This article originally appeared on 8/2/2016.
By Judie Brown
Many times as I have debated, or spoken before a large audience, or done a radio interview, I have pointed out that American Life League is opposed to all artificial contraception. We favor only natural methods of spacing the births of children.
Even in a pro-life audience, the critics will rise and scold me, stating that I damage our cause by making a connection between contraception and abortion. I’ve heard that we will never “win” as long as people like me keep making such foolish statements.
After over 40 years of killing through surgical abortion, chemical abortion such as the pill, and medical abortions such as those caused by RU-486 (mifepristone), can there be any doubt that there is a link between contraception and abortion? The answer is no.
This is why I am elated to know that Professor Janet Smith thinks so too. As she wrote in “The Connection between Contraception and Abortion”:
The connection between contraception and abortion is primarily this: contraception facilitates the kind of relationships and even the kind of attitudes and moral characters that are likely to lead to abortion. The contraceptive mentality treats sexual intercourse as though it had little natural connection with babies; it thinks of babies as an “accident” of intercourse, as an unwelcome intrusion into a sexual relationship, as a burden. The sexual revolution has no fondness—no room for—the connection between sexual intercourse and babies. The sexual revolution simply was not possible until reliable contraceptives were available.
Far from being a check to the sexual revolution, contraception is the fuel that facilitated the beginning of the sexual revolution and enables it to continue to rage.
One might go so far as to say that it rages even where there is absolutely no interest in it, such as among the kindergarten students in New York City who were exploring their “private parts” while in the classroom, and reportedly while the teacher was not looking. Of course the school attempted to blame it on the children, but really?
If we cannot see the connection between contraception and abortion, then, God forbid, another 40 plus years may go by and millions more die while the pro-life movement tries to get it right.
The abortionists argue, “If you pro-lifers really wanted to stop abortion, you’d join us in finding new and better methods of contraception.”
No! Again, I quote Professor Smith, who explains why the promoters of abortion and contraception place such an incredible emphasis on the word “freedom” and why they are so quick to try to pull us into the quicksand with them.
They are emphasizing “not on the true freedom we all desire, the freedom to be able to pursue what is good and true, but on a kind of freedom that more closely resembles license—the freedom to do whatever one wants, regardless of what is good and true. We want to be free not to discover what is good and true, but to be free to define what is good and true.”
That is the key. The contraceptive promoters realize that a baby is a possible outcome of sexual intercourse, but they reject that as an acceptable outcome. Therefore they manipulate the language to prevent the average citizen from remembering what we already know—that a baby might result if we follow God’s plan and not theirs. Perhaps this is why “reproductive freedom” and “reproductive rights” always go hand in hand with the “woman’s right to choose” and her “freedom of choice.”
Pro-lifers must see the connection between contraception and abortion. And we must talk about it, point it out, and teach others the truth. Why? Because as long as those who favor unbridled sexuality are in control, and as long as we are doing a semantics dance to avoid reality, they win. With RU486 and other medical abortion agents, plus the various forms of contraception that can kill preborn child, we no longer dare sit back and say, “We are against abortion, but we take no position on contraception.”
To say that means that we too prefer new definitions instead of discovering the truth.
The deadly connection is clear and so is our obligation to say so.
