Monday, March 08, 2010
Recently...
...I gave a talk in which the topic of contraception and the Pill came up, and the result was an extremely loud and vociferous shouting match. In particular, several of the teenage girls present were on the Puill, having been told that they needed it "to regulate me" as one put it. I am not convinced they are being given accurate information. Here's an example of material that needs discussing.
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6 comments:
There are situations in which the Pill is prescribed as a medical treatment for women who have problems such as very heavy, painful or irregular periods. I have heard concerns expressed by doctors at academic conferences that the Pill is overused for this reason, but there is surely an ethical difference between using the Pill as a medical treatment and using it as a contraceptive?
I am sure that contraception is a hot topic within the RC Church - but you draw attention to the dangers presented in nature from the indiscriminate use of chemicals in many types of medication, which are then excreted into drains or sewage.
The morality of this, is at best dubious, but then, so is a great deal of other things we do. Disposable nappies are another great polluter - are we to return to the boiling of insanitary Cotton or Terrytowel nappies?
Contraception is I agree, not as nature intended things to be, but it is better than abortion, legalised murder of the innocent. prevention is better than the cure which, sadly, so many feel is their only option.
You already have a comment about the medical prescription of the pill, being used to help those who need it - until science comes up with a better alternative, are we to condemn women to suffer?
I don't have the answers - God does. He gave science the ability to help those in need, sickness or adversity - he drives the creation of these medications, and gave the free will to men, to decide how they are used.
Individual conscience will decide in the use of contraception or not, and individuals will face their creator to answer him alone.
I think there are 2 key issues here.
Firstly - the overuse and uncritical use of the Pill for non-contraceptive reasons. Medically this often just masks symptoms of an underlying problem without failing to investigate further causes which would be best treated by other means.
Secondly - there is a danger of those originally using the Pill for such purposes to then continue to do so once sexually active without realising that the Pill can act as an abortafacient.
Fiorella is surely right here. There is a difference between the use of the Pill as a medical treatment and its use as a contraceptive. I recall people having been prescribed Warfarin joking about taking "rat poison"- another of its uses.
Fiorella, there is no medical condition that can be helped by the pill. This is a long standing myth and doctors continue to prescribe it for these erroneous reasons, perhaps because the drug companies promote this. Often the Pill can make these conditions worse.
I am not competent to comment on whether or not the Pill can help with any medical conditions; although I know it has been prescribed for that purpose for many years - indeed I once knew a nun who had it prescribed for just that reason !
However : if the Pill is the only medication which can help deal with a serious medical condition, and if it is prescribed for that reason only, then the contraceptive effect would seem to me to come under the heading of 'double effect'; which is not inherently sinful . . . it's like giving high doses of painkillers to someone in the terminal stages of cancer : it may very well shorten their lives appreciably, but as long as analgesia, rather than euthanasia, is the purpose of the medication, then that is morally acceptable.
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