Poll on contraception

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The way I understand it is that sex is both unitive and procreative and the two should not be intentionally separated. When you take away the possibility of procreation, the unitive is adversely affected and intimacy is lost. Sex for pleasure alone is easily exploited, leading to the objectification of your partner.

Once you cross that line, and sex for pleasure alone is socially acceptable, you open the door to all sorts of abuse. I personally think women suffer more as a result.

There are other reasons, but I think this is the big one.
 
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People still die taking OTC drugs like acetemenophen. The proton-pump inhibiter I was prescribed is now known to increase risk of stomach cancer. Ibuprofen increases risk of esophageal cancer. Taking Benedryl more than a few times a year is associated with a higher risk of lymphomas.

Those three women died; but what is the risk associated with pregnancy and childbirth? Something which the Pill prevents? Maternity mortality claims many more lives every year.

Also, the Pill is associated with an elevated risk of breast cancer. But also reduces risk of endometrial and ovarian cancers, both of which are harder to treat and much deadlier than breast cancer.

So we see the Pill poses risks, as do many other drugs. It also reduces risks of certain conditions and diseases.
 
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My humble view is that any type of sexual activity
and enjoyment between you and your wife is no sin.Need not put any condition that the intended purpose should be procreation.Just consider that sexual enjoyment is a reward given by God in occasionally(may be once or twice in your life) joining him in procreation.
 
Really. Benadryl? I have used the main ingredient even when not having allergy issues to help me fall asleep (it is in Simply Sleep and other OTC sleep aids, etc). I had no idea it increased risk of lymphoma. How much of an increased risk is this?
 
It’s not that the intended purpose is just for procreation, but it should at least open to it. Once people get it in their heads, at a societal level, that sex is mostly for pleasure you lose a lot of that intimacy.

It also leads to the idea that if it’s just for pleasure, then it’s just a casual thing. If it’s just a casual thing, then why get married before you have sex? Why not have sex with multiple partners? Why not sell it?

You can call that a slippery slope, but it’s a proven one that we’ve seen time and time again. Hook-up culture is a prime example. People become so numb to the emotional roller coaster ride of casual sex that their ability to be intimate with their partner is seriously diminished. It eventually just becomes an act of sexual release.
 
Replace Contraception with the word sin.

Sin is NEVER acceptable under any circumstance?
Sin is acceptable under the most rare circumstances?
Sin can be acceptable sometimes.
Sin is always acceptable.
Sin should always be practiced.

Sin is acceptable so long as it is acknowledged as still being a sin and not confused as a good. It’s acceptable so long as we understand that our circumstances are justifying it. Sometimes we sin to avoid a greater evil. It is morally disordered, though, to disregard the end, as if there were only one sin to avoid.

There are many ways to sin, and taking the spiritually proud route of obsessing over a few blinds us to our other sins and causes us to look down at others.

If this survey said “Contraception is sinful in all circumstances” rather than “Contraception is never acceptable under any circumstance,” I would have answered differently.
 
anon64350612 said:
Sorry - I have a biased viewpoint having worked on the massive class action lawsuit against Bayer and all the generic birth control pill manufacturers. I know some things about the situation that you and most others do not.

I totally get your point about it being sometimes morally licit. What we fail to do though, as Catholics, is point out that the birth control pill (and other hormonal treatments) are medically dangerous. While the pill can be morally licit, using it is more often than not an imprudent course of action. The two are separate issues.
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You do know that by law generics are the same medication?

The most dangerous drug in a person’s medicine cabinet is aspirin. Were it discovered today, it would be a controlled substance.

Vioxx caused more deaths than the Pill, which is why it was pulled from the market. Please stop the scare tactics. You’re disseminating about 1/3 of the facts. Class actions exist for nearly every med on the market. It doesn’t mean all meds are “gravely dangerous”.
 
I read a news article about it a year or two ago. It also surprised me because I’ve used it as a sleeping aid as well. If memory serves, the statistic was 20% increased lifetime risk. Also, there are increased risks of dementia associated with it.

I still take it when I’m working grave yard shift or on-call. I figure the risks associated with sleep deprivation are more serious.
 
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It hasn’t been proved to increase the risk of lymphoma. It’s a mild correlation. Same with dementia.

We use it for nausea in cancer patients - increased histamine is one pathway for chemo induced nausea. There was a huge discussion about that in an M&M - it’s not a proven effect.
 
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Thanks Pup! I continue to take it as needed.

Any drug has risks. All drugs have varying decrees of toxicity. Each individual must determine if the benefits outweigh them.
 
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The other piece of that is folks need to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to information. It gets harder to do in this electronic age.
 
Absolutely agree. I appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut here as I’m certainly aware that you, as an RN, have access to medical journals and subcriptions to Medline/ Pubmed, and so forth.

Most information the public gets are press statements based off of abstracts. It’s difficult to form an accurate assessment of risk that way.
 
There is just so much misinformation or not confirmed information (in this case) out there. Opinions being presented as fact, studies that are bought and paid for by someone who stands to gain from them, selectively editing articles to make a case one way or the other, people without qualifications acting like they are trained scholars… The web has made it so easy to spread information of dubious credibility.
 
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And it’s far too easy to draw conclusions when you can’t read the whole thing for folks who just write articles based off abstracts. That does happen.
 
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As the old saying goes “a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” People read or learn a little and then assume they are experts and spread misinformation. I see it all the time on the web, on forums and such. People spouting off because they read an article or two about a subject but haven’t done the heavy lifting.
 
Agreed. We have to be very careful with meds—even stuff that went through the FDA and your doctor assures you is a-okay can turn out in a few years to be a high risk and the subject of late night ads from lawyers trying to bring class action lawsuits.
 
I won’t say some of that isn’t from drug company push. But many times it’s because subjects used in Phase II and III trials are typically healthy individuals. A med gets released as safe and you have a much wider variety of patients taking it, so effects start to show themselves that weren’t apparent initially.
 
Catholicwife32 said:
Sin is acceptable so long as it is acknowledged as still being a sin and not confused as a good. It’s acceptable so long as we understand that our circumstances are justifying it. Sometimes we sin to avoid a greater evil. It is morally disordered, though, to disregard the end, as if there were only one sin to avoid.
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???

It’s never acceptable to commit a sin to “avoid a greater evil.” Circumstances never justify sin.

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1759:
“An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention” (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Dec. praec. 6). The end does not justify the means.
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Pope Paul VI, Humanae vitae 14:
Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it
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Tolerating evil is not the same as doing it. Sin is an offence against God, which is evil; that is never considered acceptable. I would say acknowledging it as sin and still doing it will increase one’s culpability. Committing a mortal sin with good intentions will still be a mortal sin and it can’t be said that the action was acceptable.

I get that you’re saying sin is never good… but doing evil can’t ever be acceptable.
 
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Arwing said:
It’s never acceptable to commit a sin to “avoid a greater evil.” Circumstances never justify sin.
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Acceptability is not justification. I made that VERY clear. You are arguing a strawman.
 
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