Introduction to Contraception

Catholic high school students asked me some questions on the topic of contraception. Instead of e-mailing them back directly, I'm going to answer their questions here and send them a link to this blog. But before we can even get into their specific questions, I’ve got to get into a very important question that will shed light on my answers... 

Why should we care?

Contraception is a hot button topic for a lot of people – including many Orthodox, Protestants, and Catholics alike. Almost everyone today knows SOMEONE who is using contraception (even if they aren’t sexually active). And often that person is a parent, a sibling, a good friend… or even you, the person reading this. PLEASE do not take this information and use it to condemn others or beat up yourself!

Centuries of inadequate understanding of human sexuality and, in some cases, lies, have resulted in millions of people who can genuinely believe they are doing the right thing by using contraception. I hope you can read this with an open mind, seeking truth – even if it is contrary to what you’ve been taught or the examples you’ve seen in the past. Follow the links; watch the videos; think and pray about all this.

The truth (and examine this – don’t take my word for it!) on the beauty and gift of human sexuality is wonderful! It’s not an easy thing to explain to someone that something they believe to be good (or at least okay) is not what will lead them toward God. I WANT to know it! I want to share it, because it is amazing!

Think for a minute about drinking and driving. Say two friends are out and one gets drunk and doesn’t realize how impaired she is. The sober friend doesn’t want to “interfere” and so won’t tell the drunk friend not to drive. So the drunken friend leaves, gets in an accident, and kills herself and the family in the car she hits. Take the same scenario but with a friend who says “I don’t care how mad you get at me, I’m taking your keys and driving you home!” and they both get home safely. If you’re the intoxicated person – which friend do you want? Which friend do you want to be?

I know the kind of friends I want. On the other side, I know the kind of friend I want to be. Do you?

When we talk about contraception, believe me (at least long enough to read this) that life and death are on the line. Other than just avoiding the negative "consequences" there are beautiful rewards to following God's design for our sexuality. Don't care about God? What about natural law and your body? If you care even about that, please... 

...read on.

I was raised with a very strong understanding that using contraception was not something Catholics were allowed to use. And I didn’t need to think about it too much anyway since it was drilled into me that I would NOT engage in premarital sex. My mom tried to explain a little bit about how natural family planning (NFP) works, but I was so young I had zero interest in learning about tracking cycles and just wanted my mom to stop talking about something so awkward.

Fortunately for me, my parents knew about the physical side effects of the pill (yes, there are side effects even if you aren’t sexually active) and never let doctors put me on it. I was smart in undergrad and made it exceedingly clear that I was not going to sleep with anyone before marriage and I only dated guys who respected that (even if they didn’t agree). So I was never really directly pressured to sleep with a boyfriend or to use contraception to prevent pregnancy. Believe me, I could have changed my mind at any moment and thrown my virginity away - and that temptation was real. I was also exceedingly naive and put myself in situations where I was very lucky that nothing was ever done to me against my will. Anyway, I made it through the marathon of pressures and dangers to my wedding day as a virgin. More on that later. 

As college drew to a close, many of my good Christian friends prepared for their weddings. The girls talked with me very openly about getting their contraceptive prescriptions/devices. In retrospect, I’m not even sure they all discussed it with their fiancés much. It was just “something you did” as part of marriage preparation. Sometimes, knowing Catholics disapprove of contraception, they would ask me what I thought. I lament that I didn’t know any better than to stammer, “oh, well Catholics say you can’t use it – but you’re not Catholic and you’re not going to sleep with your fiancé before marriage, so it’s cool, I guess.” I felt like that was a cop out answer, but I didn't know what else to say and I was very non-confrontational. How I wish I had known more about contraception so I could give them a real answer!

We live in a society where sex is everywhere. It has become what Hollywood preaches makes the end to a good first date. The most recent legit study on Sex on TV I can find is from 2005, but it said that 8-18 yr olds watch an average of 3 hrs a day of TV. Check out how much sexual content that means...

(From Kaiser Family Foundation 2005 Report)

(From Kaiser Family Foundation 2005 Report)

(From Kaiser Family Foundation 2005 Report)

I think this is a modest estimate for teens - assuming 3 hours of TV per day and 6 instances of sexual content per hour, that makes 6,570 instances of exposure to sexual content per year from TV alone, not counting commercials! And I really think that's low... today I think TV has a far greater rate than 6 per hour of sexual content.

The point is, our culture is obsessed with sex. It's like your life is incomplete or something is wrong with you if you aren't sleeping with someone. But at the same time, sex is completely degraded. It's just some means to make you feel good - in the moment. Maybe the next day. Or it's great exercise. Sex as a total self-gift only for marriage that also brings children into the world? How silly.

What does this have to do with contraception? Everything.

The Sex and TV study seems to be very pro-contraception, by the way... but it also said that, on average, only about 14% of shows with sexual responsibility had any reference to "sexual risks and responsibilities." They lump conception into that category. I haven't found a study on this, but I'm willing to bet the majority of television RARELY connects possible conception of a child as a perk of sexual union. In fact, because you're suppose to always use contraception, conception isn't even part of the discussion.

Here is some of the harsh reality of our over-sexed and misguided culture. 

In 2011, the UN estimates that 700,000 to 4 MILLION women and children are trafficked around the world into slavery - primarily sexual slavery EVERY year. That's an estimated $7 billion dollar annual business. (Human Trafficking: Facts & Figures). 

Let's talk about porn for just a second. Look at this crazy illustration I just found... 

From this blog

I'll probably get into why exactly porn is bad and has to do with violations of human dignity in another blog; for now, I'm going to hope that you agree that porn is not a good thing.

How about divorce? It's tough to get completely accurate statistics, but we know the rate is high. In the US - somewhere between 40-50%, depending on how you calculate the rate.

I had a summer college internship with a purity and abstinence until marriage group, Silver Ring Thing. I was learning about all those bad statistics of what's happening in our culture. Think about the prevalence of premarital sex and STD/STIs (from Planned Parenthood itself, over half of all Americans will contract a STI) and abortion (1.21 million reported in the U.S. in 2008)! 

So let's summarize. 

Each year approximately...

• 700,000-4 million women and children are sold into slavery
• 1.21 million reported abortions in the U.S.
• Pornography is a 2.84 billion dollar a year U.S. industry 

 And...

• 40-50% of U.S. marriages end in divorce
• 50%+ of the U.S. population will contract a STD/STI 

All of the pain and suffering and death caused by sexual misconduct and abuse. It's SCARY! I don't want any part of those statistics! I don't know about you, but I want nothing to do with sex trafficking, pornography, or divorce. 

Working with Silver Ring Thing helped me get really excited about abstinence and get a little more psyched up about waiting until marriage. But how to avoid being a statistic? It almost seems unavoidable... or is it?

On the other hand, I heard that there was a particular group that had really low divorce rates - down in the 2-3% variety (I've heard as low as 0.2%), with happy marriages and good communication, very few issues with porn or abuse, and almost no instances of abortion. I don't know about you - but that seemed really appealing to me! 

So I started researching. And it turns out that this group of very counter-cultural people (mostly, but not exclusively Catholic) are the people who follow what the Church teaches, including on one really important and controversial doctrine - contraception. 

After I graduated I went straight into youth ministry and actually researched and learned about the Church’s teachings on contraception and the beauty of God’s design for us! Some great books like Birth Control and Christian Discipleship, The Good News About Sex and Marriage, and various teachings based on Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body revolutionized my understanding. 

See, the people with that crazy low divorce rate, are a group of people who, when they need to postpone pregnancy for good reason, practice natural family planning (NFP) and do not use contraception. Some detractors have said that "Well, of course people who use NFP have lower divorce rates. They're following a church that's against divorce." My response is simple - I don't have a problem with that!! There are some reasons that practicing NFP directly strengthens marriage; see Q&A below on that. 

Okay, so I was out of college, working as a youth minister, and was starting to see why the Church might just be right on this whole "no contraception" thing. I was single at the time, so this still seemed somewhat removed for me.

Then all of this quasi-theoretical study got practical. About four years ago (Spring 2008) I became friends with the man I'd ultimately marry. This is where things get really awesome. We had a great friendship that turned into an awesome courtship, engagement, and marriage. It's not to say there weren't temptations, but we were both fully grounded in Church teaching and LOVED that teaching and that we loved each other far too much for sex before marriage to even be a possibility. There was also no question that our marriage would be open to life. As I write this, my husband is sitting next to me playing with our 5-month old daughter. I wouldn't trade this for anything! 

We've been married for over a year and a half now (April 10, 2010). We've had our ups and downs - but our ups and downs together. Not in problems with each other. There is a great trust between us and with God. So much of that is because of our openness to life! We used NFP to postpone pregnancy for the first few months of our marriage. Once we reached the mark where we were pretty sure my husband's new job was relatively stable (he switched jobs right after we got married) and I would be done with my grad school classes in nine months, we stopped really trying to postpone pregnancy. But even when we weren't sure I'd be able to finish school or that we'd have any decent source of income - we were open to the idea that having a child wouldn't be the end of the world. 

There is a difference between responsible family planning under God's terms and a contraceptive mentality. It may seem subtle, but it is huge! We decided it would be irresponsible to have a child as soon as we got married because of our financial situation and my classes. That justified using natural birth control methods (selective periods of abstinence) for a short period of time - NOT contraception. Important difference... 

The truth is, following Church teaching has freed us and led to unbelievable joy. It's not a bad thing! It's not oppressive. It's great and wonderful! Something I'm learning more and more is that there are great rewards (even though they don't always seem obvious) for following it. 

That's my story. That's why this is an important topic for me.

There are emotional, physical, and social reasons why the currently available forms of contraception are not a good idea. I'm going to go into these as "proofs," if you will, because I doubt you'd be reading this if you fully accepted the Church teaching. I certainly needed them!

But ultimately, contraception is morally wrong (for everyone) because it goes against God's plan as revealed through natural law, Scripture, and tradition. That's why the emotional, physical, and social reasons to not use contraception will never be completely solved. And it's why, while it's good to know about all those reasons, what really matters is why the Church teaches what she does. That leads right to our first question... which I will answer tomorrow.