Dear Anonymous: My Opinion on Birth Control

Somebody named Anonymous who apparently has no face asked me this in a comment. I sat and sat and I thought and thought, but there was no way to answer your question in a comment. So I decided to write a post about it.

Birth control is a very heated argument, and it has been for a really long time. In 1879 law called the Act Concerning Offense Against Decency, Morality, and Humanity was made. It outlawed owning, obtaining, distributing, or manufacturing any literature, article, instrument, or drug that prevented fertilization or caused abortion. Contraception was not only illegal, it was super duper illegal.

Zoom forward a bit to the 1960s when a woman named Estelle Griswold decided to start an illegal Planned Parenthood birth control clinic. She knew she'd get caught, but she was ready for a lawsuit. She became the defendant of, and won, Griswold vs Connecticut. This case stated that while the Constitution never uses the word privacy, it's one of the most basic rights of mankind. It said that the government has no right to decide what a man and wife can or cannot do in the privacy of their own bedroom. In June of 1965, birth control was legalized for married couples.

Fast forward 50 years, and we're still arguing about birth control. It's more accepted in the mainstream world, but with Obama's HHS Mandate that would require all hospitals to administer contraceptives, people are beginning to take a firm stand against it. The Catholic Church is making some serious threats to shut down their hospitals so that they wont be forced to distribute birth control which is against their beliefs. It's becoming religious freedom verses reproductive freedom. There's apparently a war on women going on. It's getting nasty.

All that to say, any and everything I say here I'm sure will cause trouble. But since when can people not have opinions about controversial issues? Since when can we not express them? As always, this is me expressing my beliefs, not shoving them down your throat. If you disagree, I would love to have a conversation with you in the comments. A respectful conversation, not a heated argument.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, here's my opinion.

Many forms of birth control should be made illegal. Before you stop reading, note that I said many, not all. I believe all forms of abortion should be made illegal, because it kills a human being. The truth is many forms of birth control are nothing more than abortion. As I explained here, the dispute as to when pregnancy begins has masked many early abortions as birth control. Everyone agrees that pregnancy begins at conception, but some say conception is fertilization and others say it's implantation. That's eight days difference, and those eight days means life or death for millions of little tiny brand new human beings. Scientifically, life begins at fertilization, but according to some, pregnancy begins eight days later. In regards to birth control, any birth control that prevents a fertilized egg from implanting on the uterus is abortion. I am whole heartedly against those forms of birth control.

Birth control that prevents fertilization from happening, I believe that should be your own decision. Many religions condemn all forms of birth control for various reasons, many of these reasons I respect. As a whole though, I see no reason for the government to outlaw all forms of birth control because of some religious beliefs. Let the environmentalists be environmentalists and let the Catholics be Catholics. We should obey our convictions and beliefs.

But when speaking of life, life needs to be protected by the government. Your religious beliefs cannot allow you to murder someone legally. That leaves the difficult distinction: which forms of birth control are abortifacient (meaning cause an abortion), and which are ok?

Abort73 has a good list of which birth control methods are abortifacient and which are not. I'm only going to talk about one birth control method, because it frightens me how casually it is treated. The birth control pill is a dose of hormones that does three things to prevent pregnancy. It prevents ovulation, thickens the mucus lining to prevent fertilization, and then as a fail-safe it thins the lining of the uterus to prevent implantation in case fertilization does occur. The first two steps that the birth control pill does are fine, but the third, if it comes to that, definitely causes an abortion. In fact, some of the abortion pills are nothing more than high-dose birth control pills. It saddens me that the birth control pill is thrown around so much regardless of the potential damage it is doing. Women take it for all sorts of reasons besides as a contraceptive, but it is known to have lasting damage on women's reproductive health in the future. It plays with life, putting children at risk. While they are only a few cells and can't be detected yet, but they are still human beings. We were all there once.

A friend of mine is very passionate about this issue. She sent me the high-low estimates of how many accidental abortions happen because of birth control--it's somewhere between 6,704,900 and 22,141,900. This is sobering. That is a terrifying amount of legalized murder in this country.

There you have it, my opinion about birth control. If you were asking about my views of fertilization-preventing birth control, I haven't figured out what I personally believe yet. When it comes time for me to make that decision I will do a lot more research, prayer, and ask a whole lot of people I respect. There, I hope that helps! Thanks for the great question!

Pop Quiz 2

My last Pop Quiz was regarding the definition of the word "conception." We did have a few winners! But not a ton of responses. I'll have to keep nagging you all to get you to respond, or I'll just actually post every two weeks like I said I would :) So for our answer!

All over the place, pro-lifer's have said that "life begins at conception" but the confusing definition of the word means a lot of the time they aren't saying what they think they're saying. In 1965, the definition of conception changed from fertilization to implantation. In order to understand the significance of this, we have to understand the distinct difference between fertilization and implantation. 

Fertilization is the moment when the sperm meets the egg, fertilizes it, and a unique cell is created. This cell, called a zygote, has DNA different from any other DNA that has ever or ever will be created. The DNA determines gender and serves as a blueprint for what the zygote will look like for the rest of his or her life. This moment determines not only all of prenatal development, but all development after birth as well. This is the moment when, scientifically, life begins.

Implantation happens eight days after fertilization. Once the egg is fertilized by the sperm and becomes a zygote, it makes its way to the woman's womb and implants on the lining of her uterus. This is implantation, and happens already after life begins. When the definition of "conception" changed in 1965, it moved conception to eight days after the original definition, eight days after life begins. That may not seem like a lot, but eight days has meant life or death for a lot of people when they, too, were zygotes.

The definition of conception was changed in 1965, the same year birth control was legalized in America. If conception marked the beginning of pregnancy, and pregnancy could be pushed back to start at implantation rather than fertilization, then that's eight more days to work with to "prevent" pregnancy from starting. New forms of birth control (called contraception) can be known as preventative birth control rather than abortion. If we were clear that we believe life begins at fertilization rather than implantation or conception, then a lot of forms of birth control would be considered abortifacient rather than preventative. How many lives have been ended by "birth control" will never be known, but the estimates are staggeringly huge.

And now, the latest and greatest question. In honor of the history of abortion (because I love it soooo much), this question will be regarding that. There are three main court cases that helped legalize abortion, which is NOT one of them? Your options are:
-Griswold vs Connecticut (1965) legalized contraception under the right to privacy.
-R. vs Morgentaler (1971) struck down every abortion law, legalizing it on demand through all nine months of pregnancy.
-Roe vs Wade (1973) legalized abortion abortion on demand in the first trimester, and allowed exceptions in the third trimester for the woman's health.
-Doe vs Bolton (1973) defined "health" to include a woman's physical, medical, psychological, mental, and familial health.

Choose wisely! And looking it up is cheating. I'll try my very very hardest to post an answer and a new question in two weeks. We'll see how that works. Good luck!

Freedom of Choice, Forced Abortions

Warning: extremely graphic photo below. 

In America, abortion is seen as a lovely thing that allows people to choose when they have children. They can plan out their families, their lives wont be interrupted by untimely babies, and women are no longer constrained by the inconveniences of pregnancy.

In China, abortion is entirely something different. It's worlds apart.

Because of fears of overpopulation, China has developed a one-child policy. In 1979 China adopted the policy that allowed couples to only have one child, and penalized those who had a second. This has brought on all sorts of problems, problems that we can only wait to see how they will play out in the future. One of the biggest examples is gendercide; because of the culture's emphasis on having boys and the liability it is to have a daughter, many couples abort or abandon their daughters until they can have a boy. This has created a distorted sex ratio that will leave 50 million Chinese men without wives.

The horrors of the one-child policy seem to be catching America's attention more and more. Recently, a photo from June 3, 2012 was released of a woman named Feng Jianmei. She was beaten and dragged into a car by Family Planning Officials. They demanded RMB 40,000 (about 6,300 American dollars), but when her family could not supply the money they forced her to abort her seven month old baby.

After the forced abortion, they laid the body next to her in bed.

This is hard to stomach. How sick that something people fight tooth and nail to defend in our country is the cause of so much suffering and injustice in another? 

LifeSiteNews article, Bryan Kemper's article, original picture, Petition to Stop Forced Abortion in China, All Girls Allowed. 

Life and Death and Apollo 13

I'm really becoming a fan of finding places in our culture where human life is valuable.

I'm a little behind on things, but I only saw Apollo 13 for the first time a few weeks ago. Anyways, it was great, and one thing in particular really struck me. When it looked as if Apollo 13 wouldn't be able to land back on earth, the entire world was captivated by the story. People put their normal lives on hold, gathered around their televisions, and prayed for these lives that hung in the balance. For three lives. Yet how often do we not care about far more than three lives that are hanging in the balance? While it's discouraging sometimes when people don't care about stopping the thousands of deaths each day from abortion, it's refreshing to see the world care about the lives of these three men.

Prenatal Discrimination Act

PRENDA, the Prenatal Discrimination Act, has failed. It would have made sex-selective abortions illegal, but the two-thirds majority needed failed with 246 yes and 168 no. (Read more here).

What's more, today Live Action released another video in their War On Baby Girls series. This time, in New York City, yet another Planned Parenthood employee counsels a woman seeking to abort if her baby is a girl. She says having another girl would be horrible because she wants a boy. What will Planned Parenthood do now? They keep saying they are against gendercide, they seemed to luck out last time by having already fired the employee of the previous video, what will be their next move?

Abby Johnson of Live Action, author of Unplanned, and former Planned Parenthood clinic director, said, "The counselor in this video is a licensed social worker. In this video you will hear her encourage the pregnant women to get a Chorionic Villi Sampling test to determine the gender of her baby. Here's what the counselor doesn't say...CVS testing is very risky...miscarriage rate is 1 in a 100 procedures. Oh well, it's not like they really care about the unborn or risks...or informed consent."

And yes, this has been my second post of the day and it's only 4:30. That's what happens when interesting things are happening in abortion news and I'm trying to draft that darn chapter four about abortion history. 

Gendercide: "War On Baby Girls, part 1" from Live Action

Live Action is a pro-life organization that performs under-cover investigations of Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider. So far they have exposed Planned Parenthood involved in human trafficking, covering up sexual abuse, accepting racist donations, and giving women inaccurate medical information. Yesterday they released another project called War On Baby Girls. The first video in the series, in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, shockingly shows the clinic employee helping a woman plan how to abort her unborn child if its a girl, but continue with the pregnancy if it's a boy. Then she helped her abuse Medicaid in order to fund this sex-selective abortion.

Stay tuned for more videos in the War On Baby Girls series. In the meantime, you can sign this petition to ban sex-selective abortions nationwide. 100 million girls are missing today. There are 100 million more boys in the world today due to this gendercide. What happened to equality, women's rights, and feminism? Girls are being killed just for being girls. That has to stop now.

Life and Death and...the AVENGERS!!

I'm not usually one for action movies. While they can be fun, completely lacking a plot is one of the most annoying things a movie can do. Even if there is a plot, not having good characters or character development or anything at all realistic is really annoying. Well, I don't know if the Avengers somehow managed all of that perfectly or if I was just in a super good movie-watching mood when I watched it, but I loved it.

Maybe I just liked all different superheroes with all different back stories, habits, styles, and struggles all trying to put aside their differences and work together. Iron Man's arrogance, the Hulk's anger issues, Captain America feeling outdated, Thor being a mythical god...ect, it made for an interesting plot.

Or maybe I just like the idea of superheroes.

Or maybe I realized just how much superhero movies appeal to the part of us that wants the good guys to win, that wants evil to lose, that wants human life to be spared.

I'm beginning to realize the parts of our culture that does value life. The Avengers have to work together in order to protect millions of people from dying at the hands of evil. Near the end of the movie, New York City is under a huge attack and many authorities wanted to drop a nuclear bomb on the city in order to keep the attack from spreading. The Avengers want to spare as much human life as they can, so they have to find a way to save the world as well as the city.

I like superhero movies, cause with each daring and incredibly act they are protecting the lives of the human beings. Too many action movies show thousands of people dying during a really cool shot of a building blowing up. Superheroes value and protect human life.

Life and Death and Parks and Rec

Last week's episode of the best TV show ever, Parks and Recreation, brought up some interesting questions. When City Counsel candidate Leslie Knope accidentally insulted a man in a speech, only to find he had just died, people were horrified. What she said would have been fine if he had been living, but because he had recently passed away it was unacceptable. Now me, being the Parks and Rec fan and nerd that I am, couldn't help but ask questions.

What is it about death that makes us respect those who have passed?

We go to funerals of people we barely knew or aren't even fond of. Why is that? Why is insulting a deceased person extra offensive, even if it's the truth? Why do we honor the dead, even those whose life we never honored?

I think this has to do with our understanding and value of life. Which leads to more questions.

How much do you value life? If you had to put a price on it, what would it be? To what extent would you go to save the life of someone you love, somebody you know, or a stranger? Saving a life could mean jumping in a frozen lake to save a drowning person, pushing someone out of the path of an oncoming car, stepping in when a person is being mugged, preventing suicide, performing life saving surgery, being at the right place at the right time to call 911, or sending money to developing countries to provide food, water, and medicine to the poor. Whatever it may be, is it worth you sacrificing your time, energy, and resources for?

We all value life to some extent. It's not entirely about courage, bravery, or sacrificing. While that's definitely part of it, I think it's mostly about our value of life. Do we ever not value life enough? That's an extremely dangerous mistake to make, but I do it all the time. Where do we need to value life more? Whose life am I not valuing?

(Also, congratulations to Leslie for winning the campaign.) 

Pro-Abortion Irony

Oh the irony. Everybody knows that Christians are the hypocrites of the world, and the pro-choice side is completely logical. Right?

President Obama is by far the most pro-abortion president our nation has ever seen. He invited Nancy Keenan, the head of NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) to the White Houses' Christmas party and he's met with Cecile Richards, the CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, four times in the White House alone. He's repealed abortion laws, voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (which criminalized infanticide), and gave this promise to Planned Parenthood. All that to say, he's extremely pro-abortion.

However, this week the White House made a pretty surprising change to their security system. The Director of the White Houses' Visitor's Office, Ellie Shafer, is now including the unborn in her tours. When you're signing up for a tour of the White House and you're pregnant, you must sign in your unborn child too.

Planned Parenthood in D.C. 

I find this quite ironic. You can go to the White House and have to sign you unborn baby in, then right afterwards walk 0.6 miles to the Planned Parenthood down the street and have that baby killed. Abortions in D.C. can be performed up to the due date, but the unborn are included in the headcount when giving tours in the White House for security purposes. It looks like the only safe place for the unborn is in the White House, even with the extremely pro-abortion president we have.

Douglas Johnson, the legislative director of National Right to Life, pointed out to Lifenews that when registering your unborn child, you must indicate the gender. If you don't know then you have to report it after birth. But what do you do if you abort your child? Do you have to report that, too?

Oh the irony.

Where Are the Feminists Now?

***Edit: I lot of people seem to be missing my point here. I'm sorry for the ambiguity; please let me clarify. I am not blaming feminists for forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortions in Asia. I am simply asking why they aren't fighting this more. If abortion is a fundamental right, then is it okay that it's being forced on women in Asia? It's starting to look like abortion is not equalizing men and women in Asia, rather being used to discriminate against women.

Abortion is used to kill women. There are currently 163 million more men than women in Asia. Why? Because 163 women have been killed. Whether you believe an unborn human, a fetus, is a life or a potential life (another argument for another time), you still can't say that 163 missing women is bringing equality to women.

I'm sorry for the confusing and I will try to be more clear in future posts. Thank you for reading.***


“163 million women are missing from Asia. That is the entire female population of the United States.” 

The feminists who claim the “right to abortion” is what gives them true equality with men should be horrified by this truth. 

Thanks to population control, forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortions in Asia, there are 163 million men without future wives. Rebecca Taylor explains, “This abundance of unmarried men is not a small problem. Unmarried men are more violent than their married counterparts. Crime is now on the rise: 

Between 1992 and 2004 China’s crime rate nearly doubled. In India from 2003 to 2007 rape cases surged over 30 percent and abduction by over 50 percent prompting the government to unveil female-only trains.”

163 million women are missing, and those who are left are living in fear of being raped, kidnapped, and sold as property to ensure rich families a wife for their son. The pro-abortion movement claims that abortion is a fundamental right for women. Where are the feminists now?

http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/03/legacy-of-population-control-163-million-missing-women/ 

"Jane Roe" on Abortion

This was originally posted in July of 2011 using tumblr. 

"In all honesty, abortion has a way of reducing so-called women into girls. In all our proabortion rhetoric, we talked about “women’s rights,” but you’ve never seen as many teddy bears as you’ll see in one week at an abortion clinic."

Norma McCorvey or “Jane Roe” of Roe v Wade. 

What Does Planned Parenthood Say About Adoption?

This was originally posted in June of 2011 using tumblr. 

What does Planned Parenthood say about adoption? This is a screen shot of a page of their website talking about adoption. 

On their website, they have information about a woman’s “options” when she becomes pregnant. They talk about parenting, adoption, and abortion. When you click on each one, they have information and frequently asked questions. For abortion, the FAQ’s they answer are things like, “How effective are in-clinic procedures?” and “How much does it cost?” There’s nothing about “is abortion right for you?” or any precautionary questions when talking about abortion, yet when talking about adoption they seem like they’re bracing you for a traumatic experience. 

They ask about adoption, “Will I be able to cope with feelings of loss I may have?” but don’t even mention the thousands of women who suffer from Post Abortion Syndrome, a deep depression and feelings of loss after an abortion. They ask if you’re feeling pressured into adoption, but don’t consider women being pressured into an abortion as a bad thing. Why should they? It’s good business. 

Planned Parenthood is a business. A big business. They make money with abortions, so they sell them like products. People say sex sells in advertising (just watch a body wash commercial), so Planned Parenthood sells a whole lot of sex. They don’t really care about women that much; it’s all about the money. So much for pro-choice! (For more information, see the movie Blood Money. It’s crazy good.) 

P.S. They hurt tens of thousands of women a year, and kill tens of thousands of innocent children a year. Our tax dollars still go to them. 

Abortion History Jeopardy (because we both know you always wanted to know this)

This was originally posted in June of 2011 using tumblr. 

This week I’m working on a chapter about the history of abortion and how it became legalized in the United States. And ohhh boy. I have two books that are over 1200 pages long, and countless other books and articles that I’m trying to make heads or tails out of. I’m not very bright when it comes to law, so this has definitely been the most exhausting and excruciating chapter thus far. 

HOWEVER. I’ve found a way to make it interesting. 

There are some remarkable, crazy facts in the history of abortion. So I’ve been keeping track of them, you know, to whip out at that perfect time in conversation. Here’s a few of my favorites: 

• Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood), her first husband, William Sanger, was an architect who helped design Grand Central Station. He was also a Communist and Socialist. 
• Margaret Sanger got started politically when she heard the propagandist for the Bolshevik party (I forget his name) speak, then she became a Marxist. 
• Numerous cases (I could think of around 5) about birth control and abortion that lead up to Roe v. Wade all rhymed with Roe, including the companion case, Doe v. Bolton. 
• The case that legalized abortion, Roe v. Wade, happened when a woman named Jane Roe and her attorney Sarah Weddington sued the state of Texas for an abortion. Although Sarah Weddington had an illegal abortion a few years prior to the case and ran an abortion referral organization, she never helped Roe get an abortion. Roe put her child up for adoption and has never had an abortion. 
• The idea for Roe v. Wade began at a garage sale. 
• Sarah Weddington’s first case was Roe v. Wade. 
• Quite a few years after the case, Jane Roe (or her real name, Norma McCorvey) worked in an abortion clinic until a pro-life crisis pregnancy center moved in next door. Because of their love and kindness to her, she converted to Christianity and became pro-life. 
• Jane Roe/Norma McCorvey was almost aborted. 
• The companion case, Doe v. Bolton, was about the alleged Mary Doe suing for an abortion because she had health problems keeping her from using birth control. The real Mary Doe, Sandra Cano-Bensing, never wanted an abortion. She thought she was signing papers to get her children back in her custody. When her attorney made an appointment for an abortion for her, she left the state to protect her unborn child. 

See? I knew you always wanted to know that. You’re welcome, world. 

(If you’re interested about citations, ha, because I’m sure you’re as cool as me and are, email me: beccafrenchauthor@gmail.com)