Am I correct in writing that these two are, indeed, related? Does one lead to the other?
I will argue that one -- contraception (when it fails!) -- can, and does lead to the other in some circumstances -- abortion.
First, let's take a look at the "beginnings," let us go back to the foundress of the birth control movement in the United States: Margaret Sanger. Here we have a female with many ironies associated with her, including her twisting of the Natural Law and Catholic Church teaching to suit her ideology.
How many know, or realize, that Margaret Sanger was a Catholic, and came from a large, Irish Catholic family of eleven siblings? Her father, once a practicing Catholic, became an atheist. The influence of her parents and the home-life she experienced, played heavily on her ultimate direction of her future life-path and philosophy. This is only natural.
Here is something that many may not know: Sanger was OPPOSED to abortion! Strange but true. On the other hand, she was a dyed-in-the-wool racist and eugenicist. Some will deny that, but let her own words speak for themselves: "We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population..."-- Letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, December 10, 1939, p. 2
https://libex.smith.edu/omeka/…
And this: "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."-- Woman and the New Race, Chapter 5, "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families." (1920) http://www.bartleby.com/1013/
This is only a small sample of her disdain for large families, one of those ironies I mentioned earlier...
I find it hard to believe, that a such a well-educated woman could not, or would not, realize that her zeal for instituting and promoting contraception would eventually lead to abortion, something she was so ardently against.
This poor creature -- once a Catholic -- used the teaching of the Catholic Church and the encyclicals of the popes on marriage and the family, to "prove" the backwardness of those teachings. However, she rightly pointed out that many Catholic women of her time were already using or quickly jumped at the opportunity to use contraception to limit the number of children she (and her husband) wanted to bring into the world.
Believe it or not, she also used the Bible and selectively quoted passages of Scripture in order to back up her claims that the limiting of family size was nowhere condemned. The problem with this thinking is the same thing we see today. There are those "Christians" that say that if something is not specifically mentioned or condemned in the Bible, then it is "okay" to do or practice. It's as if there is no "reading between the lines," so to speak, or refusing to extrapolate the spirit of the written word, and instead only look to the letter of the law, written or passed down through oral tradition. Of course, here is where the proper interpretation of Scripture comes in, and unfortunately, when one privately interprets Scripture he or she can go astray. Is that why there are literally thousands of different Protestant denominations, yet only one Catholic Church?? After all, it was holy mother Church that compiled and canonized the Bible, not the other way around.
The current ethos of "legalized" abortion is firmly entrenched in American society, and, I contend, is used as a method of birth control, again, something that Sanger vehemently opposed, yet she had no problem with the killing of BORN infants, as a way of keeping families small!!
The result of "legal" killing of the pre-born? Sixty-five-plus million fewer Americans since the Roe v Wade decision of 1973, this does not include the world-wide numbers of babies killed each year.
It is important to point out, that contraception, as well as aborting the pre-born is nothing new, and goes back to ancient times. All this boils down to not wanting to serve the Master of all of us, but wanting to serve ourselves; to be our own god, and decide what we can do with our bodies without having to pay for the consequences of our actions, or obeying any authentic guidelines, whether those of the Natural Law, or Church teachings (which include the Natural Law!). Sadly, the gift of our sexuality is then reduced to lust, rather than the love that should be shared between husband and wife, one of the tragedies of the current mentality...
Margaret Sanger, whether she knew it or not, or cared or not, opened up the Pandora's Box of the culture of death so prevalent today, not only in this country, but also in our ever shrinking world. And this culture of death is also reflected in the many wars and rumors of wars that, we, as a nation, are involved in for all the wrong reasons.
In conclusion, I ask -- as I always do -- pray for our country, and pray to end the scourge of abortion.
Gene DeLalla
Well done Gene. A difficult topic to weigh in on. I commend you.
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