Toronto March for LifeThe solution pro-choice advocates present as a way to reduce abortion is also deeply flawed. Contraception and sex education, they declare, is the real way to combat abortion rates.
The logic appears to be simple. An increased use of contraception will result in fewer unplanned pregnancies, which in turn will result in fewer abortions. However, the use of contraception as well as increasingly explicit sex ed curriculums have steadily increased since the introduction of the pill during the 1960s, and so has the abortion rate. If contraception hasn’t reduced abortion rates yet, why should we assume it will start working now?
Contraception has never reduced abortion rates, in fact, the boom in availability, acceptance, and use of contraceptives has caused people to develop a disconnect between sex and pregnancy. Many do not consider that use of their reproductive organs in an act of reproduction may result in them reproducing. While this fact seems elementary, sex-education, rather than explaining how reproduction actually works, focuses on the idea of ‘safe sex’. Sex-ed curriculums emphasize different forms of contraception, leading people to believe that contraception is 100% effective: thus the disconnect. Contraception has, however, never been completely effective. As a result, when, as the bizarre saying goes, people ‘fall pregnant’ due to faulty contraception, they turn to abortion. Increased use of contraception does not result in decreased abortions, rather it results in more people having sex, and ultimately, more opportunities for contraception to fail.
Additionally, not only does contraception use not decrease abortion rates, it also results in many early-term abortions, as many contraceptives have abortifacient capabilities. Hormonal birth control methods such as the pill have three functions. First, they discourage ovulation. If no egg is released during a woman’s cycle, pregnancy cannot occur. The second function thickens the cervical mucus, making it difficult for sperm to travel to the fallopian tubes, effectively preventing fertilization. The third function is a sort of back-up plan if the first two functions fail. The majority of birth control methods include this third function, which thins the uterine lining. This acts as an abortifacient, as any embryo that is conceived despite the use of contraception will be unable to implant in the uterine lining, and this results in the tiny human being’s death. There is no way to calculate just how many abortions contraceptives have caused, but it is sure to be no small number.
Contraception, birth control, and sex education are not the obvious cure-alls that the pro-choice movement claim they are. They have been ineffective for the past several decades, and there is no indication that they will start working now.
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Previously in this series: Abortion is a safe procedure
