If you have been near a magazine stand lately, you’ve seen the cover of Time on The Pill. The story appears to acknowledge another side, but really it seeks to lead a pep rally for the 50-year-old contraceptive.
The reason contraceptive pills have caused a revolution is that the technology changed the relationship between men and women, or accelerated the changes that were already under way. Why? Because it separated sex from its most natural consequence. Janet Smith explains:
Contraception treats the procreative meaning of the sexual act as though it were an impediment to spousal union. But the conjugal act is meant to be an act of total self-giving, which includes giving the power of becoming a parent with another. Spouses who contracept are not giving totally of themselves to one another; in violating the baby-making power of the sexual act, they confine their act to being ordained solely to mutual pleasure. They are not achieving the union proper to spouses, but are holding back from each other and preventing God, if He so chooses, from creating a new human life.
That’s from a 1998 First Things symposium on contraception (the 30th anniversary of Humanae Vitae), which has numerous worthwhile contributions. We will probably have more about The Pill later this week.
