Consequences of “the pill” on western society
By Amy Beange
In 1960, the Pill (formally known as the Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill, or COCP) was approved for use in the USA. It was an instant hit, becoming the most popular form of birth control within five years. Arguably, once the Pill became widely available, easy to use, and proven to be a largely effective method of preventing pregnancy, it came to have more influence on human life, particularly in the affluent West, than any other technology. It forever changed how men and women relate to one another. Nothing uniquely human was left untouched, including family life, attitudes toward sex, love, and romance, even the arts. Thanks to the Pill and related technologies, post-war young adults were faced with the possibility of sex without constraint, love-making separated from life-making, and sexual pleasure as the end-goal, rather than the God-given means to encourage closeness, commitment, and conception.
“Thanks to the Pill and related technologies, post-war young adults were faced with the possibility of sex without constraint, love-making separated from life-making, and sexual pleasure as the end-goal, rather than the God-given means to encourage closeness, commitment, and conception.”
If the articles marking the 60th anniversary of the Pill are anything to go on, general consensus has it that the resultant sexual revolution was a wild success, benefiting everyone. Twenty years ago, David Allyn wrote in Make Love, Not War, “there can be no doubt that, on the whole, the sexual revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s improved the quality of life for most Americans.” (quoted in Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, p 14)
But before considering the data, let us note a document produced in the Pill’s wake that made some horrifyingly accurate predictions regarding its outcomes. In 1968 Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humanae Vitae, establishing the Catholic Church’s official position on matters of contraception. In it the Pope affirmed the historical Christian teaching that God intended sexual activity to foster spousal intimacy and the producing of children, and that the Pill bid fare to significantly disrupt this ideal. This was by no means a position unique to the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant all-stars John Calvin and Martin Luther had espoused the same views, as had Christians since the time of our Lord’s first Advent. Christian approval of contraception began with the Anglican Church’s change of stance in 1930, permitting its use for married couples in extreme circumstances, with many denominations following suit and expanding the category of acceptable uses over time.
In his encyclical, Pope Paul listed four outcomes for the adoption of contraception over natural family planning, two of which I will touch on in this post: the lowering of moral standards, and a lessening of respect for women by men.
1. The lowering of moral standards
Widely available contraception was touted as the freedom not to conceive, and its proponents argued unwanted pregnancies would decrease. Instead, the contraceptive pill had the opposite effect. In the years following its introduction unwanted pregnancies increased, an outcome that on the surface seems to defy logic. Yet an increase in unwanted pregnancies is not surprising when one considers the built-in moral hazard, which simply means that parties to a contract may be incentivized to take on greater risks when the costs of risk are mitigated. In the world’s pre-pill history, sexual activity was treated with greater caution since the possibility of pregnancy was quite high. Women who conceived outside wedlock faced the financial and emotional uncertainties of bearing and possibly raising a child without the provisions of marriage. Men who impregnated women were subject to social expectations to step up and marry the lady in order to provide for her and the child he fathered. Both served as disincentives to sexual activity. Because sexual activity was so intimately connected to making babies, its “risk” or cost was high and casual sexual activity amongst those not wishing to conceive children was much less common.
The Pill severed the link between sex and babies by reducing the chances of pregnancy, i.e. the “risk” of sexual activity. This in turn lead a new phenomenon in world history, ordinary men and women engaging in sexual activity with partners with whom they had no intention of producing a child. Inexorably, the increase in sexual activity led to more pregnancies—given the inevitable intrusion of human error into the use of contraception. The result? Rather than reducing unwanted pregnancies, widespread adoption of the Pill led to a significant increase. But since preventing pregnancy through chemical means was now considered acceptable, a back-up was needed to take care of those times when contraception failed, leading directly to the legalization of abortion.
“Previously, the baby in the womb, while not always convenient, had intrinsic value. . . . But after Roe vs Wade . . . a baby’s value became extrinsic, dependent on the wishes of the mother.”
Previously, the baby in the womb, while not always convenient, had intrinsic value in the eyes of the law. But after Roe vs Wade (the US Supreme Court decision that stripped away American abortion laws in 1973), a baby’s value became extrinsic, dependent on the wishes of the mother. Between 1973 and 2011, 50 million abortions were performed in the USA, with another 4 million in Canada. The Pill did not make abortion rare, it made it common.
The link between contraception and the devaluing of human life has not only been pointed out by the religious in the West. Catholics and Protestants in Africa are also highly opposed. Obianuju Ekeocha, author of Target Africa: Ideological Neo-Colonialism of the Twenty-First Century, wrote in response to the Gates Foundation’s promotion of birth control in Africa: “I see this $4.6 billion buying us misery. I see it buying us unfaithful husbands. I see it buying us streets devoid of the innocent chatter of children…I see it buying us a retirement without the tender loving care of our children.”
In many cases the pushing of contraception in Africa goes against the wishes of women themselves, where the average family size desired by women in western and middle Africa ranges from 5 to 9. The Pill is often pushed in Africa as a means of reducing high maternal mortality rates, but studies have shown that these arise from substandard medical care, not from too many births. Yet the West aggressively advocates in Africa, both financially and politically, for increased contraception and loosened abortion laws. To the tune of $600 million the Gates Foundation sponsored a family planning conference in Nigeria that sparked the launch of a national program to raise contraceptive use among Nigerian married women. So much for something not desired by the Nigerian women themselves. Would not that money have been better spent on raising the standard of health care offered to pregnant women? Is not this a case of Western “betters” instructing African women on what is best for them, regardless of their own wishes?
Birth control for Africa is viewed by many as a response to the supposed “population bomb” that Paul Ehrlich popularized in his 1968 book of that name. The population explosion of the early 20th century was supposed to continue on a devastating, inexorable upward trajectory, resulting in the starvation of millions. Africa, with its high fertility rate, was to be particularly affected and the appropriate response was seen to be a decrease in women’s fertility. The mantra runs that fewer people equal fewer problems. Yet, as Ekeocha points out, Ethiopia has a population density of 82 people per square kilometer while the UK’s is 302. Clearly, the UK does not suffer starvation due to having too many people. Gates, et al, have made an obvious error in logic; the problem is not a matter of too many Africans but of too little economic development, which could make up the deficiencies in food supply and health care that so plague the continent. Ironically, westerners like Bill and Melinda Gates, who more than any other persons in world history ought to appreciate the benefits of free enterprise, are instead aggressively pushing contraception and abortion upon an unwilling audience.
2. The lessening of respect of women by men
For the woman, the sexual act involves being penetrated, of being entered. She literally invites the man to come into her very being. The fruit of the sexual act, pregnancy, involves the woman carrying within her body a second body, a second human life. In the gestating, birthing, and raising new life, women are necessary oriented inward—within their bodies, within their homes. Men on the other hand are oriented outward—they go out into the world and create civilization. For men, even the act of sex has an outward focus—once the man’s seed leaves his body, he can have no further participation in the gestation or birthing process. And again, despite many modern attempts to ignore reality, he will have much less to do with the early years of childcare than the woman.
The very design of the female body shows her need for a stable, long-term relationship, for it is only within such relationships that women can optimally raise children and meet our deepest emotional longings and find protection for our vulnerabilities. The hormones released during lovemaking, birth, nursing and cuddling of infants are powerful mechanisms for bonding the woman to the man she conceives with and the child they produce. Removing procreation from the act of sex has the effect of making the act about short-term pleasure. Thus, contraception encourages casual liaisons without the investment that comes from establishing a monogamous, long-term relationship.
“ [A woman’s] capacity to carry life, her fertility, are regarded as inconveniences, akin to a disease that needs to be medicated away. She is to be treated like a man—able to have sex with no lasting consequence to her body, but also to be treated as a non-carrier of life. Thus, her worth is reduced to the pleasure she provides.”
What are the consequences of artificially removing procreation, with its corollary of long-term relationships, from the sexual equation? In Genesis, God created both man and woman in His image and tasked them with filling the earth and creating civilization. Both man and woman contribute to this ongoing mandate, but in different ways. Building a civilization is impossible without people and people are useless without a task to perform. Both man and woman are necessary, yet the woman’s role, that of conceiving, carrying, birthing, and nurturing life is downgraded. Her capacity to carry life, her fertility, are regarded as inconveniences, akin to a disease that needs to be medicated away. She is to be treated like a man—able to have sex with no lasting consequence to her body, but also to be treated as a non-carrier of life. Thus, her worth is reduced to the pleasure she provides.
Yet women have a distinct aversion to being slept with as an object. Dr. Deborah Savage relates her experiences as a daughter of the sexual revolution: “The first indication that one of my dorm mates had “done it” was most often morning-after tears, followed soon by a kind of despair as it dawned on them that the young men to whom they had given themselves had no intention of calling back. The second was the heavy sense of desperation that filled the halls of the dorm as we all waited with bated breath for someone’s menstrual cycle to begin. When it did, there was usually some kind of party; when it did not, the girl just disappeared.” (Why Humanae Vitae Is Still Right, Kindle Edition)
What are the consequences of such “liberation” for women? The rise in illegitimacy and single motherhood is one. Where pregnancy is a women’s issue, why should men take responsibility by seeking marriage and restricting their sexual activity to one, life-long partner? The phenomenon of fatherless homes with their attendant social ills and greater likelihood of poverty is well-documented. (The Effects of Fatherless Children, US Congress Report 2003)
Moreover, casual attitudes toward sex have led to increased use of pornography with its ability to alter sexual desires and responses in male users. The resulting difficulties modern men have in relating to real women in the bedroom is now well documented. Pandemic porn usage has also led to a rise in sex related injuries in teen girls who are pressured, or even forced, into imitating the aggressive sexual practices depicted in porn. Nor can the increase of girls sharing explicit photos of themselves be explained except as a natural result of our pornified culture. According to one survey of 700 children in the UK, 12% of 12- and 13-year-olds said they had taken part in a sexually explicit video. The founder of ChildLine, a counselling hotline for youth, reports that “Girls in particular have said they feel like they have to look and behave like porn stars to be liked by boys.”
None of these outcomes were intended by the early advocates of legalized contraception, and use of contraception is not always accompanied by men lowering their view of women, or a general devaluation of unborn children. Yet no one denies that widespread casual sex is a product of the sexual revolution. That was the whole point, “liberating” people from marriage and babies and making sexual pleasure the ultimate goal. Obviously, such a goal could only be achieved through widespread use of contraception. But once contraception was legal and popular, it naturally led to a loosening of abortion restrictions. Once sex came to be thought of primarily in terms of consequence-free sensation it inevitably led to the objectification of women. The widespread adoption of contraception, i.e. the ability to reliably have sex without making a baby, has had a profound effect on all matters sexual. While it is spoken of by many in glowing terms as an unmitigated success, we would be remiss if we did not examine the evidence to check on the validity of that conclusion. Pope Paul VI made some predictions about the outcomes of the legalization of contraception, and though he was mocked and reviled by many for making them, his words have proven prophetic.
Join us in our interactive online classroom. We will be running the condensed version of the Identity Project in our next Apologetics @ Home sessions. The Identity Project is designed to be a safe space to talk about topics such as sexuality, gender and pornography. The curriculum is designed to appeal to all ages, from pre-teens to seniors. The theme of the individual’s identity in Christ is foundational to the Christian faith. You will be glad you took the time.