Archive for the 'Contraception' Category

There is an interesting article on LifeSiteNews this week about Belmont Abbey, a North Carolina Catholic college that’s been accused of sexual discrimination by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) because it refuses to provide insurance coverage for contraception for its employees.

In other words, a Catholic college is being accused of discrimination for applying the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

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I’ve said before that it’s fairly common for us to get hate mail at Pro-Life Action League/Generations for Life. We’ve especially gotten a lot the past several months during the ongoing fight against Aurora Planned Parenthood.

Many of these messages criticize us for fighting Planned Parenthood because, you know, abortion isn’t the only thing Planned Parenthood does.

One guy who wrote us last month plainly said — and these are his exact words — “Yes, it is wrong to kill babies but you can’t say that all Planned Parenthood does is kill babies.” (more…)

As you do your Christmas shopping, do yourself a favor and don’t buy anything from Abercrombie & Fitch.

This morning we got an an e-mail telling us about some of their new T-shirts.

One has the message, “Make love not babies”, and another has the message, “Awkward mornings beat boring nights”.

This isn’t the first time they’ve gotten themselves in trouble, and it probably won’t be the last.

In my last post, I wrote about Planned Parenthood’s condescending attitude toward pro-life teenagers.

Last week, I wrote about Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area’s connection with the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health (ICAH), a group that has featured pornographers and strippers at their annual fundraiser the past two years.

In that post, I mentioned that PP/CA and ICAH have formed a a coalition whose goal is to strip all funding of abstinence education for Illinois schools and require them to use so-called comprehensive sex education programs instead.

Yet Planned Parenthood calls itself a “trusted health care provider”, and says it “has always made the health and safety of teens one of its top priorities” by, for example, providing contraception to teens and sponsoring and promoting “comprehensive” sex education programs.

Trusted health care provider, health and safety of teens, top priorities…

So they say.

On Wednesday, October 17th, I’ll be giving a talk on the physical, emotional, and spiritual dangers of “comprehensive” sex education programs. The title of my talk is, simply: Don’t Trust Planned Parenthood.

It will be held at St. Peter’s Church in Geneva, IL, 1891 Kaneville Road (see map here) at 7:00pm.

My talk is open to high school age students.

At the same time, and at the same church, Patricia Bainbridge, the Respect Life Office Director for the Rockford Diocese, will be giving a talk on Planned Parenthood to adults.

A flyer with more information on the talks is available here [PDF].

Come if you can!

The rally in Aurora Saturday was huge.

The Chicago Tribune estimated a crowd of 1,000. The Aurora Beacon estimated 1,200.

The actual number may have even been higher.

Watch the local FOX News station’s coverage of the rally here.

Note Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area president Steve Trombley’s comments during the news segment:

We want people to understand that 90% of what we do is about providing contraception and basic health care, both of which prevent the need for abortions. We believe that health center will do more in one day to prevent abortions than those protesters will do in a lifetime.

Ah, yes, because everybody knows that making contraception more widely available is the answer to preventing abortion, right? (more…)

FOX and CBS have refused to run a new ad for Trojan condoms that features…

…women at a bar surrounded by pigs. When one pig goes to the restroom and returns with a condom purchased at a vending machine, he is transformed into an attractive man. The end of the commercial carries the message: “Evolve: Use a condom every time.” [source]

Dr. Vanessa Cullins, Planned Parenthood’s vice president of medical affairs, isn’t happy about the FOX/CBS decision to reject the ads:

As the nation’s leading reproductive health care advocate and provider, Planned Parenthood knows that for sexually active people, condoms are the best way to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections [emphasis added].

“The best way?” (more…)

Currently, a group called SisterSong is holding a “reproductive justice” conference in Chicago.

On the website for the conference — which has the amazingly unoriginal title “Let’s Talk About Sex!” — the group says:

Since the right to have sex is a topic rarely discussed when addressing reproductive health and rights issues, SisterSong believes that sexual prohibitions are not only promoted by moral conservatives in this country, but also by reproductive rights advocates who fail to promote a sex-positive culture.

Apparently, SisterSong doesn’t believe it’s good enough to simply be pro-choice; in their view, it’s also necessary to oppose “sexual prohibitions”. What exactly these prohibitions are, they don’t say, but if, as they claim, having sex merely for pleasure “is a human right”, then, hey, anything goes! (more…)

We got word a few days ago about a new video — posted on YouTube earlier this week — with animation explaining how the birth control Pill has the potential to cause embryonic abortions.

As of yesterday, it had been viewed 1,000-some views. As of now, the number of views is over 4,000.

The narrator of this slickly produced video, Nell Andrzejewski, is a longtime friend of ours, and has frequently taken part in our Face the Truth Tours.

Check it out:

Whenever I give my talks, I always manage to slip in how terrible birth control is. From a Catholic perspective it’s morally wrong, but I give a few other reasons. First off, most birth control is aimed at women, which is unfair. Secondly, most, if not all birth control for women is harmful. The Mayo Clinic even recently made a connection between contraception and breast cancer!

But the thing that I have found most interesting is this new discovery: birth control is harmful to those who don’t even use it! The saying, “my body my choice” (which is used for all reproductive choices, not just abortion), just doesn’t hold true. No action is ever isolated.

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I’ve recently been involved in a discussion on JivinJ’s blog on the topic of contraception.

If that’s the sort of thing that interests you, the discussion has been moved to my personal blog. Feel free to catch up and follow it here.

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post the other day on whether or not teen aged girls should be taught about their fertility. It seems like both sides are afraid to teach Fertility Awareness (also known as Natural Family Planning or NFP). Those in favor of “comprehensive sex ed” say it’s too complicated and teens won’t follow through. Teens would rely on only part of the method and not be fully “protected.” (Funny – we say the same thing when it comes to teens and birth control – teens won’t follow through). The abstinence-only folks think that it will cause teens to become sexually active since they will now know when to avoid sex to avoid pregnancy. (more…)

Wendy Shalit at Modestly Yours has an eye-opening post about a “comprehensive” sex-ed class at a middle school in Thornton, IL.

Here are the details: (more…)

Hannity claims that he “studied theology”.

I wonder if he was absent the day the class learned that pride is the deadliest of sins.

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To hear more of what Fr. Tom Euteneuer has to say about contraception and its link to abortion, you can buy a CD of his talk, “The Infertile Soul: Contraception’s Influence on Faith and Society” that he gave at our Contraception Is Not the Answer conference last September.

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• “Sean Hannity’s Gospel”

For two of the past three years, Father Tom Euteneuer — the president of Human Life International — has led our annual staff retreat. If I had to make a list of my favorite priests, he’d be near the top.

His column this week, “Sean Hannity’s Gospel,” reminds me of why I have such great respect for the man.

Check it out.

In a comment on John’s post, Bad Ideas and Good Ideas, Michael-2 gave a link to an article on a study done in Germany about Natural Family Planning. I think it’s worth posting about. You gotta love hearing positive things about NFP in the news. Although the article focuses on the effectiveness of NFP as a contraceptive, it’s a step in the right direction. When a couple uses NFP, they can’t help but begin to view the body differently.

On a side note, though I realize for Catholics NFP has a moral base to it, I marvel at how well the Catholic Church takes care of her children spiritually and physically. Not only is NFP good for the soul (and relationships), but it’s healthy for the body. When practicing NFP, a woman’s body is not poisoned with chemicals and there is no need for self mutilation for either partner, which by the way may cause dementia in men! And if you need to avoid pregnancy for some good reason - it’s effective!