In a study of abortion patients in 1994-95 [Alan Guttmacher Inst.], 58% of patients reported that they ‘currently used’ contraception during the month of their last menstrual period…
In 1995… approximately 29% of sexually active U.S. women who used only [OCs] for birth control reported that they missed a birth-control pill one or more times during the 3 months before…approximately 33% of U.S. women who were using only coitus-dependent contraceptive methods during the 3 months before the interview used these methods inconsistently.” [CDC, MMWR, 7June02, “Abortion Surveillance – United States, 1998”]
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Two-thirds of unplanned pregnancies occur among women who described themselves as using birth control, according to a study published in the May 2003 issue of the journal Human Reproduction.
Researchers from the Hospital de Bicetre in France surveyed 2,863 women ages 18 to 44; 1,034 of the women had had an abortion or an unintended pregnancy within the last five years and 1,829 of the women were randomly selected.
Among the women who became pregnant unintentionally, 65 percent reported using contraception.
Among those women, 21 percent reported using birth control pills, 9 percent reported using an intrauterine device, 12 percent reported using condoms, and 23 percent reported using some other method of contraception. However, 60 percent of the women who reported using birth control pills said they had missed one or more pills and 30 percent of IUD users said that device was in the wrong position or fell out.
In addition, more than 50 percent of women who reported using condoms said that the condom tore or fell off during intercourse and 30 percent of regular condom users said that they had not used a condom on the occasion when they became pregnant.
[The Washington Post, 5/5/03]
45.3% of women in Alabama Were Using Birth Control at the time of Conception [Alabama PRAMS 2003]
43.6% of women in Alabama Were Using Birth Control at the time of Conception [Alabama PRAMS 2004]
Effects of Contraception
By Rudolf Ehmann, M.D. [Head Physician of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical Superintendent of Kantonsspital Hospital, Switzerland]
Ethical and Medical Aspects of Contraception and Abortifacients
…Lauded as a blessing on the one hand but cursed on the other, it has brought about the most wide-ranging ideological and social changes.
For the first time in human history, it became possible to separate sex and reproduction to a large extent. This previously private activity now suddenly forced itself into the public arena. The “right” to freely available sex, with the breaking of all previous limits, was demanded. The principle of pleasure took precedence over the biological purpose of sex, namely procreation. In theory, it was the “pornography wave”, coupled with the sexual revolution which set this process in motion; in fact, it was brought about by an “anti-conception mentality”.
As part of this process, something previously unheard of occurred: birth control became an almost wholly medical matter. The doctor, until then the promoter and guardian of life, unexpectedly and initially unwittingly became an accessory to the prevention of life, and thus to an enormous reduction of births, the consequences of which will cause much suffering in the Western world.
“Medicalization” did not come about by chance; the majority of modern contraceptives involve “drugs” in the widest sense: i.e., substances which interfere in a way with the human organism which made the involvement of competent specialists indispensable. The novelty was that, for the first time in medical history, drugs were used on a large scale for other than medical purposes.
It was not difficult to win the physicians over to this purpose; for them and the general public, the slogan “Prevention Is Better Than Abortion” was subtly suggested…
Only a tiny minority realized that this was, in effect, to call up Beelzebub to drive out the devil. For simultaneously, and especially by moral-theologians, the concept of the “lesser evil” was spread far and wide. This concept never failed; it worked very insidiously then, as it does now.
[see related article about the evolution of the medical profession in Nazi Germany]
In addition, almost nobody noticed that virtually at the same time the practice of abortion was systematically and progressively liberalized in all Western countries. This fact alone demonstrates that the pro-contraception lobby could not have been sincere with the “Prevention Is Better Than Abortion” slogan.
It was evident that it was always the same lobby which was involved, namely the population planners (e.g. International Planned Parenthood Federation, The Population Council, etc.)
If prevention had been seriously intended, abortion would not have been fully endorsed and promoted as a remedy for failed contraception.
As we know today, contraception and abortion are closely linked. Not only, as we will see, in respect of their mechanisms, but above all ideologically and psychologically.
Effective contraception seeks to prevent, and it is indeed the child which is to be prevented. This increasingly led to the development of a negative attitude to the child, an attitude which rapidly crystallized into the concept of the child as the enemy.
As it was sex, and thus a dominant human drive which was involved, it was inevitable that it should soon take priority over the child.
Increasingly, the child became an unwanted by-product of sex. When it came into being despite the use of contraception, it was rejected and aborted. The promoters of contraception well knew that no contraceptive device, not even abortifacient pills and IUDs, offered 100% reliability, and that as a last resort only abortion would remain. Thus, abortion became essential to guarantee contraceptives and abortifacient means of birth control, and was therefore promoted at the same time. (1).
We know that in California, 40% of some 500,000 abortions each year are due to the failure of contraception (2). It is also interesting to note that in precisely those countries which accepted modern contraception on a large scale, the abortion figures for the same tine-span do not decrease, but increase massively.
For many, contraception was eventually replaced by abortion through a creeping change in attitude, as demonstrated in Yugoslavia. Finally baby-killing was used as a regular method of birth control by population planners. Thus the majority of doctors fell into [and most remain in] the trap of the infamous “Prevention Is Better Than Abortion” deception.
Bernard Nathanson, M.D. coined the saying: “Verbal engineering always precedes social engineering” in connection with the liberalization of the termination of pregnancy in the Western world. This definition is equally true for pornography as for the slogans “prevention is better than abortion” and “the lesser evil”, and many others…
Furthermore, through this compromising of moral values, and attempt was made to evolve a system of ethics without values. You should not force someone to adopt your opinions even if they are based upon facts. From this stemmed medicine free of values, medicine without ethics…[leads to] permissiveness in medicine. …The doctor simply becomes a biological engineer, a paid functionary rendering a requested service. This can be valid for anything, from cosmetic surgery to contraception, from pre-natal diagnosis and abortion to euthanasia.
What do we owe to the Contraception of the past 30 years?
1) Modern “anti-conception” made possible sexual permissiveness through the separation of sex and reproduction. Sex became the number one consumer good and increasingly took place outside the community of marriage. Among young people, the age at which the first sexual experience took place fell drastically.
2) Abortion could not be stemmed by contraception: “it increased most in those countries with the highest acceptance rate of anti-conception”.
As the ace abortionist Dr. Malcolm Potts already said in 1973: “As people turn to contraception, there will be a rise, not a fall, in the abortion rate…” (3). And again, “No society has controlled its fertility…without recourse to a significant number of abortions. In fact, abortion is often the starting place in the control of fertility.” (4).
Dr. Judith Bury, of the Brook Advisory Centres, stated in 1981: “There is overwhelming evidence that, contrary to what you might expect, the provision of contraception leads to an increase in the abortion rate.” (5)
And so it is and so it will continue to be necessary to safeguard against contraceptive “failures”.
As the acceptability of oral contraceptives (OCs) and the IUDs is relatively low in the industrialized countries, contraception is hardly likely, after 30 years, to improve the situation by providing protection against abortion. Thus the slogan “Prevention is Better Than Abortion” is increasing shown to be a lie.
3) Contraception is the destruction of the moral foundations of the Western world, particularly in the Christian countries. According to WHO, about 50 million surgical abortions are performed annually. In particular, this destroys the morals of the young.
4) Contraception results in the increase of sexually transmitted diseases (venereal disease), especially of the adnexa, due to sexual permissiveness. The consequences of this are increasing female sterility and tubal pregnancies. This leads inevitably to artificial reproduction, i.e., in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, and thus the further separation of reproduction and sex. It should be born in mind that it is the medical community itself, among others, which provides this material through its conduct. (i.e, by the medicalization of contraception).
Medical contraceptives/abortifacients are not medicinal; it is chemical warfare conducted by doctors against the body, mostly women. Thus a huge vicious circle is closed.
The spread of AIDS is the worst form of VD.
OCs are very likely directly involved in the spread by promoting more malignant viral mutations, facilitating infection, and supporting the onset of illness through steroid-like weakening of the immune system.
5) There are other serious medical side-effects, especially from OCs and IUDs.
6) Another devastating effect is the massive population “implosion” in the industrialized nations, which are dwindling and aging. This results in droves of immigrants from the Third World to maintain the standard of living of the industrialized countries. This brings the danger of subversion…
7) Thus has begun the sad ruination of family life and nations in the Third World.
8) Meanwhile, the frantic search for new and more prefect methods of family planning continues as modern contraception is unsatisfactory due to the side-effects and failure rates. These are now available in the form of RU 486 (progesterone antagonist) and Epostane (progesterone synthesis blocker) combined with prostaglandins, which enable medical abortion up to the later stages of pregnancy, thus replacing most of the surgical abortions, which are dangerous in many ways.
There is also the “anti-baby” vaccine (anti-HCG vaccine) soon to come into use, which is also a method of early abortion. Thus the perfected killing of unborn life takes its place in our society, resulting in a veritable holocaust. Thus it could be said that the great tragedy of the turn of the century is the loss of human lives which should be able to seek their own destinies and are prevented from doing so.
The solution to the very confused situation cannot lie in the development of further, more effective, safer contraceptives – even if these really were preventive and not abortive in their mechanism – but in the cessation of sexual permissiveness. A new understanding of human sexuality must be established.
Even the otherwise liberal-minded publishers of the Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey express this by saying: “Multiple partners – promiscuity, if you will – does not make for a good, monogamous marriage. Broken homes make ‘orphans of our children…’ We need…premarital abstinence. As women’s primary physicians, we have the responsibility of at least trying to educate them. The tremendous threat of AIDS [and cervical cancer from HPV] is a good reason for doing so and often affords a good opportunity for patient discussions.” (6)
Especially modern young people must be taught the life-giving sense and purpose of sex. The only course which will do justice to the complete human being in a dignified manner is, in my experience, Natural Family Planning (NFP).
Endnotes
1) Ross, A., Mauldin W. Parker, eds. Berelson on Population (Springer-Verlag, New York Inc.: 1988) pp. 7, 43.
2) International Symposium on Love, Life and Family, Irving, CA, 27 April – 1 May, 1988, personal communication.
3) Report, Cambridge Evening News, 7 February 1973.
4) Malcolm Potts, “Fertility Rights”, The Guardian, 25 April 1979.
5) “Sex Education for Burearcrats”, The Scotsman, 29 June 1981.
6) Beral, V., P. Hannaford, C. Kay, “Oral Contraceptive Use and Malignancies of the Genital Tract: Results from the Royal College of General Practitioners’ Oral Contraception Study”, Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey, 1989, 44, 465.
Rudolf Ehmann, M.D. [Head Physician of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical Superintendent of Kantonsspital Hospital, Switzerland]
For Ehmann’s entire 30-page document, Consequences of Contraception and Abortifiacient Birth Control, with 96 references, contact Human Life International, www.hli.org.