Contraception: Why Not? (part 14)

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

Slide: Reasons to Condemn Contraception:

The Catholic Church condemns contraception because it is against nature, human nature.  Human nature is complex.  Certainly we are physical creatures and we have an obligation to take care of our physiology.  I made this claim once on TV and the interviewer insisted that the Church doesn’t care about women’s bodies.  I asked where she got that idea?  Today, I’m going provide evidence that contraception harms a woman’s body.  It also harms our psychological nature; it makes women think their fertility is a defect and that, therefore, they are defective.

Human beings are also relational creatures.  We crave love.  We crave both to give love and to receive love.  Such desires are written into the human person.  We want to love and be loved.  The Church teaches that contraception is an impediment to love relationships.

We also, by our very nature, desire to be in relationship with God.  We are by nature spiritual creatures.  We have a yearning to be in a good relationship and in a loving relationship with God.  Contraception is also an obstacle for that relationship since we treat His great gift of fertility as a negative rather than a positive.

Slide: Fertility is a Great Good

Let us consider the effect of contraception on these various levels of nature.

First of all, fertility is a great good.  An adult human being who is fertile is a healthy human being. Those who are infertile are unhealthy.  This slide shows a number of people protesting hormones in food.  A woman shouting at a pro-lifer who is arguing against the abortion pill says to her, “What are you, some kind of nut?”

We live in a culture that is beginning to realize that it’s bad to put chemicals in the air and in the water supply and food.  But women are putting chemicals in their bodies day after day, month after month, year after year, to stop something that’s perfectly healthy.  It simply doesn’t make any sense, especially since women can control their fertility with the very healthy methods of natural family planning.

Slide: Violation of Physical Health

Women who take chemical contraceptives complain of liver troubles, strokes, migraines, high blood pressure, and ovarian cysts.  There are all sorts of bad physical side effects of contraceptives.

Since I’m going to talk mostly about the chemical contraceptives, let me pause for a moment to say a few things about the so-called barrier methods.  First of all, think of how incompatible barriers are with lovemaking.  “I want to make love to you, but I’ve got to get my barrier in place.”  “I’ve got to get my spermicide going.”  “I want to give myself completely, but I’m going to kill your sperm.”  What is loving about that?  Barriers are clearly opposed to an act of real self-giving.  Moreover, semen has within it certain proteins that are beneficial for women; they have a calming and assuring effect on the woman; thus condoms deny women one of the benefits for them from sexual intercourse.

Slide: Common Side Effects

The common side effects of the chemical contraceptives are: increased irritability, increased propensity to depression, weight gain, and a reduced sex drive.  Most women who use chemical contraceptives complain of these side effects.  I’m sure that every woman in this room would like to be taking a pill that makes her more irritable, more prone to depression, helps her gain weight, and contributes to a reduced sex drive.  I’m sure every man in this room wants the woman he’s dealing with to be more irritable, more prone to depression, to gain weight, and have a reduced sex drive.  We have something for you: it’s called the chemical contraceptive.

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