Contraception's consequences …

The church ought to offer more than an endorsement of the conventional wisdom on family planning to prevent abortion ("Abortion prevention," Nov. 27). Cutting the rate of abortions is important, but it is only a partial response to the grotesque number of abortions. A real response would start with rejecting abortion on clear moral grounds and acknowledging that the best way to prevent abortion is to restrict it by law. It would also include honest recognition that most abortions do not result from a failure of "family planning," since the parents are not married.

If abortion merits preventing, as the editors of the CENTURY seem to agree, it is because it is a direct assault on innocent human life. Otherwise efforts to reduce the number of abortions would simply be a matter of reducing unnecessary surgeries--a worthy goal but hardly one that needs any public intervention by the Christian community. The availability of abortion increases the pressure on women to undergo unwanted abortions.

Contraception has created the illusion of consequence-free sex. That illusion in turn creates a demand for abortion when contraception fails. Statistics indicate that states like California and New York, which vigorously promote and subsidize contraception, have higher abortion rates than states like Kansas and the Dakotas, which do not. Abortion rates are high because of Roe v. Wade and because of the expectations and moral distortions created by the sexual revolution. The Christian community has no calling to cheer on failed secular solutions or to pretend that, however worthy a goal it may be, reducing the number of abortions is an adequate response to the legal and moral devastation wrought by the Supreme Court.

Leonard R. Klein

Catholic Charities,

Wilmington, Del.

COPYRIGHT 2008 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning