Contraception and Pork
by Dr. John Bruchalski
The Arlington Catholic Herald,
January 29 - February 4, 2009
Reprinted with permission
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Ever
since Margaret Sanger, the foundress of Planned Parenthood, first began to
promote the the eugenic use of contraceptive birth control to prevent the
"unfit" from reproducing, it has been a popular opinion that contraception is
beneficial for society as a whole.
I held
that opinion once. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's recent comments
defending the addition of funding for birth control into our desperately needed
economic stimulus package on ABC's "This Week" last Sunday sounds similar:
"contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."
For Catholics who support Pelosi's opinion, consider the following facts."
* New York City is a haven for free contraceptives, a model for the nation, and yet has an abortion rate that is three times the national average.
* The Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, reports that 89 percent of reproductive-age women are "at risk" of becoming pregnant when using contraceptives; 9 percent of women using contraceptives will become pregnant within a year of regular use, and 54 percent of women who seek abortion as a solution to the problem of being with child were using contraception the month they became pregnant.
* After 40 years of pumping hormones into our bodies to suppress a natural bodily function, fertility, we are beginning to look for healthier, "greener" approaches to our family planning because of the myriad and common side effects such as weight gain, migraines, bloating and depression that often force us to change our contraceptive choices. We want and deserve, and are demanding better options.
* So many of us have been hurt through divorce and depression. Not only has the rise in the divorce rate paralleled the rise in the popularity of contraceptive use in our nation, but the increase in the diagnoses of sexually transmitted diseases, the use of antidepressants and the increase in middle school children engaging in sex have followed this trend also. We are not a healthier people, nor are we happier families, since we have adopted a contraceptive mentality.
Taking her talking points from the caustically anti-Catholic Planned Parenthood playbook, Speaker Pelosi and many of us have swallowed this lie that contraception will decrease abortions and cost while increasing our happiness on this earth.
I lived it. I tried it. I believed it ... once. Never again. As Catholics, we need conversation about our teachings, our conscience and our dissent.
We are in the midst of the greatest economic challenge ever in our nation's history and the most significant moral challenge in the history of our Church. Speaker Pelosi wants to bail out Planned Parenthood. This is more than "pork" for one of her pet projects; it is a concerted effort to slide controversial policies and funding into an enormous bill and count on the silence of the Catholic Church, just as the early architects of abortion rights did in the 1960's.
I for one believe - never again. There has been too much pain and suffering of the health of us and our families.
Rome is burning and Speaker Pelosi is not only fiddling, but pouring gasoline on the fire and telling us that too many people are the real problem. There are too many of us, and not enough to go around. As she proudly has spoken on her vocation as wife, mother and grandmother, as many of us have done, I wonder which grandchild, which child, which niece or nephew would she do away with, or forget about?
From the child's point of view, that distinction makes a really big difference. Could children's overall psychological health be deteriorating over the last generation because they intrinsically now know they are only here on earth because they were contraceptive failures and abortion survivors?
Pelosi has tipped the hand of her agenda and the "change" we should expect from this Congress and this administration. Funding international abortions to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars on a Friday night without ceremony, or funding Planned Parenthood in a stimulus bill, are steps toward the Freedom of Choice Act where, for us Catholic health care workers, there is no freedom and no choice. As Catholics, now is the time for transparency, conversation on contraception and conversion.
While the world goes green, we continue to pollute women with chemicals we do not want in our food. We all should pray and hope and work for a world where Pelosi's children and ours are welcomed as "gifts" and not unwanted as "mistakes."