From Contraception To Abortion

by Fr. Paul Marx, 0.S.B.

A journalistic condensation of an article by Rev. Paul Marx, 0.S.B., published in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Feb. 1983, as edited by Margaret Scott of "Catholic CHECKMATE", with special permission of the author and publisher.

WHY DO SO MANY BISHOPS AND CATHOLIC INTELLECTUALS NOT SEE THAT ABORTION IS USUALLY AN EXTENSION OF THE CONTRACEPTIVE MENTALITY?

The Viennese psychiatrist, Viktor Frankel once observed that man has an infinite capacity to deceive himself. This three time escapee from Hitler’s concentration camps has written eloquently how hard it is for people to face and accept the truth - to say nothing of practicing it. This must be harder if one has lived, acted, spoken, or written contrary to the truth. A good example of this is the number of bishops, theologians and intellectuals who refuse to believe that contraception leads to abortion! Fr Paul Marx, O.S.B. Ph.D. Former professor of family sociology and recent founder of Human Life International at 7845 Airpark Road, Suite E, Gaithersburg, MD 20879 USA. Fr. Marx has lectured in more than 30 countries on 4 continents.

The Evidence Is Mountainous!

I have seen it in more than 30 countries. In every nation, bar none, contraception has led to abortion - and from abortion to infanticide, the prelude to full-blown euthanasia! Once the purposes of sex are torn loose from procreation and the family, the homosexual thrust rears its ugly head, teen pregnancies and abortions sky-rocket, VD burgeons out of control, the divorce rate escalates, the birthrate falls, while the barnyard approach to birth control called sterilization becomes commonplace. Soon we see the swift disintegration of the family.

The Deception Begins

Once contraception (and remember that much of so-called "contraception" is actually abortifacient) becomes a cultural pattern, you will see very young people, and some not so young, increasingly engaged in ever more irresponsible sexual activity. They feel they will not get pregnant... if they use contraception... besides they can always resort to the "fail-safe means of birth-control" described as "post-conception family planning" or "menstrual extraction" by Planned Parenthood (PP). [These euphemisms for abortion are never called "killing"! -Ed.]

"Bitter Fruit"

As sexual deviation becomes a way of life, it brings ever more VD. [Herpes II and "AIDS" are just two!] as well as vastly-increased teen-age pregnancies, abortions and blocked fallopian tubes (which, by the way, has caused the highest sterility in American history!). And now so-called medical "experts" are saying that we must have test-tube baby stations around the nation so these women can get pregnant again - even if every successful "test-tube baby" involves multiple abortions, acts of masturbation, and other moral evils, to say nothing of the agreement to "abort" in case anything goes wrong with the implanted tiny human. [Again, they never say "kill"! -Ed.]

National Genocide

Long before this state is reached, however, birthrates have fallen far below reproduction and nations have begun to rot from within, so that today the Irish are the only developed country in the world with a good, reproductive birth rate. Yet, now that the Irish are fast taking on contraception and abortifacients also, one can predict without fear of contradiction that Ireland will not be spared the abortion "plague" either. [God will not be mocked! —Ed!]

Pope Paul VI: Don’t Say You Weren’t "Told"!

John Paul II

We were told very clearly the consequences of contraception in prophetic Humanae Vitae. Still very many bishops, theologians and Catholic intellectuals refused to see it as a superb document, so accurate and to the point. Let the reader meditate what a world this would be if Pope Paul VI had approved the abortifacient pill, the IUD - or even traditional contraception! Today sterilization is the fastest growing means of fertility control. And remember, that the whole thrust of future contraception is abortifacient, like the coming vaginal suppositories and the injection abortifacient, Depo-Provera, which the Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo is desperately trying to get approved in the USA, after two failures with the Food and Drug Administration. (Upjohn sells this abortifacient - not good enough for Americans - in more than ninety countries from its huge factory in Brussels!)

This is not to say, of course, that every couple that practices actual contraception (condom, diaphragm, jams, gels, foams and withdrawal) ends up aborting an "unplanned pregnancy". (But in no way does it disprove the point at issue, either.)

From The Horse’s Mouth - This:
Experienced promoters, like the late president of PP, Dr. Alan Guttmacher, wrote in 1973 to "Friends of Planned Parenthood":

You have accepted the responsibility of broadening the scope of your family plannling services and you have welcomed a wider patient clientele - most notably, to include MINORS for whom you have created special services to meet their special needs. All of you recognize the logical inclusion of sterilization and abortion as integral components of a modem fertility control service. (Emphasis added)

The same Guttmacher, some months after the Black Monday decision of 1973, in the Washington Star of 3rd May, is quoted as saying:

The only avenue in which Manned Parenthood has to win the battle is SEX EDUCATION.

Those who are conversant with the present sex/contraceptive education in the public schools know exactly what he meant. But worst of all, in "Politics of Abortion", Guttmacher gleefully recounts how the American bishops more or less stand by while Catholics embrace contraception and, by implication, will also accept abortion - as they get over more hang-ups!

The Rockefeller Connection

No one has been more explicit in linking contraception and abortion than has Dr. Christopher Tietze, the ace abortion promoter of the Rockefeller Population Council and Planned Parenthood. In a 1976 issue of Family Planning Perspectives he wrote: "The safest regimen of control for the unmarried and for married child-spacers is the use of traditional methods backed up by abortion, but . . . it is likely to involve several abortions in the course of her reproductive career for each woman who chooses it."

Who Needs Enemies?

Perhaps no one is so naive in these matters as those who think that merely humanistic, organ-recital, public school, and group sex education (which always amounts to contraceptive education) will solve the problems of teen-age pregnancy, abortion, and VD, now out of control.

These contraceptionists and abortionists must be greatly amused by simplistic theologians like "Humanae Vitae" - critics Fr. Charles E. Curran of the Catholic University of America and Jesuit Richard McCormick of the Kennedy Institute in Washington, D.C., who, though so wrong, are still taken seriously by too many. McCormick, through the pages of America has virtually led a crusade to have sterilization openly practiced in Catholic hospitals. And even though explicitly told to uphold the Church’s teaching on sterilization, some American bishops have done nothing to stop it in certain "Catholic" hospitals.

"None So Blind!"

Why do so many theologians, bishops and Catholic intellectuals not see it? Some may refuse to see it; those seeing it would be too embarrassed by their past teachings and writings to admit it; still others are too proud - (no one is so blind as he who refuses to see - and in this case, refuses to admit he was wrong).

But another reason, I think, is that the vast majority of theologians (and others) do not yet know that God has built a very feasible means of birth regulation into the human reproductive system called natural family planning; they feel trapped by documents like Humanae Vitae or Familaris Consortio; they feel trapped because they believe they cannot help couples with fertility difficulties. After all, where would they have learned about God’s built-in way? Surely not in the seminaries. Surely not in today’s so-called "Catholic" universities and colleges! Surely not in the Catholic press! And definitely not in the writings and directives of the official teachers of the Church - the bishops!

They Just Don’t Know

If the bishops, theologians, clergy, religious and intellectuals really saw the current sexual disaster for what it is, the bishops - like the Pope - would be giving out pastorals on Christian sexuality and chastity, while clearing the dissenting theologians out of the seminaries/as well as humanistic teachers out of our schools! —Ed.]... faithful parishioners would not be complaining that priests in the pulpit never preach on chastity, Humanae Vitae, sexual morality - and immorality - with all that the latter leads to, such as divorce, etc.

The Remedies? .. .They Seem Almost Too Obvious To Re-State!
  1. Re-educate, intensively, the Catholic educators and parents in a truly Christian sexuality - along with the glory of the marital vocation, which is to bring forth life which will last forever, as Pope John Paul II told 385,000 listeners in Washington, D.C. in 1979.
  2. Resist, expose, or stop immediately every public school or group sex education program, no matter what it is called, or how it is diffused into the curriculum.
  3. Work out thoroughly orthodox literature and courses in Christian morality at all levels of Catholic education.
  4. Before Catholics get married, and already beginning in late grade school, intensively educate for chastity and virginity as a special expression of love and concern. Make them aware of God’s great gift of fertility, and the horrendous consequences of contraception, so that those who marry will understand fully God’s way of fertility control. Prudently offer this to other Americans. (Recently, I spoke to a group of enthusiastic Mormons on Natural Family Planning. In South Korea and Japan they are teaching it to Buddhists. Mother Teresa’s nuns successfully teach it to Hindu beggars in the slums of Calcutta.)
  5. Radically change/re-orient the seminary training so that not a single priest is ever ordained who does not know that natural family planning is a very viable means of fertility control. Such priests must be trained as well, to conduct programs fostering true Christian morality in sexuality, and to assist parents in teaching their children on an individual basis as the need is indicated.
  6. Re-educate the teaching, counseling, and nursing nuns in similar fashion in their formational schools of training.
  7. Clearly re-state the connected evils of contraception, sterilization, abortion, euthanasia, as did the last six Popes, so that no one can plead ignorance, or of never having learned God’s truth in these matters.
  8. Seek the best talent on all levels to produce suitable literature and audiovisual aids, and go to the press and electronic media with good, common-sense messages of Christian chastity before and during marriage. This - with the sacraments - will assure faithfulness.
  9. Collaborate with other Christians, Jews, and people of good will to do what we can to clean up the environment, to lessen pornography, etc.
  10. Allow only those teachers and lecturers in these programs who have accepted the full teachings of the Church, and who by their lives exemplify the implementation of this teaching.

CHECKMATE FOOTNOTE:
Most important: Insist that Mothers be upheld as "First Teachers" in their clearly "God-given" profession!
- Margaret Scott, Editor

For full copy of the original article from which this digest has been made and for additional information on Natural Family Planning, or for a NFP contact serving in your area, please send a stamped self-addressed envelope to: Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., Chairman, Human Life International, 7845 Airpark Road, Suite E, Gaithersburg, MD 20879 USA.

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