Flawed argument #1 in favour of contraception, and answer: The use of contraception leads to a decline in the number of abortions
Flawed argument
The generalized use of contraception contributes to the decline in the number of voluntary abortions, in particular among adolescents.
“This argument was cited frequently in the debates that took place prior to, and which followed the publication of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae (25 July 1968). The proponents of contraception heralded the pill as the ideal method of regulating births, offering numerous advantages over so-called ‘natural’ methods of birth control, not least due to its efficacy, and even advantageous from a moral standpoint, given that it allowed couples to experience their conjugal union in peace, without the sword of Damocles of an unwanted pregnancy hanging over their heads”.
“Of all the various arguments presented at that time in favour of contraception, it is the prevention of abortions which has most stood the test of time and which continues to be presented on a regular basis, in particular in European countries confronted with the increasingly worrying problem of juvenile promiscuity. But this argument is also regularly put forward by movements promoting population control throughout the world, spearheaded by the United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA). The argument runs that thousands of women would be dying in poor countries as a result of complications from illegal abortions and the Governments of these countries have a genuine moral obligation to promote different contraceptive methods in their populations to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and hence abortions”.
Answer
“Fifty years after the introduction of the first contraceptive pill, the reality is that, far from reducing the number of abortions, contraception has itself become increasingly abortive.”
“It is said that the use of contraceptive methods in the developed countries has been accompanied by a reduction in the absolute number of abortions. This optimistic statement must be tempered by the observation that, in countries in which oral contraception has been widely used, we have witnessed a rise in the number of abortions, both in absolute terms and in relation to the number of births and that, where there has been a reduction in the number of abortions, that reduction could be expected to have been far higher, having regard to the efficacy of the contraceptives used. If abortions continue at a disturbing rate in spite of the fall in the birth-rate to a level considerably below the replacement level in countries in which contraceptives have been a part of everyday life for almost 30 years, it is because abortion has become commonplace and is used as an extension of contraception. The fact that the majority of abortions carried out in the developed countries are today seen in women who regularly use a method of contraception proves that there is no contradiction, indeed that there is coexistence, even continuity, between the two. There is now recourse to abortion as an ‘extraordinary’ method of contraception when the first ‘ordinary’ method fails. It is the same woman, with the same contraceptive mentality, who will one day practice chemical contraception and the next abortion. In California, 40% of the 300,000 to 500,000 annual abortions are carried out as a result of the failures of contraception”.