Think about birth control and the message it sends to its users:
Your body is broken and needs an artificial device or a pill to ‘fix’ it.
Your body being naturally fertile and capable of producing children is a cosmic accident. You are in need of physical intervention—whether that be permanent sterilization or a temporary means.
As well, any resulting children coming about by sexual activity are to be avoided. This is the contraceptive mentality. It is not too difficult then to see how this contraceptive mentality can have far-sweeping repercussions on our culture.
TYING BIRTH CONTROL AND EUTHANASIA
Take for instance the example of euthanasia. Its popularity has grown in large part thanks to the contraceptive mentality.
Why would I say this? How can I support this statement?
Just look at how the contraceptive mentality has conditioned the majority of people in Western society. Birth control and abortion are used to rid society of “burdensome lives” that society has no room for, as author and Professor Charles Rice puts it (1).
Man has usurped God’s authority in determining when lives ought to begin in using birth control and abortion. He has bought the illusion he can be the arbiter of life.
Thus, euthanasia becomes justified by this logic too. If men can determine whether someone gets to be born, why can’t they also decide when they must die too?
Just as children are so often deemed ‘burdensome’ with no value to contribute, the same can be said of those being euthanized, the elderly and handicapped. Rather than humans having intrinsic value, contraception asks its users to adopt a utilitarian valuation of human life. Only those determined to be contributing an arbitrarily-allotted impact on society are worth keeping around. Babies can’t work and don’t pay taxes—and neither do the very elderly or the handicapped. Together, they become disposable.
Professor Rice calls euthanasia “postnatal abortion,” and abortion “prenatal euthanasia” (2). Two sides of the same coin.
YOUR TURN
Do you have more to add to the connection between birth control and euthanasia?
Feel free to add your comment below!
1. Fifty Questions on Natural Law
2. Ibid.
