By ladijules on Tue Apr 03, 2012 Original
I was reading an article recently about an argument between the Catholic church and Obama's Affordable Care Act. It seems that this act requires that all employers (with the exception of actual churches) provide health care insurance that covers birth control at no cost.The Catholic church argument against this? That they are pro-life, birth control is against their religion, its immoral and it should not be provided. Of course, most of the more conservative Christian churches immediately jumped on the Catholic churches bandwagon with this one.
And that's when it really hit me (maybe I'm slow) - these people are NOT pro-life at all. They are pro-birth. Let me say first, I'm not even to the abortion topic yet. Right now, I'm talking about simple birth control. Condoms. Pills. Tying Tubes. All of these churches (and the politicians they are associated with) are saying they are completely against that. I had to ask... how are these people pro-life?? They certainly are not pro-reality!! They are only.. simply... pro-birth. Let me explain what I mean.
Lets look at reality and birth control. People use birth control for a reason. Because they don't want children right now, for whatever reason. According to these churches, birth control even inside marriage is "immoral". What they are apparently saying is that once you get married, you either must not engage in sexual activity with your spouse or you are supposed to have and raise all the children "God" has "blessed" you with.
First... I think most spouses of both genders would be really annoyed if they could only have sex to procreate. Talk about a way to destroy a relationship! "No honey, we can't have sex anymore. We had twins from the one time we had sex and we can't handle anymore!". Sorry, In a normal, healthy relationship, I don't see that happening. The need for intimacy with the one you're in a relationship with is too essential to keeping that relationship alive and functioning. So, according to these churches, no sex unless you make a baby.
How is that pro-"life"?
Of course, if you and your spouse do give into those desires, you can not protect yourself from getting pregnant. At all. So if you get pregnant, oh well. You have a baby. Great. I've been married 23 years. That means I would have had the potential to have at LEAST 20 kids by now!!! Lets face the facts... the majority of couples in the entire world that could possibly support and raise that many kids these days is REALLY small. Financially alone most of us couldn't do it. These days, it takes both couples working their tales off just to afford 2 or 3 kids. But 20 kids? Not all of us are the Duggart family, we can't afford it and we wouldn't want it. Having that many kids means SOME one, usually the mom, has to stay home and be enslaved to the kitchen, laundry and nursery to care for them all. Which means, there is only one income to support all those mouths to feed. Good luck with that. Unless you are an executive with a golden parachute you'd be living in complete poverty. So would your children.
How is that pro-"life"?
The world already has a population of 7 BILLION. And that is with most couples in the "first world" nations only having a few kids per couple. Can you imagine if EVERYONE had 20 kids? Scientists are already in a panic because we have reached our limit for natural resources. They are now predicting major wars over water and land resources since we keep polluting them to attempt to provide for everyone on the planet. Without a major change, they are predicting major, terrible wars and mass starvation if something isn't done about our population. And yet.. these churches want you to constantly procreate.
How is that pro-"life"?
That is of course saying you can actually take care of another baby. Or any baby. Another fact.. sadly, there a lot of people out there, single and married, who should never have had kids. Child abuse and neglect occur every day, in ways we don't even want to consider. If those children are not killed outright by their parents (in ways that are just terrible to behold), then they live with the catastrophic effects of child abuse. Those effects can linger for life, causing depression, self hatred and criminal activity and that's just for starters. Their lives are a constant struggle with pain and self doubt and they often become under achievers.Without help, they will often go on to abuse others including their own children.
How is that pro-"life"?
Then there is the idea of "if you don't want it, put it up for adoption". For some reason, all these people think adoption is the perfect solution. I don't know who came up with that line of bullshit. It's sort of a solution, in SOME cases,but not all. The simple fact is, the only babies really in demand are healthy white ones. The kids that aren't that.. are of different races, born with disabilities or drug problems and such, are very hard to place even now! Never mind when we have an even larger number of them. So what happens to those babies no one wants? They are abandoned at hospitals until the state can find a foster home for them. Unfortunatly, the number of decent foster homes is going down dramatically, so they will be there a LONG time before a slot becomes available.Then they are dumped in foster home after foster home until they are 18, then kicked out of the system on their own with little or no support. Most of the kids this happens to end up with major mental issues, as well as having been abused. (See above). They are never really cared for, never get love from a "real" parent, never learn to love themselves, never have a stable background or upbringing. They are cast out on the world with no help and no safety net, with fewer skills and somehow are expected to hit the ground running... when all they usually do it hit the ground.
How is that pro-"life"?
It also occurs to me that these same people who say they are pro-"life" are the same people who scream about providing any kind of funding for children and families. They are constantly blaming their political enemies for allowing services such as welfare, medical care and food stamps. But how will families live and provide care for their children without it? Even when we are just having 3 kids per couple, if someone loses their job the whole family can be put in the poor house. So they are telling us essentially to have those 20 kids but they aren't going to help us provide for them. Once they are BORN, they are your problem, not their's. Again, sounds like pro BIRTH to me. They want to force you to have a child you either don't want or can't afford to feed.
How is that pro-"life"?
There are already countries in which access to birth control is rare or non-existent. In those places, women are forced to have child after child, since they often also have no say over if they will have sex or not. What happens to those children? As already stated, it takes a massive amount of resources to raise just 3 kids to adulthood - and that is in a first world country! In poorer countries its even worse!! Look at Africa. Do you know how many children die each day from starvation and lack of medical care? I can answer you. Thousands. They die a horrible death, slowly wasting away in agony because their parents can not afford to feed 15 kids.
How is that pro-"life"?
Let's continue to look at another side of this. What about children born with disabilities? Simple fact.. there are families (I know one) in which ALL of their children are disabled. What about the children? All are disabled enough that they will never have a "life" as we know it. They will have to be cared for their entire lives. At a VERY great financial expense to the families and to society. As the parent of a disabled person myself, you can not possibly know the pain we go through with our children. I look at my son, and know the hell he has been through. Schools that are abusive, not having a voice to speak up for himself. Living very little of life, because he's just not able to interact with it. Knowing he will probably never have a girlfriend, knowing he will have to be cared for by a society that often rejects him. More, a society that doesn't want to have to pay the 100,000 dollars a year it will take to house him in a decent group home for his life. But according to these churches, it doesn't matter. They still expect you to continue to have children even if that child will be born with life limiting disabilities.
How is that pro-"life"?
Everything I just covered above is dealing with the "no birth control inside of marriage" idea. What about the "no birth control" idea outside of marriage? What about that poor teen aged girl who was only given an abstinence only education by the same church? Who wasn't even given the most basic knowledge of exactly what sex IS, never mind the lesson on "how you get pregnant"? Essentially, that poor girl is sent out into the world with no education at all, no protection.. and gets taken advantage of by a boyfriend and gets pregnant? She is going to have hell to pay from her parents, who some how think she should have known better but didn't give her an education to know, Period. Then you are going to stick her with raising a baby that is a constant reminder of "how she screwed up" and how she is such an "embarrassment", "immoral" and a "slut" according to her parents and the church who refused to educate her in the first place? How nice of you. What about that woman who was minding her own business and gets raped and impregnated? Lovely that you want her to be reminded of something horribly traumatic and disgusting every day of her life! Let me guess she "deserved it" and it was "Gods will" that she was raped, right? What about that little 10 year old who "played a game with Daddy" and gets pregnant? Nevermind the fact that her little body can not handle a pregnancy with out permanent damage, or the fact that the child will be born from incest or the terrible mental damage it will do to her to be forced to have her own sibling. Congratulations all you pro-birthers. The idea that birth control should be non-existent and so should abortion just doomed all those innocent females to a living and perhaps life threatening hell. And doomed the baby as well.
How is that pro-"life"?
I could go on and on. There are a thousand issues on this topic. But what I see is this: Calling these people and churches pro-life is wildly incorrect.
They are pro-birth. But they are also:
Pro-child abuse
Pro-women slavery
Pro-starvation
Pro-fear
Pro-environmental destruction
Pro-cruelty
Pro-ignorance
Pro-destruction of marriage
Pro-poverty
Pro-overpopulation
Pro-war
Pro-insanity
Pro-self hatred
Pro- "don't give them a chance"
But they most CERTAINLY are not PRO LIFE!!!!!!!