Show The war on birth control Keith Lockitch Ayn Rand Institute Religious conservatives are increasingly opposing birth control The Bush Administration has shifted funding from sex education endorsing condoms to programs preaching abstinence only And Bush FDA appointees spent three years blocking nonprescription nonprescription nonprescription non- non prescription use of the morning after pill despite overwhelming evidence of its safety Shockingly there has been an increasing number of Christian pharmacists refusing to fill contraceptive prescriptions in in some cases even for ordinary birth control pills for married women What is behind this disturbing hostility to reproductive freedom Religious conservatives insist that their growing opposition to contraception is not the product of some sort of puritan sex anti-sex agenda What they are concerned about they claim is irresponsible sexual indulgence They decry what they see as asa asa asa a culture of mindless promiscuity spawned by bythe bythe bythe the advent of effective and easily available birth control But blaming birth control for the irresponsible actions of th those se who misuse it is like blaming for crystal meth addiction Like any other technology contraception is a tool that can be used rationally or and abused used properly it enables people to be bemore bemore bemore more responsible about sex It is bizarre to crusade against irresponsible sexuality by crusading for the renunciation of responsibility the conscious deliberate rejection of rational family planning in favor of reproductive roulette Clearly there is something deeper underlying the growing antagonism to birth control It is significant that in opposing contraception conservatives declare that sex must be inextricably tied to reproduction that reproduction that it itis itis itis is morally wrong to pursue sexual pleasure while deliberately preventing pregnancy To demand sexual pleasure without openness to children is isto isto isto to violate a sacred trust writes Albert Mohler president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary But this implies a certain hostility to sexual pleasure as such not its irrational promiscuous pursuit but the very act of enjoying sex as something separate from reproduction What explains such hostility Consider that sexual desire is a response to personal values For a rational person it is not nota a desire for mindless indiscriminate indulgence but a feeling that results from the embodiment in ones one's lover of ones one's highest most important values For a couple in ina a serious committed romantic relationship sex is a celebration of their love love an an expression in the form of intense physical pleasure of the joy that each partner derives from the other But such joy is a selfish pleasure a a rationally selfish pleasure It is a pleasure that people pursue for the sake of their own enjoyment and happiness whether they choose to have children or not And this fundamentally is what religious conservatives nave Have against it Virtue according to Christianity consists of sacrificing ones one's desires and goals in the name of fulfilling ones one's duties to God dodo Sex on this premise is at best a necessary evila evil- evil a sinful act justifiable only by the duty to procreate To deliberately prevent pregnancy by using birth control is to assert ones one's right to enjoy sex purely for its own sake sake not not as a means to procreation but purely as asan asan asan an end in itself And this is what conservatives find unacceptable What they object to is that a couple using birth control is placing their own personal happiness above obedience to religion They object to contraception not despite the fact that it removes the fear of unwanted pregnancy but precisely because it removes that fear To proclaim categorically as Mohler does that every marriage must be open to the gift of children is to demand that a couple sacrifice their own dreams and long to toan toan toan an alleged duty to be I t 1 tEven fruitful and multiply Even a couple who wants to have children must on this premise do so out of submission to divine will not because t they ey value children as a source of personal joy The rejection of birth control is the demand that couples surrender the power power crucial crucial to their own happiness in 1 of ife choosing when or whether to have children and instead allow themselves to be reduced by means of their healthy sexual desires to the role of stock farm animals breeding uncontrollably Th Though ugh they claim their intention is notto not notto to condemn sexuality as such but merely its indiscriminate pursuit religious conservatives are in fact opposed to sexual happiness They are opposed to the fact that sex is an exalted pleasure that people pursue as an end in itself Their war on contraception is not a war against the alleged excesses of the birth control revolution it is a declaration of war against the pursuit of happiness Keith Lockitch is a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine CA The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn author selling Rand of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and originator of the V philosophy of |