The furtherance of contraception has always been accompanied by lies, manipulation, and misinformation, and the recent case with Hobby Lobby and the contraception mandate is no exception.
The first church to officially sanction contraception was the Anglican Church back in 1930 at the Lambeth Conference. They did so on the pretense that it would only be used by married couples “where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence.”
You’d have to be incredulous to believe that the creators of that rationalization really thought people wouldn’t move beyond that narrow construct and use this decision to justify contraception in general.
Then, in the 1950s American doctors neglected to tell hundreds of Puerto Rican women that they were participating in a clinical trial of the pill. At least three of the unknowing subjects died and many others suffered from unpleasant side effects. Never mind. As Mao said, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Then to promote widespread usage of the pill, its negative side effects were downplayed or ignored and it was sold as a solution to the abortion problem and as a way to happier, healthier sexual relations.
Well, now there are concerns that the pill is a cause of breast and ovarian cancer, though the government and scientists seem curiously incurious about resolving this very important issue.
Abortion has surged massively as a result of the pill because it has created the notion that sex shouldn’t have any consequences, a notion that is unconsciously accepted by many women who aren’t using the pill or any contraception. When they get pregnant, abortion becomes their after-the-fact contraception.
The makers of Plan B, which is an abortifacient that prevents an embryo from implanting in the uterus, completely neglect to tell prospective users about this basic fact of how the drug works on their website. Why? If it’s so innocuous of a process, why not be up front about it? More deception.
The current controversy about the Obamacare contraception mandate is a shining example of how lies are used to advance the seemingly holy cause of birth control.
How often did you hear that Hobby Lobby wanted to deny their employees contraception? How often did you hear that access to birth control was a “right” that was being denied by Hobby Lobby?
These were outright lies meant to scare gullible women and men into submission to The Cause. Never mind the truth, which was that Hobby Lobby was only seeking to avoid providing abortifacients, that it was and is providing other forms of birth control, and that women who want their precious abortifacients for free or next-to-nothing could get them from an alternative government program.
Never mind that this is a “right” which was created from whole cloth by Obamacare, that no one has a right to free healthcare (though it may be something we do want to provide in certain cases). Never mind that of all the “healthcare” services, contraception was one of the only ones to be provided for free.
Why? Why should birth control be free instead of children’s healthcare or dental care? Why do I, who personally oppose contraception, have to pay for it as a result of government diktat? (If a company wants to do so voluntarily, I have no problem.) Or, why do we subsidize a “medicine” which does the opposite of what medicine is supposed to do: cure a disease? Birth control actually prevents the body from functioning naturally, after all.
Never mind all of this. Facts, the Constitution, personal conscience, religious freedom, all must bend to the demands of the Contraception Cause. I really wonder why this is such a shibboleth of the left and progressives in general. They would rather destroy an embryo to get its stem cells than explore the much more promising field of adult stem cells. They would rather scorn and eliminate abstinence education when no right-thinking person can say that teens having sex is a good idea.
And they would rather demonize and marginalize anyone who disagrees, to the point where they’re willing to trample on the Bill of Rights to advance their agenda. It’s a sad state of affairs, but I’m still confident in our system and that the tyranny of the majority will not triumph.
Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.
