Holy Publicity, Batman!
— Posted by John (September 25, 2006 at 9:39 am)
The Pro-Life Action League’s “Contraception Is Not the Answer” conference was a huge success!
What’s more, an article on the conference was prominently featured in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune.
On the whole, we found the article to be fairly balanced. It does contains a few misleading points, though; we plan to address those in a separate post.
For now, here’s the article, without further comment:
Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement’s success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it’s time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.
Their voices were raised in Rosemont on Friday and Saturday at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.
“Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else,” Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion veteran whose Pro-Life Action League sponsored the conference, said in an interview.
No one knows how many supporters Scheidler and his colleagues have, but conservative leaders are watching to see if the anti-contraception rhetoric gains traction.
Of special interest is how closely evangelical Christians are willing to align themselves with traditional Catholics on the issue. The Catholic Church long has opposed contraception, but evangelicals generally embraced its use–until recently, some argue.
“It is clear there is a major rethinking going on among evangelicals on this issue, especially among young people” disenchanted with the sexual revolution, said Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “There is a real push back against the contraceptive culture now.”
Whether or not Mohler is right about young people, the sympathetic sentiments of a key leader in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination adds fuel to the debate.
New strategy
“I think it’s great that more pro-life people are finally speaking up about it,” said Helen Mazur, 27, who flew in from Philadelphia with her husband for the conference, called “Contraception is Not the Answer.”
“It’s always been a touchy subject, but you have to stand strong on your beliefs. Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world,” Mazur said.
“It’s new to some aspects of the pro-life world, and it’s old news in other parts of the pro-life world. It’s just beginning to be embraced more fully by the whole pro-life world,” said Mary Turner, 42, of La Crosse, Wis.
That possibility alarms abortion-rights advocates, who warn that birth control, taken for granted by millions of women, could become a battleground.
“You would think that the pro-life community would agree that the best way to reduce abortion is to reduce unintended pregnancies, and the best way to do that is make sure contraception is widely available,” said Larry Finer of the Guttmacher Institute, a public policy group.
“But clearly, that is not the case. Instead, we see groups extending their traditional position on abortion into the realm of contraception.”
Ted Miller of the advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America thinks a series of legislative battles lie ahead.
“The same strategy that anti-choice groups have used to undermine the right to abortion, they’re going to use to try to restrict access to birth control,” he said. “But this time I think they’re over-reaching. The public isn’t going to buy this.”
Unlike abortion, birth control is part of the daily lives of most women of childbearing age in America. A stunning 98 percent of women 15 to 44 who have had sex report using at least one method of contraception; almost 40 million women of that age use birth control, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Meanwhile, 91 percent of Americans agreed that couples should “have access to birth-control options” in a new Harris Interactive poll of 1,001 likely voters, conducted in July.
“You’re going to tell women they can’t try to prevent unwanted pregnancies, they can’t take steps to make sure they’re economically and emotionally ready to have a child? No way,” said Kirsten Moore, president of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project.
What’s more likely, experts suggest, is an ongoing “chipping away” at access to contraceptive services. This could entail cuts to federal programs that pay for birth control.
Likely it also would involve a state-by-state push to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions for reasons of “conscience.”
Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, opened Saturday’s session with a clear tactical agenda for the budding movement: “It’s time to get serious about denying Planned Parenthood funding for birth control or sex education and abortion. We need to hold them accountable for this contraceptive welfare. We have to work very carefully to keep that sword away from Planned Parenthood.”
‘Chemical attack’
Euteneuer believes a single argument holds the greatest potential for changing how the anti-abortion community thinks about birth control.
“Chemical contraception doesn’t prevent abortions, it causes abortion,” he said in an interview. “If we believe life begins at the moment of conception, we have to defend it against [this] chemical attack.”
Euteneuer was referring to the possibility that hormonal birth control, including the pill, the patch, injections and some IUDs, might prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a womb. Scientific evidence suggests that this occurs infrequently, if at all, and that birth control works primarily by preventing a woman from ovulating.
But there is no way to prove that interference with implantation doesn’t occur, which disturbs anti-abortion supporters.
“We can’t say it’s true, and we can’t say it’s not true, because there is no test for fertilization” and therefore no opportunity to study the question in humans, said James Trussell, director of Princeton University’s Office of Population Research.
Another line of argument against contraception, that it harms relationships between men and women, is advanced by Janet Smith, professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
“When people use contraception, they’re not asking themselves, do I want a lifetime relationship with this person or would this person be a good parent,” Smith explains. “They’re simply hooking up, typically because of sex, and sliding into marriage.”
The result, Smith says, is disappointment and divorce.
Damon Clarke Owens, another speaker and president of New Jersey Natural Family Planning, believes contraception changes sex from a “unconditional gift of self” to a conditional act that turns away from “God’s gift of children.”
“If the sex act has nothing to do with a child, then what happens if contraception fails?” he asked. “Abortion becomes a backup for failed contraception, another way of getting rid of the unwanted and devalued child.”
What this boils down to is a case for “women and men having sex only within marriage and only for the purpose of procreation,” said Steve Trombley, president of Planned Parenthood of Chicago, and “I don’t think that’s sellable in any corner of America.”
Internal dispute
Even within the anti-abortion movement, however, there is disagreement over making contraception an ideological and political target.
Although good statistics don’t exist, such an overwhelming portion of women uses birth control, it’s likely many who oppose abortion are among their number. Anti-abortion organizations have long adhered to a disciplined strategy of making abortion their exclusive focus to maximize the potential for political success.
Dr. John Willke, who heads the International Right to Life Federation and the Life Issues Institute in Cincinnati, sees peril in the attempt to shift the movement’s strategy.
“I’m here to stop abortions… and we’re coming close to winning on this issue,” he said. “If we take up an anti-contraception agenda, we won’t win the abortion fight in the foreseeable future.”
But Scheidler is anxious to take advantage of the anti-abortion movement’s successes.
“We’ve been trained to steer clear of discussing contraception, as if it were a distraction,” he said. “I’m tired of this `Don’t get off the subject’ mentality. Contraception is the subject.”
“It’s not just a side issue from pro-life, it’s the core issue,” Libby Gray Macke, director of Project Reality, an abstinence program in Illinois, told the crowd Friday evening. “Abstinence is the way to prevent abortion.”
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ausblog says:
I’m pro-life always have been. World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is anywhere between 20 and 88 million.
3,500 per day / 1.3 million per year in America alone. 50% of that 1.3 million claimed failed birth control was to blame. A further 48% had failed to use any birth control at all. That leaves 2%that had medical reasons. That means a stagering 98% may have been avoided had an effective birth control been used.
At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existance. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.
Comment posted September 25th, 2006 at 10:13 am
mary kay says:
…and the only “effective” proven method of birth control?
C’mon, everybody…
Abstinence!!!!!!
What that really means is that a staggering 98% of couples who copulated did so without considering the consequences…and ended up pregnant. Taking responsibility for one’s actions, something lacking in our culture, is the way to avoid abortion. and contraception. It’s simple. If you don’t want to be a parent, keep your clothes on…married or not…it’s the only thing that works and still keeps you in the “BIG” game. And with God as the Ump, I can tell you it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “You’re Out!” He makes the rules and to have the privelege of playing with the Big Guy, you better follow them. Being allowed to play in the game of creation means taking your role seriously…
Comment posted September 25th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
ausblog says:
Over 3,500 terminations per day, 1.3 MILLION per year in the United States alone.
50 or 60 MILLION per year World Wide.
I am a pro-lifer who has no religious convictions at all . I didn’t need the fear of god or anything else to come to my decision, just a good sence of what is right and wrong.
You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?
You would not exist, if you have children they would not exist, and your (husband or wife) would be married to someone else. You would have been deprived of all your experiences and memories. In this day and age with terminations being so readily available and so many being carried out, if you make it to full term
you can consider yourself lucky. Lucky you had a mother that made the choice of life for you. Don’t you think they all deserve the same basic human right, LIFE?
I’m all for contraception, prevention is certainly better than termination.
Did you know you can get an implant that is safe, 99.9% effective, and lasts for three years? Just think girls not even a show for three years, wouldn’t that be great? I think too many people rely too heavily on the last option (abortion), I think if abortions weren’t so readily available people would manage their reproductive system far better resulting in a fraction of the number of unwanted pregnancies.
World wide there are over 50 MILLION aborted pregnancies each year. In America 3,500 terminations carried out every day, that’s over 1.3 million every year, 50% of all cases claimed that birth control had been used, 48% admitted they took no precaution, and 2% had a medical reason. That’s a stagering 98% that may have been prevented had an effective birth control been used. Don’t get me wrong, I suspect the percentages in Australia would be much the same.
Just a lot of unnessessary killing.
At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existance. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.
I am convinced that in the not too distant future, people will look back at many of the practices of today with disbelief and horror.
ausblog
Comment posted September 25th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
sunnyday says:
Glad to hear that the conference generated publicity in a major daily! John, pls. do clarify those inaccurate portions of the article by having your own article published — or maybe writing a letter to the editor. It’s important to set the record straight on matters of life, especially with the other side releasing erroneous or fabricated data from time to time.
Guess what, Fr. Tom Euteneur is in the Philippines! He arrived yesterday and we got to spend the morning with him as we paid a visit to the mayor of Manila, Mayor Lito Atienza (who is very pro-life in the way he runs his city), then dropped by a home for abandoned children. Then he conducted a talk with some seminarians at the University of Sto. Tomas.
By the way, Fr. Tom is here as in the Philippines to speak at the Congress of Life, Love & Family, a regular event organized by Human Life Int’l. He’ll be dealing a lot with the contraception issue, as with the pro-life movement in general.
Comment posted September 26th, 2006 at 3:04 am
ausblog says:
I’m posting from aus and with what you got goin on I’m glad of that.
Could you tell me roughly what % of your christian comunity are (radical,fundamentalist’s who want to impose their radical ideals and beliefs on the whole country)
All sounds a bit Taliban-ish?
Seems they have too much power, seems they have bush in their
pockets. Church and state should never entwine. That to me spells
Fundamentalist government(not good)
A good christian heart would not force their ideals on others,they are more likely to serve the people in any way they can offering assistance to those in need.
Some may appreciate their efforts and want to be more like them.-Ridicule and condemnation isn’t the way to go- they’ll never change hearts and minds that way.
Maybe they know that what they ask is ridiculous, so try to impose their will. I think if there were a god he would want people to find Humanity.
True humanity can only be achieved by concidering others/caring about others as much as,if not more than yourself.
Then and only then could we call ourselves a -Civilisation-
Comment posted September 26th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Rosie says:
“A good christian heart would not force their ideals on others,they are more likely to serve the people in any way they can offering assistance to those in need.”
So what you’re saying is that Christians should act as doormats especially to those who insult their faith? For someone who doesn’t believe in God you sure think you know how a Christian should act. Like you just said ridicule and condemnation isn’t the way to go, or does that just apply to Christians? If you don’t believe in God you should get special treatment? We Christians should walk on egg shells so we don’t offend anyone, but athiests can try to make us take every cross in the country down because it bothers them? I think you will find that people are getting sick of the double standard.
Comment posted September 27th, 2006 at 9:39 am
mary kay says:
Ausblog said:
“True humanity can only be achieved by concidering others/caring about others as much as,if not more than yourself.
Then and only then could we call ourselves a -Civilisation-”
I say:
Recently on Relevant radio I heard someone say that most people confuse being compassionate with being nice.
Then he gave the example of a doctor examining a patient only to find out that the patient had incurable cancer.
I ask you, which would be more compassionate? Not telling the patient that he was sick because you didn’t want to upset him, or telling him the truth even though it would be painful?
Compassion means thinking of the other person first. And doing what is best for them even if you look like the bad guy … (or a religious freak). We, as catholics, recognize the danger that contraception and abortion have brought to our country and our world, and even though it makes us unpopular, we speak out, exposing the truth. This is compassion.
Not speaking out and letting all those women and babies come to harm may seem nice at first glance, but on further inspection you will see that it is simply cowardice.
We are not afraid to take a stand. We are not afraid to speak the truth. We are not afraid to share our views. Even if we are hated because of it. Would we make contraception illegal? Only when said contraceptive acts as an abortificant. Would we try to educate the world as to the physical, moral and spiritual dangers that contraception poses? You betcha!
So being a true christian may not be the most likable way, or “nicest” way, but it is the most compassionate way. Jesus did not come to earth to make everyone feel good. He didn’t pat sinners on the back and tell them to carry on. He called them on their sins and asked them to repent and change. As a christian I can do no less than to follow what He did.
That, my friend, is civilization…
MK
Comment posted September 28th, 2006 at 7:04 am
Generations for Life » Blog Archive » Planned Parenthood Doesn’t Like Us… says:
[...] Holy Publicity, Batman! [...]
Comment posted October 23rd, 2006 at 6:15 pm