Guest commentary by Marie Hahnenberg
I have met many wonderful people while heading up American Life League’s Pill Kills project . And I continually hear one thing from the women and men on the front lines at our protests against the birth control pill: the need for more education about these deadly pills and about the theft of women’s dignity because of the contraceptive mentality.
As we continue to expose the true nature of the birth control pill, people are becoming aware of the tragic outcome of the acceptance of this dangerous poison. Not only has the pill caused many deaths, it has led to abortion as a “remedy” for all problems, and it has resulted in the disintegration of the dignity of women.
What women thought would liberate them back in the 1960s and ‘70s has brought untold harm to women, children and families all over the world. The decriminalization of the birth control pill (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965) led to the decriminalization of abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973) under the guise of the “penumbra” or shadow of a right to privacy that the Supreme Court claimed to be in the U.S. Constitution.
As was predicted by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, great turmoil and disrespect for human sexuality and human life has emerged as a result of society’s acceptance of artificial birth control. Below, Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, explains the four prophesies addressed in Humanae Vitae:
• Contraception would lead to “conjugal infidelity and a general lowering of morality.
• Contraception would lead men to cease respecting women in their totality and would cause them to treat women as “mere instruments of selfish enjoyment” rather than as cherished partners.
• Massive acceptance of contraception by couples would lead to a massive imposition of contraception by unscrupulous governments.
• Contraception would lead man to feel that he can exercise a limitless “domination over his own body and its functions.”
Due to the contraceptive mentality that is prevalent in our society today, families are not staying together, young boys and men are becoming addicted to pornography, babies are viewed as commodities that can be disposed of at will and sex, to many, is just another extracurricular activity. Turning contraception and child killing into a “right” pits mother against child and inevitably leads to the degradation of women and the disintegration of womanhood.
The true dignity of being a woman is a great gift from God, one that many people today are forgetting. Women, after all, have the gift to bring new life into the world via the safe haven of the womb where newly conceived babies are intended to peacefully and safely grow and develop until the time of delivery.
Currently in the United States, over 1,200,000 babies are brutally ripped from the womb each year. And one out of every four abortions is committed in a Planned Parenthood facility. With every child it kills and every birth control prescription it fills, Planned Parenthood is robbing these poor women of their dignity.
This complete disrespect for women seeps into everything Planned Parenthood does. In early March, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards sent a fundraising e-mail that exemplifies how Planned Parenthood uses the suffering of a poor pregnant mother with cancer to line her organization’s pockets:
Today I want to share just one story from Nicaragua. Amalia is the mother of a 10-year-old girl and is pregnant. Ten weeks into her pregnancy, Amalia was diagnosed with an aggressively spreading cancer.
Situations like this are heartbreaking, but in Nicaragua, Amalia's situation is desperate. Because treating her cancer would require terminating the pregnancy, Nicaragua's total ban on abortion means that Amalia and her doctors can't fight her cancer.
Instead, Amalia is left to fight the law with what time she has left, and her daughter faces the prospect of growing up motherless. All because the country's leadership legislated away a woman's right to make her own decisions.
Planned Parenthood's international programs work to protect the health and rights of women like Amalia every day in countries around the world—and we need your help to do it.
So let me get this straight: Planned Parenthood is asking for money to “protect the health and rights of women like Amalia” instead of finding a physician who will do his best to save both mother and baby? Planned Parenthood continues its attempt to brainwash vulnerable people into believing that abortion is a “health right” and something that every woman deserves.
Why not instead give women the respect and help they need to fulfill their mission as mothers? There is not one woman in this entire world who needs to have an abortion. Talk to the mothers who have suffered over the years because they thought they needed an abortion. Talk to the women who are filing lawsuits against Bayer HealthCare because its Yaz birth control pill has caused blood clots and pulmonary embolisms. Talk to the families of the women who have died because of taking the pill or having an abortion.
If a mother has a deadly disease and is pregnant, the doctor should follow the ethical standard of care that has been followed through the ages: Do everything he can to save both the life of the mother and the child. The doctor should not pick and choose. He should never kill one person to save the other. It is the job of the physician to do everything possible to save both persons. Help is available and it is possible to save both lives.
Take, for example, the story of a mother named Nereyda and her preborn baby Angel Jesus. Nereyda’s insurance company had been pressuring her and telling her that she needed to abort her five-month-old preborn child or it would not treat her serious stage-four sarcoma cancer. Nereyda and her husband did not want to have an abortion and, with the help of a pro-life counselor, were able to draft a health care directive that protected their preborn child. Nereyda also found alternative treatment for her cancer and delivered her child three months after doctors told her that she only had two months to live.
Do not believe in the lie that abortion is the only answer. It is never the answer. Do not believe Planned Parenthood or other pro-abortion organizations that tell you that you need to have an abortion. A woman’s womb is supposed to be one of the safest places on earth and yet is one of the most invaded, defiled and deadly places, thanks to organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, that relentlessly hawk contraception, then stalk and kill innocent preborn human beings via abortion.
May we, for our part, do all that we can to expose and defeat the contraceptive mentality and its progeny, the abortion industry, as we proclaim the true dignity of each woman and her preborn child, each made in the image and likeness of God.
Marie Hahnenberg is the director of American Life League’s Pill Kills project. Visit www.ThePillKills.com or e-mail "> // .