Consequences of Contraception

Humanae Vitae, the encyclical by Pope Paul VI that upheld the Church's constant teaching that rendering the sexual act sterile through contraception and sterilization is opposed to the true meaning of the act, has been criticized as being out of step with modern realities and uncompassionate to people in difficult situations. However, modern experience has revealed that respecting the full meaning of the sexual act is necessary to the preservation of the dignity, stability and integrity of the human person. In his excellent article The Facts of Life & Marriage: Social Science & the Vindication of Christian Moral Teaching, W. Bradford Wilcox shares the research and the changing attitudes toward marriage and contraception that vindicate the teachings of Humanae Vitae.

The most obvious effect of the contraceptive culture is the increase in divorce. As the use of "The Pill" increased in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the divorce rate climbed right alongside. Looking back, we can now see a cause-effect relationship between the two. Factors that have led to increased divorce are rooted in how the contraceptive revolution made marriages less child-centered. Marriage and sex have become about self-fulfillment rather than about family. The Moral Law teaches us that self-fulfillment can only come through the practice of self-sacrificing love. We can see the results of the selfish attitude created by contraception not only in the increased divorce rate, but also in the decreased rate of marriage.

Contraception and abortion have allowed men to put off marriage, even after they had fathered a child - leading to the disappearance of marriage

Between 1968 and 1993 the percentage of men 25 to 34 who were married with children fell from 66 percent to 40 percent. Accordingly, young men did not benefit from the domesticating influence of wives and children.

Instead, they could continue to hang out with their young male friends, and were thus more vulnerable to the drinking, partying, tomcatting, and worse that is associated with unsupervised groups of young men. Absent the domesticating influence of marriage and children, young men—especially men from working-class and poor families—were more likely to respond to the lure of the street. Akerlof noted, for instance, that substance abuse and incarceration more than doubled from 1968 to 1998. Moreover, his statistical models indicate that the growth in single men in this period was indeed linked to higher rates of substance abuse, arrests for violent crimes, and drinking.

The restless single life, often described as "the thrill of the hunt," is a lifestyle that promotes using other people for brief thrills without the stability, selflessness and love of marriage and family life.

By removing the procreative meaning from the sexual act, contraception was supposed to empower women. In truth, contraception has done just the opposite.

Using the language of economics, Akerlof pointed out that “technological innovation creates both winners and losers.” In this case the introduction of widespread effective contraception—especially the pill—put traditional women with an interest in marriage and children at “competitive disadvantage” in the relationship “market” compared to modern women who took a more hedonistic approach to sex and relationships. The contraceptive revolution also reduced the costs of sex for women and men, insofar as the threat of childbearing was taken off the table, especially as abortion became widely available in the 1970s.

The consequence? Traditional women could no longer hold the threat of pregnancy over their male partners, either to avoid sex or to elicit a promise of marriage in the event their partner made them pregnant. And modern women no longer worried about getting pregnant. Accordingly, more and more women (traditional as well as modern) gave in to their boyfriends’ entreaties for sex.

I am not promoting using pregnancy to force someone into marriage. However, a woman who wanted to choose not to engage in sexual behavior before marriage is disenfranchised by contraception and abortion. As a result, virginity has come to be seen as an unhealthy aberration even in the face of increased incidences of sexually transmitted diseases. Women have lost power over their sexuality.

Contraception and abortion are often cited as necessary "health" options for the poor. In truth, the poor have suffered the most from the contraceptive mentality.

The poor have less of an economic stake in marriage, so they are more dependent on religious and moral norms regarding marriage. Middle-class and upper-class Americans remain committed to marriage in practice because they continue to have an economic and social stake in marriage. They recognize that their lifestyle, and the lifestyle of their children, will be markedly better if they combine their economic and social resources with one spouse. So the bottom line is this: The research of Nobel-prize-winning economist George Akerlof suggests that the tragic outworkings of the contraceptive revolution were sexual license, family dissolution, crime, and poisoned relations between the sexes—and that the poor have paid the heaviest price for this revolution.

The assumption is that children are a financial liability, and therefore having sex without children helps the poor. The truth is, though, that the stability of committed, loving family is the greatest resource for those trying to get out of poverty. The last thing the poor need is consequence-free sex. The first thing they need is the social stability of family life.

Contraception made many campaign promises around the time that Humanae Vitae came out. These promises made Humanae Vitae and the Church's teaching on contraception very unpopular. However, contraception failed to live up to its promises. It harmed marriage (and therefore society), it weakened rather than strengthening women, and it hurt rather than helped the poor. Yet, contraception continues to be touted as "women's health," as emancipation of sexuality and as a necessary option for the poor. In truth, freedom and fulfillment actually lie in the Church's teachings about the true meaning of sexuality.