Contraception lead to increased abortions and STD's?

[Curious_Hobbit]

In the past I’ve heard several times that proponents of contraception in the U.S. argued that contraceptives would cause abortion rates to decline, but abortions rates increased instead. I’ve also heard there is a correlation between the availability of contraceptives and STD’s.Can someone refer me to any studies or good articles about this? I’m interested in learning more and having good sources to cite. Thanks!

 

[Seeker2010]

In the past I’ve heard several times that proponents of contraception in the U.S. argued that contraceptives would cause abortion rates to decline, but abortions rates increased instead. I’ve also heard there is a correlation between the availability of contraceptives and STD’s.Can someone refer me to any studies or good articles about this? I’m interested in learning more and having good sources to cite. Thanks!

You’ve been misinformed. Both abortion rates as well as rates of STD’s have been falling for decades. A simple google search will help you find that.

 

[faithfully]

Wiki has lots of stats on abortion.

The CDC compiles the # of abortions as REPORTED… the numbers are going down.

This site has some older stats.

It shows that 54% of those getting an abortion used a failed contraception. Abortion is their Back-up Method.

46% apparently didn’t think they could get PG, didn’t want to use contraception, or didn’t expect to be having sex… so no contraception…

 

[Holly3278]

I don’t mean this as anything in favor of contraception or abortion by any means. However, contraception became widely available before abortion on demand was legalized by Roe vs Wade. So, therefore, wouldn’t it be accepted that the abortion rate would increase after abortion on demand was legalized? Is it not possible that the increase in abortion rates is unrelated to contraception?

That said, I do not know how contraception could lead to more STD infections. The reason? Well, I think that the primary concern of some women is to avoid pregnancy. Once they feel they are protected against pregnancy through the use of artificial contraception, they tend to neglect the fact that there are still STDs out there that you can get and that contraception will not protect you from. Also, some women (in particular younger women who tend to be less educated than older women) believe that contraception such as the birth control pill helps to protect against STDs which it does not.

Now, of course, these are just my own theories but in short, I think women kind of get a false sense of security with contraception and therefore end up being riskier when it comes to the other potential harms of sexual behavior.

 

[Curious_Hobbit]

I may have been confused. The argument might have been that contraceptives will reduce the number of births out of wed lock and abortions won’t really be needed. I may have confused this with the pope Paul VI predicting that contraceptives will lead to more abortions.

I was just wondering if anyone could refer me to particular studies, primary sources, or other articles. Here are just a few articles.

catholicbasictraining.com/apologetics/coursetexts/8f.htm

nccbuscc.org/prolife/programs/rlp//Schu05.shtml

lifenews.com/nat5038.html

 

[katieh921]

There is no way to prove that contraception leads to abortions and STD’s without a controlled study…something that is basically impossible to do. At most you could find a correlation (though I don’t even know if that exists) but the first rule of statistics is that correlation does not equal causation. Basically any study that “proves” that contraception causes abortion or std’s is inherently flawed.

 

[JimG]

Anecdotal observation only, but it seems to me that when contraception became more widely available (and sold off the shelf instead of from behind the pharmacy counter) extramarital sex became a lot more common. More sex partners meant more failed contraception, which meant more out of wedlock pregnancies or more abortion.

 

[Seeker2010]

Folks, you can wish for it all you like, but it’s an indisputable fact that rates of all negative things associated with promiscuity have been falling for decades, despite the fact that promiscuity itself is on the rise. Unwanted pregnancies, STD’s, abortions, you name it.

Here is a chart that I created using CDC data on Syphilis rates in the US since 1941. Other diseases have similar results. The number of new HIV infections remains relatively constant from year to year, with our increasing population, that means the rates are going down.

Keep in mind, I made this myself with data freely available from the CDC website.

http://nykevin.smugmug.com/Other/Random/Syph-Rates/1024696988_kCpKo-M.jpg

 

[stephe1987]

Abortions went up A LOT since they became legal. Before they were legal, 90% were done at doctor’s offices, so they weren’t unsafe or anything like that. Today, there are MILLIONS of abortions every year. Millions of women later regret having their abortions. Many women are forced into having abortions by their boyfriends, and they also say they wouldn’t have had an abortion if it weren’t legalized.

Different studies I’ve read show that 50% to 66% of sexually active people aged 15-24 either have or have had a sexually transmitted disease of some kind (ranging from a rash to full-blown AIDS). That is higher than ever before! The rates for the elderly are also higher than ever before.

Maybe the rates for HIV or syphilis or certain other specific STDs/STIs are going down, but it is very obvious that the overall disease/infection rate is increasing, based on the percentages and news articles (from secular sources) that I’ve been reading lately.

And… it is indisputable that 50% of babies born in 2007 were born to unwed mothers. It is good that they did not murder their children, but it is not good that so many children are growing up in broken homes today. So many children will grow up with an absent father, not knowing who their father is, or in a home where parents aren’t committed to each other.

The rates for divorce and infidelity are also HIGHER than ever before! Around half of all marriages end in divorce, and a very high number of people (I don’t remember the exact percentages) have admitted to cheating on their spouse. This, along with the out-of-wedlock birthrate, leads to broken families.

Is promiscuity on the rise? Yes. But is it good? Definitely not.

And why would anyone “wish” for abortions, out-of-wedlock births, and sexually transmitted diseases to go up? That is a disgusting accusation to make.

EDIT TO ADD: Even one abortion is too many. One STD is too many. But millions of people? That is way too many and a reason to fight.

 

[stephe1987]

Also, there are plenty of organizations that are NOT required to report their abortions/diseases/etc., and people might choose to go to those instead for privacy, out of embarrassment, etc. Planned Parenthood isn’t even required to report sexual abuse of minors! So the CDC figures are misleading.

And like I said, even if it is true that certain diseases such as HIV and syphilis have gone down, the overall percentages of people with an STD of any kind are increasing, especially among young people and the elderly.

And of course… even ONE is too many. One dead baby, one person with ANY kind of STD.

This stuff will not end unless people learn some self-control and keep it in their pants. Giving people condoms to stop the spread of disease is like giving people bullet-proof vests to help them not get shot. Most of the time, it will protect you, but is that really a chance worth taking?

Contraception is a factor in the sexualization of humans. People are seen as sex objects for pleasure, and not as human beings. In the past few years when I lived in Los Angeles, I met a lot of men who have NO respect for women. They cohabit with her (she agreed to it because she thinks they will get married soon), and meanwhile he is cheating on her, and has no qualms about dumping her if she complains. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” They say there are prettier girls who will put out without marriage, so there is no reason to commit, even if the birth control fails (it’s never 100%) and she gets pregnant.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Folks, you can wish for it all you like, but it’s an indisputable fact that rates of all negative things associated with promiscuity have been falling for decades, despite the fact that promiscuity itself is on the rise. Unwanted pregnancies, STD’s, abortions, you name it.

Here is a chart that I created using CDC data on Syphilis rates in the US since 1941. Other diseases have similar results. The number of new HIV infections remains relatively constant from year to year, with our increasing population, that means the rates are going down.

Keep in mind, I made this myself with data freely available from the CDC website.

http://nykevin.smugmug.com/Other/Random/Syph-Rates/1024696988_kCpKo-M.jpg

Is syphilis the only STD? What about gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, hpv etc?

 

[06convert]

The bottom line is that concraception incourages sexual relationships that are both non-monogamous and not open to life, or out of the context that God created the act. So when the contraceptive fails or is not used properly the couple is many times more likely to spread an existing STD or have an abortion.

Contraceptives were not created to prevent pregnancy or stop the spread of STDs. There was already a 100% effective way to prevent that with abstinence. Contraceptives were created as a way to try and let us have random self serving sexual relationships that aren’t open to life. The fact they might prevent the spread of STDs (if used properly) is just another selling point. .

So while contraceptives are effective for these reasons if never misused or never fail, they don’t solve the real issue. The issue isn’t STDs and pregnancy. The issue are people having sex with multiple partners and having sex in a way that isn’t as God intended (open to life).

 

[Seeker2010]

So the CDC figures are misleading.

Trust me, the government data is wrong, it’s really much worse than reported? Please. Doctors are required, by law, to report STD incidents.

Giving people condoms to stop the spread of disease is like giving people bullet-proof vests to help them not get shot. Most of the time, it will protect you, but is that really a chance worth taking?

Except sexual activity isn’t the equivalent of being downrange at a shooting gallery. I’ve had sex thousands of times with dozens if not hundreds of different women, and never caught a thing. There was a brief rumor that a playmate had herpes, but turns out it was the oral variety, and the only reason 100% of us don’t have that eventually is that some of us die before we become infected.

Contraception is a factor in the sexualization of humans. People are seen as sex objects for pleasure, and not as human beings.

People ARE sex objects for pleasure, that’s not mutually exclusive from being a human. Your philosophy towards that predisposes that sexuality for fun is bad. It’s not.

Maybe the rates for HIV or syphilis or certain other specific STDs/STIs are going down, but it is very obvious that the overall disease/infection rate is increasing, based on the percentages and news articles (from secular sources) that I’ve been reading lately.

Those two statements are logically inconsistent. You can’t have rates for all measured diseases going down individually and have rates of all measured illnesses going up as a whole. It’s a mathematical impossibility. Whatever sources you are reading are either wrong, or you are misunderstanding the data presented.

And… it is indisputable that 50% of babies born in 2007 were born to unwed mothers.

Actually, it’s closer to 40%, but it is still a large percentage. However, there’s a big difference in a 16-year old who accidentally get’s pregnant and a 40-year old professional who does it on purpose, but from a statistics perspective they are the same.

Around half of all marriages end in divorce, and a very high number of people (I don’t remember the exact percentages) have admitted to cheating on their spouse. This, along with the out-of-wedlock birthrate, leads to broken families.

Perhaps that only serves to prove the idea the humans are not naturally monogamous, and the by making that the norm we’re attempting to force a square peg into a round hole with the predictable results? Na, it couldn’t be that, could it?

Is promiscuity on the rise? Yes. But is it good? Definitely not.

Based on the measurable statistics, your statement is logically invalid. At worst, the rise in promiscuity is neutral, at best it’s actually a good thing, as the negative indicators have been falling while promiscuity has been rising.

As to why you’d want them to be rising, it’s because then you’d have a point. Ya’ll bleat on with ‘The sky is falling’ arguments because everybody is getting their freak on more and more, but when I come along and point out, no STD’s are not rising, they’re falling, and no, abortion is not rising, it’s falling, and no, unwanted pregnancy is not rising, it’s falling, then all of a sudden your ‘Everyone is having too much promiscuous sex’ argument looks silly.

 

[rwillenborg]

Folks, you can wish for it all you like, but it’s an indisputable fact that rates of all negative things associated with promiscuity have been falling for decades, despite the fact that promiscuity itself is on the rise. Unwanted pregnancies, STD’s, abortions, you name it.

Here is a chart that I created using CDC data on Syphilis rates in the US since 1941. Other diseases have similar results. The number of new HIV infections remains relatively constant from year to year, with our increasing population, that means the rates are going down.

Keep in mind, I made this myself with data freely available from the CDC website.

http://nykevin.smugmug.com/Other/Random/Syph-Rates/1024696988_kCpKo-M.jpg

My reading of the data suggests that we should be very thankful to Alexander Fleming for discovering penicillin. Has contraceptive use played a role? Absolutely. Has penicillin played the larger one? I would say definitely yes.
Does an increase in the availability of contraceptives, though, lead to an increase in risk-seeking behavior, even if the physical consequences of that behavior can be avoided? As another poster stated, causation can’t be shown, only correlation on that front, and even in that case, it is difficult to account for other influencing factors.

However, to the OPs original point, the idea behind contraceptives was that abortion would become obsolete or at least rare, since women now had a way to prevent unplanned pregnancies. I think it is fair to say that, at over 1 million abortions a year, abortion is far from rare and over half of ALL pregnancies are STILL unintended (per the Guttmacher Institute).

And seeker, I don’t know anyone, religious or not, who would wish that the incidence of STDs, abortions and unplanned pregnancies would go up. You really think people wish for that?

 

[Seeker2010]

You really think people wish for that?

To be fair, no, I don’t think people want bad things to be going up.

BUT, I think the ‘promiscuity is evil’ crowd truly believes that bad things are in actuality on the increase. They hear someone somewhere say that STD’s are on the rise, and they KNOW that promiscuity and permissive sexuality is on the rise (because in fact, it is), so they just blindly believe that without giving it a second thought, and use it to bolster their position that ‘promiscuity is evil’. “See, I told you promiscuity is evil, STD cases are rampant and rising!”

It’s only AFTER I point out that virtually EVERY MEASURABLE STATISTIC that ‘you would think’ would be rising in an era of increasing promiscuity is in fact FALLING that a lot of ‘But, but…’ comments start. And again, in fairness, I think most people believe they’re telling the truth when they make a comment like “STD’s are at all time highs” and are genuinely shocked when I point out actual facts.

Ultimately their argument becomes circular. Promiscuity is evil because promiscuity is evil. Cause it sure isn’t increasing STD’s, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, divorces or any other metric.

Your point on modern medicine is, of course, spot on. Which actually leads me to a good segue.

If you believe, as I do, that God has not interacted directly with humanity, and has not given us a list of rules, then why is it that virtually every major religion condemns promiscuous behavior? My opinion is that back in the day, most of these diseases that today are NBD were death sentences, in some cases horribly so, and were seen as punishments from God for bad behavior. Ergo, since God is punishing promiscuity, God must object to promiscuous behavior.

 

[mark_a]

You’ve been misinformed. Both abortion rates as well as rates of STD’s have been falling for decades. A simple google search will help you find that.

As a percentage, are abortion rates lower now than in the time before abortion was legalized?

 

[faithfully]

As a percentage, are abortion rates lower now than in the time before abortion was legalized?

As a percentage of what? Population perhaps?

According to the CDC reports 2005 abortion in the US were around the same rate as 1974. The peak of reported abortion were in 1990. The difference being close to 500,000 abortions from the PEAK number.

Now, if you look at US Census numbers. The population of in 1974 is significantly lower than it is today.

So numbers of abortion that are near the same in years 1974 and 2005, are significantly different as a percentage of population. In that the percentage of population getting an abortion in 1974 isHIGHER than the percentage of population getting an abortion today. So, not only are the number of abortions lower… but as a percentage of population even lower still.

Can the numbers be wrong? It is indicated that CDC can only report the numbers that are REPORTED. But I would GUESS that any numbers left off today are equal to or LESS than the unreported numbers in the earlier years, when auditing such data would be much more tedious without all of today’s technology. So, I would consider the margin for error to be less today than yesteryears.

I think good things are happening with regard to abortion. I don’t know if making it illegal is the answer to ending abortion. It will help. It will probably stop the abortions in poorer economies where they aren’t near free. But it won’t stop abortions of the elite. Didn’t before. But I just think the answer lies more in further education. I think a woman should have to watch an abortion via ultrasound before she submitts… They should know and see what they are doing. Will this stop them all? No, but I have a feeling it would stop many. It’s the blind desire to think they are just wiping out a few cells. Not usually the case.

I think trying to stop contraception is barking up the wrong alley in order to stop abortion. I mean if you can’t stop MURDER, how can you expect to stop something that is percieved to prevent the “need” or consideration of a murder. It’s a much lesser evil.

 

[mark_a]

I think good things are happening with regard to abortion. I don’t know if making it illegal is the answer to ending abortion. It will help. It will probably stop the abortions in poorer economies where they aren’t near free. But it won’t stop abortions of the elite. Didn’t before. But I just think the answer lies more in further education. I think a woman should have to watch an abortion via ultrasound before she submitts… They should know and see what they are doing. Will this stop them all? No, but I have a feeling it would stop many. It’s the blind desire to think they are just wiping out a few cells. Not usually the case.

I think trying to stop contraception is barking up the wrong alley in order to stop abortion. I mean if you can’t stop MURDER, how can you expect to stop something that is percieved to prevent the “need” or consideration of a murder. It’s a much lesser evil.

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

As a percentage of what? Population perhaps?

Yes, sorry for not being clear.

The Church teaching about abortion and it mother, contraception, stems from the teaching that we are to welcome and protect new life, not vice versa.

I don’t think the most pro-lifers believe that passing laws against abortion will end abortion. Women have been aborting for thousands of years, but laws should protect society and citizens, especially the most innocent of all.

Best wishes.

 

[faithfully]

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Yes, sorry for not being clear.

The Church teaching about abortion and it mother, contraception, stems from the teaching that we are to welcome and protect new life, not vice versa.

I don’t think the most pro-lifers believe that passing laws against abortion will end abortion. Women have been aborting for thousands of years, but laws should protect society and citizens, especially the most innocent of all.

Best wishes.

I agree, the laws against murder should protect all people.

I just re-read my statement. I don’t like the way I wrote it… that I “think good things are happening with abortion.” That just sounds really gross. Doesn’t it? Sorry about that. But what I mean is there actually seems to be some tiny progress towards decreasing abortion rates…

I hadn’t actually realized that rates were down until I looked up the numbers for this thread. SOMETHING is working… the question is WHAT IS IT??? How do we prove it?

In the mean time… I will push for more and more education. I just know too many woman that have used really stupid excuses… “I just didn’t know that XYZ…” And I know too many women with little self respect. I think the biggest thing the men of the world could do is show women respect. Not pick and choose which women to respect, but respect. That women are worth it… straight off!

Ok… OT… Sorry…

 

[lynnabelone]

Hey, its nice to see you here i am into a great honor for the holy grails cause she leads me to the era of life, and i think thats all matter when you have faith in holy grails.