From the Hard Right II

The Most Pro-Life Thing You Can Do by Christopher Check

"(...) Contraception, however, did more than enable the sexual revolution; it inspired it. As Paul VI warned, a man using contraception will "forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires."

If you doubt that this exploitation of women has come to pass, then you must be unaware of the $12 billion American (or $57 billion worldwide) pornography industry and the marriages it has destroyed.Paul VI also warned that contraception would become "a dangerous weapon . . . in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies."

If a husband and wife could sterilize themselves on the grounds that another child would break their limited means, the Pope concluded that governments could apply the same solution to "the problems of the community." Overpopulation. Crime. Feeblemindedness. Take your pick. Americans might find Pope Paul's warnings a little fantastic until they discover that controlling the populations of the Third World is a central element of our own national-security policy.

When we contrast the promised benefits of contraception (spontaneity, romance, pleasure) with the realities that Paul VI predicted (divorce, adultery, political tyranny, even disease), we should not be surprised to discover that the proliferation of contraception has done nothing to slow abortion. On the contrary, the former leads to the latter. It's easy enough to see how abortion steps in when contraception all too frequently fails.

But the more profound relationship between contraception and abortion is this: Both are a deliberate rejection of human life, the true end of marriage. Marriage begins as an act of love, the total gift of oneself to another. The child is the fruit of this love. Contraception deforms marriage into an arena of self-gratification or lust, to use a word out of fashion.

What is the bitter fruit of lust? Abortion.Yesterday, we marked the 32nd anniversary of the Supreme Court's creation, out of whole cloth, of a mother's "right" to kill her baby. If you fear for the soul of a nation that promotes this "right" to the tune of some million-and-a-half innocent babies a year, here is my suggestion: Read Humanae Vitae, toss out your pills and prophylactics, and (if you are married, of course) have another baby. Bringing a child into the world is the most pro-life thing you can do."