The answer is: that contraception is complicated.
I grew up in an era where there wasn't any question. It was in the air I breathed, so to speak, even in Africa: There's nothing wrong with contraception, especially for poor people. I didn't learn that from my parents (we never actually had the talk and they actually cared about the poor people), but the magazines and newspapers and books were all pretty unanimous. You can figure from that that I didn't hang around with a lot of Catholics or Muslims and that I stayed immersed in US media. For almost all the time Tom and I were the oldest of the kids in our compound, so there were no older teens to learn misinformation from.
The Pill made a big noise, of course, but I wasn't all that interested in the debates. I wasn't married, I was too shy for a girlfriend, and I didn't want kids, and that was that. Which meant, of course, that I didn't think there was anything problematic about contraception.
I eventually met a lady and she married me and said she wanted kids. Um. OK, fine.
Over five children and thirty years later it finally started to sink in how important this was and how valuable children were. A lot of things started to make more sense. Too soon old, too late smart.
Along the way I heard a lot more about the Pill and how it had changed America. Whether the commentator was celebrating or decrying the changes, each agreed with the others that the technology had changed culture. It was easy to see that some of those Sexual Revolution cultural changes had been disasters. But looking back at it now, I'm not quite as convinced as those pundits were that the Pill was the turning point. Several trends converged with the new technology to create a perfect storm.
At any rate, the next step came a few years ago when I decided that our church was failing the youth (and many of the adults) by failing to clearly explain what the faith was about, so I wrote a short book. (They weren't interested.) Part of the book was the history of the church and another was what made the denominations different. I'd read about other denominations before, but this was the first time I was trying to understand them empathetically rather than analytically, so that the kids would see the other sides' positions. (I know, once again too soon old and too late smart.)
The Catholics made a big deal about contraception, and I decided to learn why. There were surprises: In 1930 Anglican bishops decided there were sometimes grounds for using contraception. 60 years later Anglicanism had changed so much that not using contraception was deprecated in all the better circles (bad for the planet you know). Wow.
Another surprise was that the Catholic (and earlier, most denominations') position was more sensible than I thought. I would not have been persuaded had I read about it 30 years before, but I'd learned a few things about sex and children and value since then, and their understanding of sex made more sense.
The key seemed to be openness to life. I agreed that was central.
But.
It did not logically follow that sex always had to be open to the prospect of babies. And in addition, it was not hard to find cases where pregnancy would be very dangerous in one way or another, or there was disease, or where pregnancy could result in crippling problems; some quite close to home.
In consequence I tend to side with those Anglican bishops; at least the first generation of them.
The question that they and I face is how common are those grounds? People are notoriously prone to turning rare excuses into commonplaces, and I’m not immune to the temptation to self-justification. I don't have a clean answer to that, except that I'm pretty sure the extremes are incorrect. With 5 children I suppose we've lived a middle ground on that spectrum.
I'm not sure that was right. Nor am I staying up nights worrying that was wrong. I am worried when I see contraceptive use running to barren extremes around me.
So far I've been considering contraception within marriage.
I gather some unmarried Catholic girls and boys, understanding that premeditation makes a sin worse, would decline to prepare contraception and wind up pregnant. On one hand they are kidding themselves (pretending that flirting with sex isn't premeditation), and on the other they might take advice from Luther and sin boldly and repent thoroughly(*).
I don't want to see contraception pushed as a cure for social ills, and I worry about its moral hazard that encourages non-marital sexual activity. I won't go into why that’s been a disaster.
And the effort to compel people to support contraception against their religion is a serious imposition.
On the other hand, I do not want to see contraception banned either. The technologies (with some abortifacient exceptions) seem to serve legitimate ends.
If by some magic power I could turn back the clock and talk to those Anglican bishops, I don't know how I would advise them.
(*) "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger"
In regards to your first comment, abortion isn't birth control, anyway. While it technically controls birth, it's clearly a different ethical animal than simply not wanting to get pregnant in the first place. In one case there is no fetus and in the other there is.
ReplyDeleteSome call it birth control, but that often seems to be an obfuscation used in pro-choice literature in order to give it extra legitimacy. "You already approve of birth control, therefore we will subsume abortion into that category."
I once heard an interview with an Imam about Islamic medical ethics, and I really liked his phrasing of his take on abortion: abortion should not be used for family planning. It works better in my mind than referencing it as birth control.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think birth control actually has two different uses, and I think they should be approached differently. Basically, is this a medical treatment or is this a medical service?
Pregnancy is natural. This means that birth control is one of the few medications designed not to bring us back to health, but actually to pull us away from normal functioning. I think that has some complexities to it that should get more play in our society.
On the other hand, for some it's really a treatment. My grandmother had a blood disorder that rendered pregnancy extremely difficult. She had 3 live children, 2 post 8 month miscarriages, and 1 child who survived less than 24 hours. She would never admit how many earlier miscarriages she had, but we suspect as many as a dozen. After the last stillbirth, she bled so badly the doctor told them she would die if she ever got pregnant again. Unfortunately, they were Catholic and their priest had been quite clear: no birth control, no sterilization. God must make the call. After assessing the situation, the doctor just did the hysterectomy anyway (it was the 1950s).
I was talking about this with my dad a few months ago. It still stings him that the church would have preferred he be an orphan rather than allow his parents some non procreative sex. It's surreal that one must maintain "openness to life" even in the face of one's own death.
I'd call it sexist, but I'm not sure my grandfather was getting off easy there either. To raise 3 children on your own, having to teach them about a God that supposedly wanted things this way? A God that forced you to turn down available technology that could have saved you?
It's obviously a biased anecdote, but I think it illustrates my point. My grandmother needed birth control/sterilization as a treatment, not as a service. Something had gone wrong that needed to be corrected.
Sixty years later, my circumstances aren't nearly as dire, but I still found myself with two medical conditions...one caused by my pregnancy, the other worsened by it. I've been told both will worsen with all subsequent pregnancies. Neither will push me to imminent death, but both have the potential for serious disability, and my life insurance rates are already much higher than my husband's based on what's already happened.
It's tough trying to think of how much disability you would accept to have a second child. I'm not sure how it will turn out. But I do know that I now believe birth control is a treatment for me...it's preventing something bad from happening.
These stories are not uncommon, and I think those opposing birth control entirely have shot themselves in the foot by not acknowledging them. It's hard to maintain any credibility when your stance is so heartless in so many cases.
If I could talk to the Pope, that's what I'd say. Split the conversation in two. Allow people to prioritize their current children over hypothetical ones. Allow women to make some of their own calls about how much damage they will sustain for another pregnancy. Don't belittle responsible actions by implying it's all for some "consequence free sex".
Off soap box.
I understand very well.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear...the rant wasn't aimed at you. Just my thoughts on the matter. I liked your post.
ReplyDeleteBTW, thanks for updating the research portion of your last post.
Don't forget your sister got pregnant, and after also not getting the talk, still knew a little. She was not going to have premarital sex, hence no contraception. Ok, sex, pregnancy, marriage, eclampsia, termination of pregnancy around 28 weeks to save your sister's life. Overwhelming guilt and sorrow when 5 months later, the baby died. Maybe 2 lives destroyed? Still working on that.
ReplyDelete