Business Insider, a site concerned with financial, media, and tech verticals, has published a piece entitled “Time to Admit It: The Church has Always Been Right on Birth Control,” which the authors acknowledge was inspired by the heated discourse surrounding the HHS mandate, and by their editor’s wishing the Church would eliminate the requirement. While one of the authors was associate editor at The American Conservative, it’s still very surprising to find an article like this published by a thoroughly secular news source.
The authors cite Humanae Vitae, and the four results predicted by Paul VI in the event that widespread contraceptive use was employed: General lowering of moral standards, a rise of infidelity and illegitimacy, the reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men, and government coercion in reproductive matters. That these four results are part and parcel of today’s cultural experience is not hard to argue.
“By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father…In 1960, 5.3% of all births in America were to unmarried women. By 2010, it was 40.8%. Cohabitation has increased tenfold since 1960. And if you don’t think women are being reduced to objects to satisfy men, welcome to the internet, how long have you been here? The idea that widely-available contraception hasn’t led to dramatic societal change, or that this change has been exclusively to the good, is a much sillier notion than anything the Catholic Church teaches.”
If there’s anything about the Church that is most often misunderstood, it is that Church teaching has human happiness and fulfillment in mind. Prohibitive teaching on sexuality is obviously not motivated by anything else: What benefit does the Church glean from such a difficult teaching? When Paul VI predicted the social decay that would result from widespread contraceptive use, it was not an alarmist crank engaging in authoritarian fear-tactics. It was someone hoping happiness for humans.
February 9th, 2012 | 11:00 am
The war between God and evil has always been a war between long-term well-being vs. short term temptations.
All the moral calculations tend to support the notion that temptation is reasonable, logical, and rational – if one ignores (or neglects to tally) the consequences and focuses only on the next half hour.
February 9th, 2012 | 11:26 am
In 1960, 5.3% of all births in America were to unmarried women. By 2010, it was 40.8%.
Yet, not surprisingly, births to unmarried women are most common in those demographics that are much less likely to use contraception (especially minorities and those without any college education).
If you want to reintroduce the social institution of the shotgun marriage, go ahead. It’s not clear how telling people not to use contraception will lead to fewer single mothers among people who are not inclined to use it in the first place, though.
February 9th, 2012 | 11:53 am
What about the idea that the changes haven’t been exclusively bad?
February 9th, 2012 | 11:56 am
Mark
And yet it seemed to work for “those demographics that are much less likely to use contraception (especially minorities and those without any college education)” before.
Shotgun marriages are not advisable or desirable, two of the factors that make them a good deterrent to uncommited sex outside marriage.
February 9th, 2012 | 12:05 pm
So Mark, we should start blaming the victims? Besides, your comment completely misses the change. What caused the change? Clearly, non-availability of contraceptives is not the problem as out-of-wedlock children correlates to availability, as the pope predicted no less. I imagine you would call that a lucky guess, I suppose.
BTW, I’ve never before heard shot-gun marriage used as a straw man. Points to you for that.
February 9th, 2012 | 12:50 pm
“So Mark, we should start blaming the victims?”
What “victims”? I made the rather uncontroversial point that women who get pregnant outside of marriage are disproportionately likely to not be using contraceptives or to have partners who don’t use them. Do you care to cite any evidence against my proposition?
“Clearly, non-availability of contraceptives is not the problem as out-of-wedlock children correlates to availability, as the pope predicted no less. I imagine you would call that a lucky guess, I suppose.”
A lot of things happened at the same time one of which, as I hinted at, was the declining lack of social pressure on a man to marry a woman he impregnated. It is not as if impregnating a woman before marriage was somehow unprecedented before the 1960s. Historians have long noticed that a fair number of marriages happened less than nine months before the bride gave birth. The proportion of such marriages and how they varied over time is an interesting question.
February 9th, 2012 | 1:46 pm
Yet, not surprisingly, births to unmarried women are most common in those demographics that are much less likely to use contraception (especially minorities and those without any college education).
So explain why China keeps growing, despite its one-child policy?
If “birth control” works – and, one assumes, heavy handed government coerced is better than voluntary – then how come there were more, rather than fewer, unplanned or “unwanted” births than there in 1953? Or 1958? Or 1962? Or virtually any year you choose, prior to the so-called “sexual revolution”?
February 9th, 2012 | 1:48 pm
Like virtually all things classed as “sin”, what looks harmless enough when one looks at a single, isolated fact, turns out to be very different if one is capable of seeing its place in the larger interrelated context of the real world, where everything is complex and every reality interacts with every other reality.
February 9th, 2012 | 2:10 pm
If you asked someone their thinking behind how they raised their children, gave advice to their friends, or ran their business, and they said, “Well I pretty much just say ‘do whatever feels good,’ because no one can know any better,” most people I think would agree that such a person needs to grow up and probably shouldn’t be put in a position of any great responsibility. But when the Church does “due diligence” in holding to moral teachings that are responsible and cautionary, people dismiss these teachings as outmoded, reactionary, etc. I wonder why that is? Perhaps we have become so accustomed to flattering advertising (you deserve it!) that even subtle calls to mild self-discipline sound very grating to the ear.
February 9th, 2012 | 2:26 pm
If “birth control” works – and, one assumes, heavy handed government coerced is better than voluntary – then how come there were more, rather than fewer, unplanned or “unwanted” births than there in 1953? Or 1958? Or 1962? Or virtually any year you choose, prior to the so-called “sexual revolution”?
Blake,
How do you explain that the birth rate and the abortion rate in the United States has been falling for decades? The abortion rate has been falling since the early 1990s, and the birth rate has been falling even longer.
February 9th, 2012 | 4:02 pm
The birth rate has been falling since 1820, on a snakey sine-wave riding a decaying exponential. This is most obvious since the early 1900s, when annual data became available (versus the decennial Census data for earlier periods). Presumably, the birth rates fell after 1919 because birth control and the Pill became suddenly available, and then rose again from the 1930s to the 1950s because they were abruptly outlawed and “shotgun weddings” were all the rage.
February 9th, 2012 | 5:54 pm
Blake,
How do you explain that the birth rate and the abortion rate in the United States has been falling for decades? The abortion rate has been falling since the early 1990s, and the birth rate has been falling even longer.
Please distinguish between “wanted” and “unwanted” births.
Also please distinguish between children whose parents (both of them) are willing, able, and prepared to care for them, vs. those who are not.
There goes your question.
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