Does contraception increase out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion rates?

Question

http://forums.christiansunite.com/index.php?topic=14313.0
I read there that it does. What do you think?
Is the distribution of birth control demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness?

Answer 1

Absolutely. Contraception encourages pre-marital sex. Pre-marital and contraceptive sex teaches those who engage in it instant gratification. Those who wait until marriage AND learn to wait until the infertile times of the month learn the virtue of self-mastery--they do not become slaves to their own will and desires, but overcome it with patience, forebearance and true love (willing the good of the other person). The same can be said for contraception.
Birth control deliberately attempts to make that which is healthy in men and women (namely, their fertility) and make it not work as God intended it. What happens then? Women, in particular, become "sexually available" to their husbands. The act of intercourse, over time, becomes less of an act of love and self-giving to become an act of personal gratification and mutual masterbation. And when birth control fails, this creates a situation in which a baby--a new life willed by God Himself (which would otherwise have been wanted and willed by the parents as well) is looked upon as an undesireable byproduct of their sexual act. How sad! Even husbands now have children for whom they do not want to care for and provide!!!! And yet this is the husband's vocation in his life--to love his family as God loves the church (Ephesians 5)!!!! This type of selfishness kills love--for the man and the woman AND the children. That is why married couples which contracept have a 50% divorce rate, whereas couples that do not contracept have a 2% divorce rate. That's right, 98% of couples that avoid contraception in their marriage remain together for life as God intended it (Matthew 19:4-9). And that is just the couples that married in the first place. Artificial birth control, by attempting to remove the most natural consequence from sexual intercourse--children--removes the need that people used to feel to get married before engaging in sex. But, you might say, some people always fornicated before marriage--that is true, but in the 40's and 50's prior to the advent of the pill, sexual intercourse was almost always ALWAYS followed by marriage in the such cases, and almost without exception, it always followed pregnancy for sure. Now, babies that may even be wanted by the moms are being aborted because the moms cannot afford to take care of them by themselves. The dads are usually not around, and if they are, those couples which abort are drastically more likely to break up than those who carry to term (for raising the child or for giving the baby up for adoption). (http://www.afterabortion.org/QA.html).
There is a better way--and I am NOT talking about the rhytmn method (which is very ineffective by the way). It's called Natural Family Planning or NFP. My husband and I practiced it to avoid pregnancy for the first 9 months of marriage, and then we used to concieve our first baby and got pregnant on the first try! Basically, it is tracking a woman's body temperature and other signs of fertility to be able to tell when the woman is fertile--and then avoiding or having sex during those days (depending on whether or not one wants to avoid or achieve pregnancy). I am including some links below for more information on NFP if you are interested--and some on the dangers of other methods of birth control. It works for anyone--breastfeeding, menopausel and even women with irregular periods and it is 98% effective at avoiding pregnancy when partners learn the method from liscensed teachers. Also, it introduces no chemicals or unnatural agents into the man's or woman's body and consequently has none of the medical risks associated with other methods--what loving husband would want his wife to do that to her body anyway? especially just so that he can "have" her whenever he wants? The Bible shows us time and time again what good things come to those who wait (Sarah, Hannah, Isralites in Egypt...etc). How true this is for couples who practice NFP!!!!
Thanks for reading and God Bless!

P.S. I mentioned a lot of the negative side effects of artificial birth control, but I didn't even allude to the negative long-term health effects that chemical forms of bc can have (like the pill, the shot, the patch...etc) Here's an excerpt from Dr. Janet Smith's talk on "Contraception: Why Not" Very revealing if you ask me!

There’s a wonderful book out by Dr. Ellen Grant called The Bitter Pill. She was very much in on distributing contraceptives in the 60’s in London, but she saw woman after woman coming in with different pathologies that she found were Pill-related—high blood pressure, blood clots, cysts in the breast, all sorts of things, lumps in the breast. So she said, “I’m not going to prescribe these anymore.” She looked into this, and she discovered that when they were first testing for the Pill, they were trying to find a male contraceptive pill and a female contraceptive pill. And in the first study group of males, they found that there was some slight shrinkage in the testicles of one male, so they stopped all testing of the male contraceptive pill. You might notice that there is no such thing. In the first study group of females, three females died, and they just readjusted the dosage. Now, I don’t know what that tells you, but it tells me that there’s something sinister going on here. Women are still dying from the Pill.

Answer 2

I dont think it does at all. In fact if you look at statistics in Europe, where contraception is readily available, their rate of teenage pregnancy is a fraction of ours.

As far as contraception being degrading to women, I totally disagree. I think that some men, particularly in some religious traditions are threatened by the idea of women being able to express their sexuality freely. I also think these same men would keep women from having power in the work place, politics and other areas of life.

Answer 3

yeah, whatever