Maternal Mortality rate and the morality of contraception

[setter]

The Church should not say that using birth control is immoral for those women.

The Church should not say that _______________ is immoral for
those _____________.

I got it.

They should have a **way out **

of a very high probability of death.
"No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it."1 Corinthians 10:13

 

[buffalo]

svoboda:

You are reading so much into what I write. That’s not what I said. I said that historically women had no other choice. Some women may have still wanted to be stay at home moms as some women want that today.

Let me be very clear: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS CHOICE.

What’s wrong is forcing this choice on every single woman. Because not every single woman wants to live that way.

What is EVIL (in my opinion) is forcing that on women in the third world when it means a 1 in 16 chance of DYING!

How would you feel if out of nowhere I started saying that you’re a Nazi who thinks Jews should be burned? Hmm?

May I point out to you that most women who vote, who are leaders in society, who have careers are ALSO MOTHERS. Women don’t have to choose one or the other, and most don’t.

Motherhood is extremely important. Brining new human beings into the world is extremely important, otherwise we’ll go go extinct.

I know that without birth control they have no choice but to become pregnant, some might like it, some might not. Some might prefer life to pregnancy. I would.

I think they should have a choice, that’s all I’m saying. 1 in 16 chance of DEATH, is a huge risk, they should be given a way out.

The Church should not say that using birth control is immoral for those women. They should have a way out of a very high probability of death.

If they still want to have large families and take that risk, that’s their choice, but I think they should be able to decide for themselves.

Natural and Divine Law limits the choices we as humans have.

 

[svoboda]

Kendy:

Well, I can speak from the perspective of a woman from a third world country. My grandmother had no control over her body, could not say “no” to her husband. The man was definitely the head of the house and no one questioned him, and she had more than a dozen children most of whom died. Her story is similar to that of most women of her generation and many Haitian women who live in the provinces of today.

My mother did have a say in the matter and she chose to have only three children. So, did most of her sisters and my aunts on my father side. And most of the Haitian women, I know, when given a choice choose smaller families.

Furthermore, I did some work on third world development, particularly studying parts of Africa, and most women reported that they would prefer to have smaller families than watch their children die of malnutrition or rsik their own death, but they didn’t really have a choice.

Kendy

This is a terribly sad situation for women and children to be in.

In my opinion it is immoral for the Church to tell those women and their children that they cannot use birth control when it may very well be the only way for them to avoid death, to avoid having more children than they can feed etc.

Moral teachings are supposed to be good, they are supposed to protect human beings, not condemn them to death and suffering.

 

[Kendy]

buffalo:

Protecting them by aborting their unborn children? Who exactly does this protect?

I don’t think she said anything about aborting unborn children.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Svoboda, what it comes down to is that there IS no choice. Simple as that. Contraception is a grave evil. YOU might not see it that way–but God does.

Considering that HE made us, one would think that He would have the “whole picture” available to Him.

Don’t you trust Him?

I do. I’m from the U.S. I came close to dying with my third child, due to a sudden hemorrhage, which thankfully was successfully treated.

Life ITSELF is a risk. Yes, childbirth is a risk. (Did you know that there was nearly 50% maternal mortality in any given pregnancy in the DEVELOPED world until only about 150 years ago? Do you know what major development brought this risk down to less than 3% in a period of less than 20 years? I’ll tell you–WASHING HANDS AND INSTRUMENTS).

Imagine. That’s all it took. No contraception, no surgical procedures. HAND WASHING.

Hand washing is still the number ONE way to avoid infection.

Before you demand contraception–has it occurred to you to investigate if there are OTHER factors like the above contributing to those high maternal mortality rates?

 

[Rob_s_Wife]

svoboda:

We should fight for quality of life for every single human being, we should protect them from illness and death.

Oh my… where to start ??

---

I’ll start with 2 questions to the above quote:

---

Why should we protect them from illness and death? Illness and death are as much a part of living life as health and birth.

---

And how does not allowing them to be conceived at all meet that goal? All that does is deprive them of any life.

 

[Kendy]

Tantum ergo:

So, you think that a woman only becomes a mother if she has NO OTHER CHOICE?

You think motherhood is so valueless that no woman would choose it? That a vote, or some “position of leadership” (please tell me what percentage of working women are in positions of leadership, BTW) is MORE IMPORTANT? A bigger cookie?

“Forcing women to become pregnant”. That is how YOU see the lives of women in Africa. First, you’re insulting the average man in Africa by equating him to a rapist. Second, you’re insulting the average woman, by focusing on statistics without focusing on what the woman HERSELF wants. Do you KNOW that these women “are forced” into pregnancy?

Are you so elitist that your conception (pun intended) of choice is based on CONVENIENCE rather than on love?

A respectful challenge here.

You show me, not what YOU THINK, or what YOU WANT, but what that African WOMAN WANTS.

Not what YOU THINK SHE WANTS. What SHE wants.

One hardly needs to be an elitist to know that many third world women are forced into marriage by the age of twelve and have no control over their pregnancy. I hope you are familiar with the plight of the millions of women in the world who have their clitoris removed as young girl and have married off for a cow right after getting their first period. This is not cultural bias; it’s a fact. As a woman who came from a third world country, I am always amazed by how little Western women appreciate the freedoms and dignity they have.

Kendy

 

[1ke]

svoboda:

But abortion is a gravely immoral act because it destroys a human life.

And so is contraception.

svoboda:

Contraception is a method to prevent conception of human life, no one is hurt by it.

Wrong. And, irrelevant. You are advocating moral relativism, which is contrary to the moral order and Church teaching.

svoboda:

But not all women want children, if I lived in Africa I would rather sterilize myself and remain childless than have a 1 in 16 risk of dying as a result of pregnancy/childbirth complications. If I were married young to an older man (not out of love) I would want 0 children.

That’s you.

svoboda:

As for women’s rights in places like that, ever seen footage of Afghanistan under the Taliban? Documentaries about young girls in developing nations who are married off to older men? Polygamy statistics?

Yes, there is work to be done to bring people to the Truth. Teaching them a falsehood will never bring about this Truth.

svoboda:

In my opinion birth control is a far lesser “sin” than not giving women a chance to avoid the 1 in 16 chance of dying from pregnancy.

Well, I suppose your opinion is influenced by the fact that you are looking only at the temporal and not the eternal consequences for the woman and for those who lead her astray.

 

[svoboda]

Tantum ergo:

Svoboda, what it comes down to is that there IS no choice. Simple as that. Contraception is a grave evil. YOU might not see it that way–but God does.

The Church does. Other religions don’t. Even most Catholics don’t.

I don’t think God does.

Considering that HE made us, one would think that He would have the “whole picture” available to Him.

Don’t you trust Him?

I trust God, not the Church. I think the Church is failing in a very big way to protect human life.

Life ITSELF is a risk. Yes, childbirth is a risk. (Did you know that there was nearly 50% maternal mortality in any given pregnancy in the DEVELOPED world until only about 150 years ago? Do you know what major development brought this risk down to less than 3% in a period of less than 20 years? I’ll tell you–WASHING HANDS AND INSTRUMENTS).

Imagine. That’s all it took. No contraception, no surgical procedures. HAND WASHING.

Hand washing is still the number ONE way to avoid infection.

Yes, now imagine that the Church said washing hands to avoid infection was a sin.

This is what’s going on with birth control. Birth control is a scientific advancement that can save lives! Not just the women, but the children too. Children would benefit from being born into families who can feed them and clothe them.

And the Church says it’s a sin simply because it says no. Not because it hurts people, but because it says so. Because of some technicality in their teaching.

Before you demand contraception–has it occurred to you to investigate if there are OTHER factors like the above contributing to those high maternal mortality rates?

Obviously poverty and bad health care, here we don’t have those problems. Ideally they’d have a great health care system just like we do, but until then there should be no question about whether those women can use birth control.

Their lives are on the line.

 

[fix]

svoboda:

Not at all, I don’t think the ends justify the means. Murdering people, stealing, lying, abusing your children, torture etc. are always grave evils even if they bring about great results.

Birth control, on the other hand, doesn’t hurt anyone. I don’t see anything wrong with it in principle.

Birth control may be a good end, but contraception is always wrong. You say ends do not justify the means, yet you endorse separating love from sex and claim the end result is good?

But this is just like blaming the internet for people looking at pornography. The internet makes it extremely easy to look at pornography, but in the end people still make a choice.

The internet is not intrinsically wrong. The action of contraception is wrong.

Does contraception cause marriages to fail? I have not seen any evidence of it. Infidelity causes marriages to fail, maybe contraception makes infidelity much easier.

It makes treating each others as objects easier.

I don’t think contraception can be blamed for it. Correlation is not the same as causation. You might as well say that failed marriages cause people to use contraception.

Contraception is one example we have of how we decide for ourselves what right and wrong are[relativism], rather than accepting there is an objective moral order we all may know.

 

[1ke]

svoboda:

529000 of them die each year due to pregnancy related complications!

The solution here it to eliminate the causes of mortality, not the pregnancies.

You’ve solved nothing by attempting to bring down the number of pregnancies without doing anything to improve the safety of childbearing.

If the causes are not eliminated then those who do become pregnant are still at risk. Have you no care for those who want to have children? You can’t reduce the pregnancies to zero. Slapping a contraceptive band-aid on the problem does nothing for those mothers when they do have children.

Hmmm…

 

[fix]

svoboda:

Yes, now imagine that the Church said washing hands to avoid infection was a sin.

This is what’s going on with birth control. Birth control is a scientific advancement that can save lives! Not just the women, but the children too. Children would benefit from being born into families who can feed them and clothe them.

And the Church says it’s a sin simply because it says no. Not because it hurts people, but because it says so. Because of some technicality in their teaching.

This is not what the Church teaches at all.

 

[svoboda]

1ke:

The solution here it to eliminate the causes of mortality, not the pregnancies.

You’ve solved nothing by attempting to bring down the number of pregnancies without doing anything to improve the safety of childbearing.

If the causes are not eliminated then those who do become pregnant are still at risk. Have you no care for those who want to have children? You can’t reduce the pregnancies to zero. Slapping a contraceptive band-aid on the problem does nothing for those mothers when they do have children.

Hmmm…

Cutting down the pregnancies would reduce the mortality. Having 1 or 2 or 3 children instead of 15 (most of whom may very well die, and if you don’t believe me just check child mortality rate, I think it might be on the same website).

Sure, ideally they would live the way we live here. But RIGHT NOW they do not. Right now they don’t have good conditions for giving birth, right now they don’t have the money to feed many children.

Right now they should be using birth control, because it is a quick solution that does not require a complete system change, elimination of poverty, and women’s rights.

 

[1ke]

svoboda:

.

The Church should not say that using birth control is immoral for those women.

The Church does not teach that birth control is immoral. It teaches the contraception is immoral.

And, something cannot be immoral for some people and not for others, it either is or isn’t. You are proposing moral relativism, and that is an error already dealt with by the Church.

 

[svoboda]

fix:

This is not what the Church teaches at all.

No, but imagine it did. Imagine it had a good theological reason for teaching it too. (Like say: pains in childbirth were God’s punishment to Eve for sinning, using all this technology to fix the situation goes against God’s will.)

This is pretty much the situation with birth control. Those people have a very good reason to use it, but for theological reasons the Church says no.

Preventing pregnancy hurts no one. Why is it evil?

 

[svoboda]

1ke:

The Church does not teach that birth control is immoral. It teaches the contraception is immoral.

And, something cannot be immoral for some people and not for others, it either is or isn’t. You are proposing moral relativism, and that is an error already dealt with by the Church.

Well, by birth control here I mean something like sterilization because it doesn’t require husband’s participation.

 

[fix]

svoboda:

No, but imagine it did. Imagine it had a good theological reason for teaching it too. (Like say: pains in childbirth were God’s punishment to Eve for sinning, using all this technology to fix the situation goes against God’s will.)

This is pretty much the situation with birth control. Those people have a very good reason to use it, but for theological reasons the Church says no.

Preventing pregnancy hurts no one. Why is it evil?

I was referring to your implying that Her teachings are true simply because she invents them as such. The proscription regarding contraceptive acts is from Christ.

 

[fix]

svoboda:

Preventing pregnancy hurts no one. Why is it evil?

Preventing pregnacy may be a good thing. How it is done and why it is done are the questions to be answered.

 

[1ke]

svoboda:

And the Church says it’s a sin simply because it says no.

Um, no, contraception is not a sin for the reason you describe. Please pick up some church documents and study them.

The Church is founded by Christ and it is the teacher of Faith and Morals. Following Church teaching would elminate the entire problem. The problem is not Church teaching, but that people choose to disregard it.

You are clearly not open to learning what the church teaches and why. You merely want to promote your agenda and shake your finger at the Church for not following your idea of the way to do things.

 

[1ke]

svoboda:

Those people have a very good reason to use it, but for theological reasons the Church says no.

Preventing pregnancy hurts no one. Why is it evil?

They have a good reason to prevent pregnancy.

They do not have a “good reason” to use contraception as it is an intrinsically disordered act that is never morally licit.

Preventing pregnancy is not evil. Contraception is. It is a mortal sin.