Changing Attitudes towards Humanae Vitae

By Theo Stearns, TOP

[editor's note: this article was written in 1978. It provides valuable insight to the questions raised about birth control from very early on.]

A decade has passed since the publication of Humanae Vitae, an encyclical letter of Pope Paul VI considered to be the most controversial Church statement of the century. Pope Paul VI's teaching was greeted in 1968 by skepticism and even open ridicule in a world engaged in promoting contraception as a panacea for poverty, pollution, war, crime and marital difficulties. The development of the birth control pill and the intrauterine device (IUD) offered what seemed to be a convincing sign that medical science had "licked the fertility problem" once and for all through chemical and mechanical means. Many Christian couples, including Catholics, had already begun the practice of contraception considering it not only useful to marriage, but in many cases necessary. The opinion that Humanae Vitae was unlivable, an impossible moral standard for couples, was widespread even among the Roman Catholic clergy. The question of whether the encyclical is truly a gift of the Holy Spirit or whether Pope Paul "simply missed the mark" as one theologian recently declared has been pointed to as a root cause for dissention and a crisis of faith for some Catholics. Little attention, however, has been given to the changing attitudes which constitute a well-established movement of return to the possibility b y the superiority of living Humanae Vitae. A rapidly growing number of Natural Family Planning programs with centers throughout the United States and in most countries in the world bear witness to this.

The concerns of couples in the area of birth regulation are many and varied, but those who turn to Natural Family Planning have the common response that they do not like contraception which intrudes into their marriage as a chemical or mechanical barrier to their own natural fertility. It is usual to hear actual repugnance expressed by couples who claim that such devices only stress the marital relationship. They find the mentality that accompanies contraception also repugnant. This mentality maintains that pregnancy is a "failure" or "unwanted" if unexpected and that fertility is a "problem" or a "disease" with which the couple must continuously wrestle by the use of medicine in the form of pills or chemical foams, gels or jams, or in the form of comfortable and demeaning mechanical barriers. Ignorant of the alternatives, more than one quarter of the nation's couples have resorted to sterilization as an escape from the continuous use of contraception but many of these couples express deep regret and depression at having submitted themselves to a veterinarian solution to human fertility. Even agencies such as Planned Parenthood have recognized a growing rejection of the currently available contraceptions and abortifacients.

The control of fertility by artificial means has been largely unsuccessful as far as its wholehearted acceptance by married couples. The most effective means of contraception still have notable "failure" rates and serious side effects which range from mental depression and physical discomforts to cancer, stroke and death. This brings yet another burden of anxiety to the contracepting couple and frequently resentment by the wife who must carry the responsibility of regulating her own fertility alone and at the sacrifice of her health. If a couple rejects the most dangerous but also the most effective birth control methods, the abortifacient pill and IUD, they are faced with an assortment of contraceptives that are significantly less effective than the natural methods currently being taught.

It is becoming increasingly obvious to couples who have experience with contraception that it does not give them control over their bodies or even freedom of choice. They feel victimized by the artificial devices which replace a healthy understanding of human fertility with a device used in ignorance, doomed to failure and producing severe health consequences. These couples are relieved to learn about Natural Family Planning as it offers them an autonomy and self-respect which they did not have with contraceptives.

A more insightful response saw in Humanae Vitae a prophecy that they panacea of contraception is really a Pandora's box of social and moral ills. This is especially evident in the worldwide abortion movement which murders 55 million unborn babies yearly according to the United Nations. Widespread abortion always follows the use of contraception. The attitude of unconditional control of fertility created by the contraceptive mentality is uncompromising toward the "mistakes" which inevitably arise from the failure of the contraceptive or their users. Dr. Paul Marx [1], director of The Human Life Center, St. John's University, Minnesota, the largest center of its kind in the world, said, "Having seen the anti-life movement in more than 46 countries and having conversed with more pro-lifers around the world than perhaps any other human being, I am convinced that contraception is a chief cause of the present moral chaos. That conviction did not come easily: I resisted it for years. Widespread contraception is the gateway to abortion which is not 'one' issue, as so many have been brainwashed to believe."

A lax attitude towards the sanctity of human life was predicted in HUMANAE VITAE and can be further seen in the fact that the two most promoted contraceptives are actually abortifacients, i.e., they do not necessarily prevent conception but cause in a significant number of cases the abortion of a conceived child. In this country approximately two million surgical abortions are performed yearly but an estimated additional nine million "silent" abortions are caused by the use of the pill, IUD, the morning after pill and menstrual extraction. No war has been so destructive of human life. Abortion is the greatest tragedy of modern times, a tragedy in which the genocide of Hitler and Stalin pales when compared to the number of totally innocent, helpless, and unbaptized children destroyed.

Contraception seems only to create the problems it is supposed to cure. By its nature contraception creates an attitude that sexual activity and human reproduction are two separate issues which in turn removes the sexual act from the sanctity and confines of marriage and family and places it in the market place. Pope Paul warned in Humanae Vitae that such an attitude would open the "wide and easy road" which leads to the general lowering of morality, especially among the youth in our society. Teenage pregnancy has reached "epidemic" proportions. Never has there been more sexual activity at an earlier age, never have there been more babies conceived, and never have there been less births proportionately speaking. The Planned Parenthood theory that the increased and easy availability of contraceptives will provide a cure for the "epidemic" of teenage pregnancies is evidently wrong. It is not unusual for pro-life workers to talk to young women in their mid-teens who have had three or even four abortions. Given the failure rate of these contraceptives and the immaturity of those encouraged to use them, no less could be expected.

Pope Paul also predicted in HUMANAE VITAE that contraception would become "a dangerous weapon… placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral demands. Who could blame the government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? [2]" Coercion is a part of the contraception, sterilization and abortion programs in the United States and abroad. The census bureau reported in 1974 that the decline in fertility in the United States was most pronounced among blacks, American Indians and Mexican-Americans. Most recent studies show that 25 percent of American Indian women have been sterilized with money that has been earmarked by treaty agreements to be used for "necessary" medical needs for Indians, and Spanish-speaking women in the United States are sterilized at a rate 30 percent higher than white, English-speaking women. Planned Parenthood revealed that women on welfare are two times as likely to be sterilized and 90 percent of these sterilizations were performed without the written consent of the woman or without her understanding of the consequences of the operation. Statistics reveal that non-white women have twice as many abortions per capita as white women—an astonishing figure in light of the fact that percentage-wise, non-whites oppose abortions more than whites. One wonders if the policies of the birth control agencies are not attempted to create a world which is much whiter and much richer. That such practices are actually a type of racial genocide of minorities and victims of poverty is evidenced by the rationale of those who work to continue public funding of abortion on the basis that an aborted baby is cheaper than a live one. On the international level such agencies as International Planned Parenthood Federation and Agency for International Development (AID) use the taxpayers' monies to support over 60 percent of all abortion, sterilization and contraception in the underdeveloped nations.

Fr. Pierre Primeau, Director of Centro de Pastoral Familiar para America Latina, made a plea this summer at the Human Life Center that American citizens be educated as to how their tax money is being used in Latin America. The population control policies often inflicted on underdeveloped countries which wish to receive financial aid from the United States are causing, according to Fr. Primeau, grave moral and family problems. Meanwhile, Dr. R. T. Ravenholt, director of the population agency of AID, has set an initial goal of sterilization of 100 million couples in these nations with American tax money.

Some may wish to reject the idea that contraception stands at the root of the decline of stable family life and related social problems, but few could deny that contraception and abortion are necessary tools of a sexually permissive society. Others may reject the idea that contraception is harmful to the marital relationship, but few of these with any real understanding of Natural Family Planning could deny that the natural methods are psychologically, medically and aesthetically superior to all other artificial alternatives. At this point none could deny that contraception is used against the poor, helpless, those that a Christian society is pledged to protect and succor as they come to us in the image of Christ.

The problem of return for couples who are currently using contraceptives and for the clergy who have recommended its use seems large but is not insurmountable. The encouragement of Natural Family Planning centers with well-instructed teachers is a positive solution which generally brings an enthusiastic response. Natural Family Planning and pro-life work are closely associated. The education of young women and men, especially in their natural fertility, produces a self-respect which discourages the permissive use of sex and the violent solution of abortion. Such work certainly calls for leadership from the Third Orders who as laity are commissioned no only to moral exhortation but to providing the means to accomplish this morality.

ENDNOTES

[1] Paul Marx, PhD is now Fr. Paul Marx, and he founded Human Life International based in Front Royal, Virginia.
[2] Humanae Vitae,paragraph 17

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Theo Stearns is prioress of a Dominican Third Order community, Catholics United for Life. She is a Natural Family Planning instructor and certified through the Human Life Center, St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota. She has been an active pro-life worker since her conversion to Catholicism in 1973.