Has the Sexual Revolution Been Good for Women?

This is an interesting overview of some of the gender issues in culture and politics:

Of all the political gambits that ought to be torn from the playbook once and for all, the idea that a national “war on women” is afoot has got to top the list. It’s an ideological whopper that demands more scrutiny than it has so far gotten — because underneath it are solid rocks of myth, especially myths about the sexual revolution and its real fallout. Let’s turn over a few of these to see what facts they hide.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Speaking of Nuns

JImmy Akin has some interesting analysis of the apparent turnabout of the Catholic Health Association and Sister Keehan, their spokesnun. I'm intrigued by his concern that a too-detailed analysis of how the Administration can achieve it's immoral aims could be immoral itself (enabling). And the mention that late Friday news is ignored by the MMS, when convenient. Give it a read and see what you think.

A closer look at Sr. Carol Keehan's turnabout...:

The move is momentous because Keehan famously broke with the U.S. bishops to endorse the original passage of the administration's Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") and then broke with them again to endorse the Department of Health and Human Services abortion drug and contraception mandate, providing political cover for the administration. Both acts were widely criticized, and it appeared to many that Sr. Keehan was a willing tool of the administration's "divide and conquer" strategy for dealing with the Catholic community--playing the role of an alternative Catholic authority that could be pitted against and thus neutralize the voice of he bishops.

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent.)

In Memoriam

With Mike Wallace's recent passing here is an opportunity for a two-fer: a remembrance of Mike Wallace and of Margaret Sanger:

Mike Wallace's classic interview with Margaret Sanger makes the rounds after Wallace's death...:

Margaret Sanger was many things admirable: a vibrant personality, a brilliant organizer, a canny reader of the temperature of the times, a woman who built powerful institutions in a man’s world. But she was also many things ugly and even despicable: an egotist who frequently clashed with others; a free-love advocate who had a dizzying number of affairs and who hurt many men as a result; and a eugenicist who argued that “birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defective.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Speak the Truth

Here's an articulate discussion of the HHS mandate, contraception and gender in the light of the Catholic Faith by (gasp!) a Catholic laywoman:

The HHS Mandate gets Pwned:

Here’s how you fight it:

Don’t just call it an attack on religious liberty: make it clear that contraception is *morally wrong*, and don’t let people think it’s just ritually impure like eating pork.

And do it in the confidence that this is a winning issue for the Church and a losing issue for Obama. Don’t back down. Resist the Tyrant!

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Taboo

topics in RCIA certainly included contraception. I managed to persuade some to attend a viewing of Dr. Smith's video "Contraception: Why Not?" in the Mystagogia period of formation. The reactions were enlightening to say the least.

Contraception, deception, and retrospection:

The feature story for the May 2, 2010, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper is titled, "Uncovering a string of lies"; it was written by Dr. Janet Smith to mark the 50th anniversary of the FDA's approval of "The Pill." An excerpt:

That the Father of Lies should be using lies and subterfuge to promote contraception should not be surprising.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)

Condoms and Happiness

don't go together, surprise, surprise:

“Safe Sex” with Condoms Bad for Mental Health, Psych Researcher Finds:

(LifeSiteNews.com) – Research from Scotland finding that heterosexual sex without using condoms is more likely to make people happy than “safe sex” with condoms, has stirred controversy among “sexual health” campaigners. The lead researcher wrote of the survey respondents, “The more often they have sex without condoms, the better their mental health.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

What Is This About?

A rapist or a murderer has a higher place in hell than someone who leads little ones astray to false teaching, especially to false moral teaching, for the one defiles the body, and the other defiles the soul. God help us!



Father John Corapi, Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 1, 2001

Father is apparently coming back to this theme:

The Canadian Bishops & Their Rebellion: What It’s Going to Cost:

The majority of Canadian bishops signed the infamous Winnipeg Statement that just categorically rejected Humanae Vitae. That kind of rebellion is catastrophic

Read the whole thing.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Abortafacient Contrceptives?

Following up on the previous post here is some more evidence for that argument:

New Evangelical Documentary Exposes Abortifacient Qualities of the Birth Control Pill, Promotes NFP:

By Alex Bush May 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A documentary called “28 Days on the Pill” has been released that seeks expose the abortifacient properties of the birth control pill.  The documentary explains that many forms of birth control pills contain progesterone,...

Read the whole thing.

(Via LifeSiteNews.com Headlines.)

Don't You Prefer Contraception to Abortion?

This is what an earnest young candidate asked me a few years ago during the RCIA Process. He reasoned, as many do, that it is the lesser of two evils. But I had to answer "no".

You see, it's not really abortion or contraception; the two go hand-in-hand:

"Most abortions are the result of unwanted pregnancies, most unwanted pregnancies are the result of sexual relationships outside of marriage, and most sexual relationships outside of marriage are facilitated by the availability of contraception. To turn this 'progression' around: contraception leads to more extra-marital sexual intercourse, more extra-marital sexual intercourse leads to more unwanted pregnancies; more unwanted pregnancies lead to more abortions."

Janet Smith (via the USCCB Pro-life page.)

The mentality that separates the sex act from procreation doesn't greet pregnancy as a happy accident. If sex is for gratification (mutual or otherwise) then the "burden" of parenthood doesn't exactly signal gratification to the reluctant parent. And that doesn't even address the fact that the contraceptive pill and IUD's are abortifacient by themselves already.

And even the so-called 99% effective method (birth control pills) fails sometimes. Consider that:

"Pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute has repeatedly reported on major surveys that show 56%-58% of all women having abortions were using contraception the month they became pregnant."

(Hat tip to Physicians for Life.)

If President Obama offers contraception to "lessen the need for abortion" he is in fact promoting a mindset and technologies that will increase the actual number of abortions. There's no common ground between the pro-lifer and pro-choice positions in contraception.

For those desperate for common ground they have to consider sterilization. Good luck with that project.

Dialogue: Answer to Example Number One's Question

Lo and behold, Obama does not want to reduce the number of abortions. He just wants to increase the use of contraceptives. Oh yeah, there's a common ground for him to work with the "Spirit of Vatican II" Catholics: they both reject Humanae Vitae. Guess where the rest of us are left?

Key Obama aide: "It is not our goal to reduce the number of abortions.”:

The goal, as reportedly stated by Melody Barnes, who is the President’s Domestic Policy Adviser and the Director of the Domestic Policy Council, is to "reduce the need for abortions."

And what has been Obama's preferred method of "reducing the need for abortions" in the past?


Each of these prominently features the use of contraceptives as an essential means of reducing abortions.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)