Being against the pill (and other forms of artificial contraception) is not just for Catholics anymore.At my day job at Benedictine College, we are organizing a symposium to mark the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae featuring Janet Smith and others.
As we prepare for the conference, I have discovered a whole world of people who oppose contraception. Here are some non-religious reasons women are turning against the pill.
First: Women are speaking out about the pill’s side effects.
In a family-unfriendly video from Crack’d called “If Birth Control Commercials Were Honest,” a woman explains what contraception leads to.
“The pill’s great,” she says enthusiastically. “it just has side effects like weight gain, nausea, depression, migraines that could indicate cancer, or a lack of sex drive, so you won’t even get pleasure from sex.”
She goes on to earthily describe what intrauterine devices, implants shots, sponges, diaphrams, rings and patches do, too. She misses one, though …
Second: Contraception’s link to breast cancer has become clear.
As more and more mainstream news sources acknowledge the birth-control-breast cancer link, women are asking why they were not told earlier.
“It’s time to re-evaluate hormonal contraceptives and remind doctors that they should be discussing the risks and benefits of the drugs before prescribing them,” one doctor advised Time magazine.
Third: Contraception’s link with depression is in the news.
Contraception also leads to depression, we know — and writers are increasingly sharing their stories.
To make matters worse, writes Sindha Agha, “I came across the headline ‘Study on male birth control canceled due to slew of side effects.’ Three percent of the male participants had reported depression as a side effect. A biology professor’s quote in The New York Times sank my slowed heart; ‘Twenty percent or 30 percent of the women who take oral birth control pills experience depression and have to take medication for it.’ … Had I been a boy, would they have let me keep my mind?”
Fourth: Contraception has been linked with suicide.
The depression risk, reports Time magazine, includes suicide — as the American Journal of Psychiatry explains.
“The absolute risk of suicide associated with hormonal contraceptives is still extremely low,” said the Time story. But when Danish researchers looked at deaths in their massive study they found that “[a]mong women who used hormonal contraceptives currently or recently, the risk of attempting suicide was nearly double that of women who had never used contraceptives. The risk was triple for suicide.”
Fifth: The big-money agenda behind contraception is clear.
Women are understandably fed up with being used as pawns in an unholy alliance between big government and big business.
“Follow the money seems like good advice, even when it comes to some of these thorny social issues,” Peter Schweizer pointed out in The Daily Beast. Studying the Obama-era contraceptive mandate, he noticed that “President Obama’s biggest financial backers are precisely the Big Pharma companies who benefit from the mandate.”
Sixth: Third-World women are tired of being condescended to.
Too often Western elites want to eliminate poverty by eliminating poor people. African women are sick of being treated as if they — and their families — need to be managed by enlightened Europeans and Americans who know better than them.
Obianuju Ekeocha tirelessly promotes this point. Follow her on Twitter, where you will find this at the top of her page: “I’m an African woman. I don’t need free condoms I don’t need free contraception. I don’t need abortion rights. What I need is education.”
Seventh: The environmental degradation caused by contraception is devastating.
Human contraception making its way from sewers to streams is causing catastrophic harm to fish — including making them become transgender.
Eighth: Women are telling the world about their decision.
So, as a result — and apart from any religious reason — women in sophisticated France and American millennials in Vogue are telling the world that they are done with the pill.
Ninth: Natural forms of family planning are becoming more popular with non-Catholics.
As this UK article makes clear, there is a market for ways to naturally manage family size.
Natural Family Planning is clearly the way to go, as it requires sacrifice from men as well as women — and the sacrifice is temporary.
Someone should have thought of that 50 years ago.
