All forms of birth control are immoral, according to many Christian conservatives. We’ve previously written about this absurd position here and here. The Chicago Tribune recently reported on a formal conservative effort to prohibit all forms of birth control:
Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement’s success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it’s time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.
Their voices were raised in Rosemont on Friday and Saturday at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.
If immorality is not a good enough reason to ban all birth control, check out the “logic” of this argument:
“I think it’s great that more pro-life people are finally speaking up about it,” said Helen Mazur, 27, who flew in from Philadelphia with her husband for the conference . . . “It’s always been a touchy subject, but you have to stand strong on your beliefs. Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world,” Mazur said.
What??
I’m often asked for real life examples of how religious beliefs threaten society. This is a good example. Some might write these people off as an irrelevant fringe, but the views they voice are held by millions. These same views underlie the oftentimes successful efforts to invite individual pharmacists to deny birth control to pharmacy customers. See here and here.
As I’ve set forth previously, banning all birth control (other than the totally ineffective guessing game known as “natural family planning) is the focus of many, if not all, of the dozens of pregnancy resource centers that dot the country.
I can assure you that these pregnancy resource centers have the ear of government, at least in Missouri, where I live. Two months ago, Missouri Governor Matt Blunt signed a bill inviting Missouri citizens to take a tax credit (we’re not talking about a deduction, but a credit, which is a write-off of one’s tax bill) of up to $25,000 for donations to these outlandishly fraudulent organizations (in the bill they are called “Pregnancy Crisis Centers”).
Just connect the dots, then. Just follow the admonitions of “fringe” goups to the passage of laws that use tax dollars to support organizations that do their best 1) to present themselves to be medical centers when they aren’t and 2) to actively work to prohibit all forms of effective birth control. Then top it off by denying abortions to those who are not attempting to have babies, then cut Medicaid to those same people as they struggle to survive.
Told ya. The issue is sex, not babies. The thing is, though, when talking to someone like this, there are two questions to ask, in this order: How long have you been married? How many children do you have? If the average is greater than 2 to 1–one child for every two years of marriage–then the final question is: where are the rest?
Then step back and watch the thermometer boil over. It's always someone else's choice they target, not their own.
There are six plus billion people on the planet. Plunging birth rates? Give us more!
Because the world is all the better with more unwanted children and bad parents out there, apparently? Pffft. The reasoning of the pro-life movement here is mind-boggling.