from pregnancy, and we organize our sexual relationships based on that assumption, a pregnancy is a failure — one that we aren’t willing to accept — and people often turn to abortion as the “solution.”
But, if people are going to be having sex without an openness to pregnancy anyways, shouldn’t we promote contraception to reduce the chances of unwanted pregnancies? We offer clean needles to drug addicts, even though we don’t want to promote drug use…
This past weekend, Jill Stanek asked her readers the following questions:
Do you agree or disagree that the contraceptive issue is tied to the abortion issue?
Why or why not?
Do you think pro-lifers should accentuate or ignore contraception in our discussion of the sanctity of life?
Check out the conversation in the comments.
Personally, I think Students for Life is right not to take a stance on the issue, so long as we don’t shy away from talking about it. I’m hesitant to bundle ideas, and the relationship between contraception and abortion is complex. Though, we shouldn’t be afraid to address the issue. But there’s room for debate and disagreement.
What do you think?
0 Comments on “What do Pro-Lifers think about contraception?”