By Jacek Pulikowski,
Love One Another! 1/2003 → Christian family
People can take one of two positions with regard to their sexuality
and fertility: they can accept themselves as they are, their
biology, their nature (or ecology), as creatures of God, or
they can chose not to accept themselves, and consequently try
to improve on nature, which is to say, to improve on God’s
handiwork.
In the first instance, people recognize their nature and subscribe
to it, that is to say, to the Creator’s concept of themselves.
In the second, they develop an “anti-concept” or “contracept”
against the Creator’s concept, a supposedly “better”
“up-dated” concept, but one that rejects the true
nature of the human being. In the second instance, people always
lose. Those who think they have somehow tricked or outsmarted
nature, who try to profit from what is pleasant, and reject what
is inconvenient in God’s plan of love — such people
always comes away the losers. Their schemes end up recoiling upon
them. And they are the poorer for it.
Now, since we cannot reach people with the statement, “God
planned it this way, and it is good for you” – since
many young people can’t be reached this way – why
not take the ecological tack: “This is healthy. This is
natural, and that is unnatural. This is harmful”.
It is not my aim here to go into the whole question of the
harmfulness of contraception; this a person can read up on his
own. I would, however, like to dwell a bit on the contraceptive
mentality. The contraceptive view, then, is the view of the person
who seeks to improve on nature as created by God. Compared to
the view God intended for us, it is a pitiful one indeed. After
all, one would think that by the twenty first century, we had
acquired enough knowledge on the subject of human fertility that
we would not need to hold it in fear or seek to neutralize it
out of fear. Today we are in a position to understand the workings
of fertility, and to make the best possible use of it. Here we
must stress that in order that the best use be made of natural
family planning (NFP) methods, it is extremely important that
the husband take part in observing and interpreting his wife’s
fertility signs. Where he does this – and this is something
that, given his innate, male inquisitiveness, may not only interest
but fascinate him – there is great hope that things will
go well for that marriage. Things go much less well when the woman
is forced to do this on her own, behind the man’s back,
so to speak. Some women have no choice but to do this, although,
given time, even they may succeed in getting their husbands on
board.
Many people fail to see the difference between the contraceptive
and the natural approach to fertility. One often hears remarks
like the following: “The important thing is not to have
children. As to whether we achieve this by natural or artificial
(“modern”, “scientific”) means, that’s
a secondary concern”. Such statements are based on a complete
misunderstanding of what NFP is.
To begin with, NFP is not about not having children. On the
contrary, it is about having children – but – at a
time when we are ready to welcome them, and as many children as
we believe in good faith to be optimal for our family. What’s
more, NFP can be very helpful in instances where a couple have
difficulty conceiving a child. Natural methods are useful in determining
the cause of the problem and choosing the best time for intercourse
in order to optimize the chances of conception.
Natural methods are used by those who accept their nature and
consider the life of a child to be more important than sexual
pleasure. Thus the conjugal act is ordered to its primary purpose
– procreation. This does not mean a renunciation of sexual
pleasure. Indeed, if anything, the pleasure is even fuller and
deeper, for it is both enhanced by the couple’s having to
wait for one another, and uninhibited by the fear of incurring
a pregnancy. One might say that NFP is “ecological”
from a physical, psychological and moral point of view. In none
of these three areas is NFP in any way harmful (not even the fiercest
opponents of NFP would deny this). Finally, NFP is educational:
it engages the reason and the will, fosters self-mastery and taking
responsibility for one’s actions – a very important
quality in life.
Contraception, on the other hand, is about not having children.
The aim of contraception is to sterilize the person or the conjugal
act. Our fertility is a source of fear. It is treated as a disease,
as something that has to be resisted and destroyed. Thus it represents
a rejection of our nature. Contraception is used by the person
who does not accept his nature and considers sexual pleasure to
be more important than the life of a child. Thus the contracepted
act is ordered to its primary purpose – sexual pleasure.
The sad thing is that to the extent a person strives to increasing
his pleasure, the more superficial and less pleasurable it becomes.
This is a consequence of enjoying the sexual act “on demand”
(no waiting to enhance mutual attraction) as well of inhibitions
resulting from a fear of its fruits – i.e. the possible
conception of a child (it is precisely this fear which prompts
one to reach for a contraceptive in the first place). One can
say that the contraceptive position is “anti-ecological”
– physically, psychologically and morally. Every contracepted
act is harmful to our physical and psychological well-being. More
than that: it aims at the harming of our health, since contraception
is disposed toward the destruction of fertility, which constitutes
an important element of our health. Indeed, ill-health in this
area is a source of enormous anguish to a great many marriages.
Thus, if contraception were to be completely harmless to our health
(as some tout it to be), it would also have to be completely ineffective.
Clearly, then, when supporters of contraception talk about its
harmlessness they have in mind its effect upon the health excluding
the “area” of fertility. Now a person’s health
constitutes an integral whole embracing all aspects of his well-being,
including the physical, psychological and spiritual. You cannot
affect the health in one area without affecting other areas as
well. This should be self-evident even to those without great
knowledge in the fields of biology, medicine or psychology.
Finally, contraception is non-educational. It relieves us of
the use of our reason and will, of self-discipline and taking
responsibility for our actions (its entire effort is limited to
the using of the contraceptive, while it is the manufacturer who
assumes the responsibility). In effect, the contraceptive position
favors the rejection of the conceived child, where the device
is seen to have failed. There is a certain logic to this: the
couple did not want a child in the first place, they used the
device “in good faith”, and the manufacturer carries
the “blame”. Why, then, should they be saddled with
the
unwanted results? Thus, despite the “pious wishes”
of the manufacturers, and their strident claims that contraception
results in fewer abortions, reality points in the opposite direction.
Thus, anyone insisting on a comparison between the natural
and anti-conception approaches would have to admit that that they
are diametrically opposed. The one comparable value is that of
effectiveness, and here the latest natural methods turn out to
be of slightly higher efficacy than the newest contraceptives.
If some find this surprising, or hard to swallow, it only shows
how effectively they have been duped by the contraception lobby.
Although we are not interested here in contraceptives as such,
I feel duty-bound to say a few words about the abortion-inducing
role of certain hormonal agents. Most people are unaware of the
fact that in addition to its role as a contraceptive (arresting
peristaltic movement in the oviducts), the modern pill acts as
an abortifacient (destroys the endometrium during the embryo-reception
stage). A woman swallowing such a pill can never know if it has
acted as a contraceptive or an abortifacient, and thus she incurs
the moral culpability pertaining to an abortion. Of course, such
culpability is not incurred by those who have been duped into
thinking that they are “merely” crippling their fertility.
One may suppose there are many people in this situation.
A chemical preparation called RU 486 also deserves mention.
A classic abortifacient, it passes as a contraceptive. It is recommended
for use up to the seventh (even the tenth) week of pregnancy.
Sometimes it is labeled enigmatically as a “treatment for
inducing delayed menstruation”. Its working name is 32486,
that is to say it is the 32486th preparation of a certain French
pharmaceutical firm. I mention this to highlight the fact that
the contraceptive industry is far from being a cottage industry.
It is an industry developed on a massive scale. It is also worth
recalling how RU 486 first came to life (or rather to death).
The fall of 1988 saw a great debate raging in all the media throughout
France. All the leading lights of the day, scientists, cultural
experts, artists, politicians, and journalists came forward to
state their opinions. Many saw RU 486 as the greatest discovery
of the twentieth century, as an enormous benefit to mankind, but
there were others who saw in its use a hidden and legal genocide
on a scale never before seen in the world. Finally, after long
and heated discussions, they decided: “We will introduce
it, but on a trial basis only, in France only, and only on native
French women who have already borne children, and only in hospitals
under the strict control of a physician, etc. etc. Ten years later,
the abortifacient pill, whether legal or not, was universally
available throughout the world. It has since become your standard
means of “do-it-yourself” home abortion. Incidentally,
among the first decisions made by newly elected President Bill
Clinton (in his first term of office) was – along with his
taking up of the homosexual cause – the legalization of
the RU pill. I mention this only to underscore the power of the
lobby conspiring against the life of the unborn child.
Finally, the “latest word” in modern enormities.
U.S. law protects the child from the moment its head emerges from
the mother’s womb. Ingenious minds thus came up with the
following procedure: labor is induced, but in such a way that
the child is born feet first. The entire child emerges with the
exception of the head, which remains inside the mother. The child
is then killed by siphoning out the brain, after which the baby
is removed from its mother. All this is quite legal and in accordance
with the laws of the land, although, thankfully, the procedure
is now being seriously challenged in the courts. In the USA alone,
thousands of children die every year as a result of “partial
birth abortion”.
The world has strayed into error. It is the logical outcome
of man arrogating to himself the right to decide matters of life
and death, and to set conditions, upon the meeting of which a
human being is granted the right to life.
Jacek Pulikowski
The article was published with the permission from "Love One Another!"
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