Contracepting Conscience

On 07.25.11, In contraception, Helen Alvare, By Betsy

by Helen Alvaré

This article was originally published at ThePublicDiscourse.com on July 25, 2011.

The new, pro-contraceptive recommendations by the Institute of Medicine endanger the health and well-being of women.

Richard John Neuhaus once commented that the “philosophes” of the French Revolution would turn over in their graves to discover how the Catholic Church had become the chief defender of the place of reason in the public square in the late 20th century. Today in the 21st century it is the feminist revolutionaries of the 1960s who are squirming in their rocking chairs as the Catholic Church dares to defy “the establishment” to stand for the freedom of women and of conscientious objection to federal mandates. (more…)

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GOP’s own ‘Great Society’ backfired

On 12.23.10, In contraception, Politics, By Betsy

by Robert W. Patterson

Robert Patterson is the editor of Family in America, a publication frequently graced by the writings of Dr. J and other Ruth Board members. This article is especially timely, given that it talks about Nixon’s holiday surprise, and given that we are still arguing over proper government policy toward contraception.

This article was first published in The Examiner on December 23, 2010.

When he signed the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970 on Christmas Eve 40 years ago, President Nixon missed the irony of starting a campaign to reduce “unwanted and untimely childbearing” just as the country was about to celebrate the “unplanned” birth of a baby born in poverty 2,000 years before. (more…)

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The Incoherence of Federal Sex Policy: Title X, Medicaid, and the Eisenstadt Decision

On 10.21.10, In contraception, Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D, By Betsy

by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.

This article was first published in the Fall 2010 issue of The Family in America.

In a 1972 decision widely hailed by the political classes, the Supreme Court opined in Eisenstadt v. Baird, “If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right to be free from unwarranted government intrusions into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”1 Imagining that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was coercing her citizens to have children against their wishes, the Eisenstadt decision struck down a statute that had been amended to comply with the requirements of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). That earlier decision had demanded that states allow the sale of contraceptives to married couples, as the Court held that prohibiting the use of contraceptive devices in marriage would be an unacceptable invasion of marital privacy.2 In Eisenstadt, however, the Court moved to claim that “whatever the rights the individual to access contraceptives may be, the rights must be the same for married and unmarried alike.”3 (more…)

 
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The Gift of Female Fertility

On 09.27.10, In contraception, By Betsy

This is a short excerpt from an outstanding chapter on contraception by Angela Franks, Ph.D. in the Women, Sex and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching anthology.

From “The Gift of Female Fertility: Church Teaching on Contraception” By Angela Franks, Ph.D. in Women, Sex and the Church

Modern western women and girls are too often in a state of undeclared war with their bodies, seeking to remake them until they fit the dominant cultural standards of attractiveness. During the past forty years or so, those standards have gradually come to emphasize thinness to an extreme degree. As fertility has become more and more optional and undervalued in women, so have cultural elites located female beauty less in fertile Rubenesque voluptuousness and more in prepubescent skin-and-bone youth. (more…)

 
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The New Contraceptive World Order

On 06.28.10, In contraception, Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D, By Betsy

By Jennifer Roback Morse

This article was first published June 28, 2010 by National Catholic Register.com.

The 50th anniversary of the birth control pill — the Food and Drug Administration gave it final approval in 1960 — has been the occasion of much media fanfare, societal reflection — and what we might call Secular Triumphalism. We, the Enlightened, knew all along that giving women control over their fertility was going to be simply marvelous. End of story. Some of us have tried to point out that the pill had some negative consequences, but few seem interested. (more…)

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