Hi Dan,
I have very different take on this.
The title of this article refers to “the stigma of unintended pregnancies.” Circa 1960, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the USA was about 5–7%; today it is about 41%. If a stigma exists today about unintended pregnancies, I suspect that it much, much fainter than the stigma that existed circa 1960.
You mentioned “women’s health opposers” without identifying them. I doubt that you are referring to those who fob off artificial birth control drugs designed to induce a diseased state — prolonged infertility — by poisoning women and devices or interventions which monkey-wrench the human reproductive works, usually in women, as “health care” rather than as “lifestyle” drugs, devices or interventions. And I doubt that you are referring to those who deploy the linguistic absurdity “safe abortion” even though direct abortion (A) is a risk factor for infertility; (B) is a risk factor for ectopic (tubal) pregnancy; (C) is a risk factor for cerebral palsy in babies conceived later; (D) is a suspected risk factor for breast cancer (the majority of studies that have examined this say there is a link and some also report a dose effect: the greater the number of direct abortions, the higher the breast cancer risk); and (E) is deliberately fatal to the fetus targeted by the abortion.
No, I think rather with your use of “women’s health opposers” that you are referring, wrongly, to pro-lifers, or those who advocate for fertility awareness methods to avoid or achieve conception without tampering with fertility. These fertility awareness methods have largely replaced the older rhythm method (though that still has some advocates and may work well for some) and include the Billings ovulation method, the Creighton model and symptothermal methods. These are cooperative methods the burdens of which are shared by both husband and wife (or the unmarried male and female though I suspect people unmarried to each other who lack the restraint to avoid sex out-of-wedlock will possess the restraint necessary to follow these methods properly).
Note that the 1960s champions of these lifestyle drugs, devices and interventions (Planned Parenthood very prominently among them) declared they would prevent out-of-wedlock births, abortion, child abuse, divorce, adultery, STDs and more. The 1960s were a time of moonshots, psychedelia and great hope in technology and medicine.
How did that work out? The data are in. After decades of widespread use of these artificial (fertility-tampering, sometimes fertility-destroying) methods, the reported rates of out-of-wedlock births, abortion, child abuse, divorce and STD transmission have not fallen but have moon rocketed, with one reaching not merely epidemic but pandemic proportions. Not groovy. While rates of adultery are difficult to obtain, you may suspect as I do that they have increased. In the USA, unmarried women procure more than 80% of abortions; of the remaining less than 20% of abortions (those procured by married women), a significant percentage may be by women impregnated by men to whom they are not married: abortion in the USA is overwhelmingly a consequence of sex between people unmarried to each other. Further, the majority of women having abortions in the USA were using a “contraceptive” drug or device when they conceived the child they aborted (many so called “contraceptives,” besides failing to prevent conception, may also cause a very early abortion); a greater majority were experienced “contraceptive” users but some abandoned these drugs or devices, often because of their side effects which frequently include depression, weight gain and decreased sex drive, for just three examples. How ironic. Should we be surprised by such unintended effects when the intended effect is to produce a diseased state? Might these effects — intended (infertility) and unintended (depression, weight gain and decreased sex drive) — have something to do with adultery and divorce?
I have some other differences with your article, Dan, but I’ll stop with this. The Sexual Revolution has not so much been tried on an enormous scale and found wanting as it has been tried on an enormous scale and found disastrous. While economic and other factors contributed, that revolution has been fueled largely by the use of artificial “contraceptives.” How much worse must things get before those still clinging to great hopes for these lifestyle drugs, devices and interventions rid the moonbeams from their eyes and shake the psychedelic dust from their bell bottoms?
