Contraceptive mentality
“The contraceptive mentality originates in a refusal of the child who is seen as an obstacle to achieving one’s own projects or to leading the way of life one has chosen. It leads to actively taking all possible measures to avoid conception, from the intake of chemical contraceptives to the use of mechanical devices. In doing so, it voluntarily separates the two meanings of the conjugal act, union and procreation, in a perspective that is hedonistic and shuns responsibility. (…) It implies a ‘self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfilment. The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception’ (Evangelium Vitae, 13).”
The contraceptive mentality “refuses the arrival of a child and defends sexual freedom and pleasure outside of the bonds of marriage. The emphasis on contraception ends up in an increased refusal of the child when it dares to present itself without having been invited”. Once contraception has been accepted and used, the person who uses it “tends to think she is protected from pregnancy and will therefore live a more sexually promiscuous life, which will inevitably lead, one day, to an unwanted pregnancy”, and in this case, will often end in abortion.
“It is frequently asserted that contraception, if made safe and available to all, is the most effective remedy against abortion. The Catholic Church is then accused of actually promoting abortion, because she obstinately continues to teach the moral unlawfulness of contraception. When looked at carefully, this objection is clearly unfounded. It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the ‘contraceptive mentality’ - which is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect for the full truth of the conjugal act - are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro- abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church’s teaching on contraception is rejected. Certainly, from the moral point of view contraception and abortion are specifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment ‘You shall not kill’. But despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree (Evangelium vitae, 13).”
The anti-life spirit present in the contraceptive mentality also manifests itself in population control policies, motivated by “a certain panic deriving from the studies of ecologists and futurologists on population growth, which sometimes exaggerate the danger of demographic increase to the quality of life” (Familiaris consortio, 30).