Ann Bailey
Increased use of contraceptives results in increased abortion…who knew! Seems counter-intuitive, but it is true. Recently, the media and the Obama spin masters have been all over a study that supposedly shows that if you hand out free birth control (under Obamacare) you’ll have fewer abortions. They’re hoping this type of research will convince the general public that forcing employers to pay for their employees’ contraception is a good idea.
The problem for the pro-contraception/pro-abortion team is that the research from countries like Spain, Sweden, England, and Wales tell a completely different story – when you increase contraceptive use you get higher pregnancy and higher abortion rates. Not to mention that the new Obamacare-supporting study is full of some significant research flaws and invalid assumptions.
Research coming to us from The Guttmacher Institute (a Planned Parenthood affiliate and no friend of the pro-life movement) shows that increased used of contraceptive in the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Singapore, and South Korea also brought about an increased rate of abortion.
Despite an increase in the use of contraceptives in England and Wales, the number of abortions increased from 175,542 in 2009 to 189,574 in the year 2010. Commenting on this increase in the abortion rates, Paula Franklin, director of Marie Stopes International, states:
“with improvements in contraception rates last year, these figures come as a surprise… Although the rise is small, these abortion figures send a warning for the government’s family planning strategy.”
Since Marie Stopes International is one of the largest abortion providers in the UK, it leaves one wondering just how concerned about that news they could actually be.
Why does increased contraception = increased abortion? When contraceptives are flowing people will engage in more sex acts and in riskier sexual behavior – often outside of marriage which provides a stabilizing influence to human sexual behavior. You get more pregnancies because contraception (even when consistently used) is far from 100 percent effective and contraception fails in predictable percentages. By the way, the highest rate of abortion occurs in cohabiting relationships – a fact that this writer finds shocking and disturbing considering the massive increases in the cohabitation rates over the past few decades.
Now stop and think about the increase use of contraception accompanied by increased sexual activity and what that is going to do to the rate of sexually transmitted disease/infection. With the exception of limited protections provided by barrier methods such as condoms, contraceptives provide zero protection from sexually transmitted diseases. The Centers for Disease Control provide supporting data, but there should be no surprise to anyone that there’s a clear link between birth control and increases in STDs.
You don’t have to oppose contraception because of religious reasons to have serious misgivings about the efficacy and the wisdom of flooding the world with contraceptives.