Contraception: Why Not? (part 5)

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.

Slide: Contraception Contribution?

What do you think has contributed the most good to our culture in the last half century?  Contraception, cars, computers, iPods, cell phones?   We cannot imagine ourselves without cars, computers, iPods, or contraceptives.  We have become totally a contraceptive culture. If right now all contraceptives were taken off the shelves we’d hear the screeching of brakes all over the place because many people would not to what they were about to do, if they did not have access to a contraceptive.

Slide: Early Predictions

We’ve become a culture that’s been defined by contraceptive sex.  People hardly know anything else now.  The contraceptive pill was not developed until the late 1950’s.  Up until that point there was the condom, the diaphragm, and douches – some using Lysol.  In the late 1950’s, the contraceptive pill was developed, put on the market and people thought it was going to be – in fact they still think it is going to be — the salvation of mankind.  It would control the population crisis.  It would reduce the number of unwed pregnancies and abortions.  (We all know that that hasn’t happened.)  And we thought it was going to improve marriages.

I’m going to make an argument that as a matter of fact rather than doing a great deal of good, I think contraception has been very damaging to our culture.

Slide: Teen Sex Practices

Some people want to keep throwing more and more contraceptives at teenagers.  They think that somehow this will stop them from getting pregnant.  But all the evidence suggests otherwise.  In 2003, 62 percent of 12^th graders had had sexual intercourse.  Of course, there’s a significantly higher percent who have engaged in sexually activity  — the sort that President Clinton introduced into popular culture.  I recently read that 70 percent of kids having left high school claim to have engaged in oral sex.  The data about teen sexual experiences other than intercourse are more limited.  In 1995, 53 percent of teen males ages 15-19 said they have been masturbated by a female.  A full 49 percent had received oral sex, 39 percent had given oral sex, and 11 percent had engaged in anal sex.

Slide: Sexually Transmitted Diseases

There are three million new cases of Chlamydia every year, a major cause of infertility in the United States.  Chlamydia is very much connected with a growing problem with infertility.  Not so long ago, about 10 percent of couples were infertile; now more than 15 percent of couples are infertile.  The major cause of the increase in infertility is sexually transmitted diseases.  Often when a woman gets a sexually transmitted disease, she gets a lesion.  When that lesion heals there is scarring.  Scarring in the fallopian tubes causes the embryo to implant in the tube rather than travel to the uterus.  You might have noticed that there is a huge increase in ectopic pregnancies, more than 600 percent since 1970.  Ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition.  The embryo cannot possibly come to term in the fallopian tube and if it continues to grow, it can cause the tube to rupture and the woman could bleed to death.

Another major STD is the human pampilloma virus (HPV); there are between 5.5 and 6 million new cases every year.  The HPV is a major cause of cervical cancer.  A vaccine for the HPV has been discovered, but it doesn’t protect against all forms of the HPV.

The incidence of the HIV that causes AIDS is much lower than all the others – there are many fewer than 100,000 new cases each year.  But that is where a disproportionate amount of the money for research is going.

Fifty years ago there were only two sexually transmitted diseases: syphilis and gonorrhea.  Now there are about 35 to 50 different sexually transmitted diseases.

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