Under the Influence of Contraception

Family-Life Speaker Links It to Abortion and Divorce

 

ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, JULY 25, 2008 (Zenit.org).

 

Here is an excerpt of a talk titled "Why Contraception Matters: How It Keeps Us from Love and Life," given by Steve Patton, director of the Diocesan Center for Family Life in St. Augustine. The talk is being distributed by One More Soul.

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It used to be, before the contraceptive revolution, that there was a pretty clear and firm connection between sex and marriage. Married people had sex, unmarried people didn’t, or if they did, they more or less knew that they weren’t supposed to. Most everybody knew this.

But over the course of the 20th century, as contraception became more socially accepted, more available, and more effective, all that began to change. By the time the sixties rolled around it was becoming clear, to married and unmarried people alike, that you didn’t have to be married to have sex. Contraceptive practice had made sex into a recreational activity that everyone has a right to.

What did this mean for the unmarried? Well, you probably heard the old saying, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” Widespread acceptance and availability of contraception has led to widespread fornication. Pre-marital sex is now not only socially acceptable, but socially respectable. It’s no different among Catholics. About 90% of engaged couples in the U.S. who come to the Catholic Church for marriage are already sexually active -- 90%. Yes, people do still get married, but in fewer numbers. Why? Well, one of the reasons a man and woman used to get married was to start having sex, and contraception basically removed that as a reason. 

What did the contraceptive revolution do to married people? There are three ways that it led to an increase in divorce rates.

First, it’s the flip side of what I just mentioned: If sex is no longer a reason to get married, then it’s also no longer a reason to stay married. Anyone can have it. It’s pretty much a commodity. But once sex is removed from the portrait of all those things that make marriage unique and valuable, then a married couple at risk will have one less reason to try to make it work. 

Second, widespread contraceptive practice in many cases removed another reason that has traditionally held together married couples, namely, children. There is something to be said for a couple trying to make their marriage work for the sake of the children. But what happens when there are no children? More contraception has led to fewer children, and in many cases to no children at all. Divorces naturally followed.

Third, widespread use of contraception by married couples also led to an increase of adultery. Once you take away one of the greatest fears of extra-marital sex -- which is pregnancy -- you’re going to see an increase of that activity. And when there is an increase in adultery there’s also going to be an increase in divorce.

In net effect, our culture of sterilized sex has made marriage on the whole a less attractive institution to enter into, and an easier institution to get out of. It’s contributed to the demise of millions of marriages, both those that actually took place and those that should have taken place, but never did. 

Death to life

How does widespread contraception lead to declining birth rates? Well if the life-giving potential of sex is pervasively removed from the picture, a cultural mindset is gradually fostered in which children themselves are pervasively removed from the picture. They tend to be viewed not as gifts but as liabilities, spoilers of a pleasurable lifestyle. We might have one or two, if that would be pleasurable to us, but after that the norm is to reject them.

How does widespread contraception lead to widespread abortion? I credit Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse with summing up the motto of our culture of sexual liberation this way, and keep in mind that our culture of sexual liberation was made possible only by our culture of contraception: She says ours is a culture in which, “all adults are entitled to unlimited sexual activity without a live baby resulting.” I’ll say that again, “all adults are entitled to unlimited sexual activity without a live baby resulting.”

What Dr. Morse touches upon is our culture’s prevailing disconnection between sex and babies. Before contraception was king, the prevailing assumption was that a baby was a natural consequence of sex. If you chose to engage in sex, you knew it could result in a baby. You might not have wanted that to happen, but you assumed that it could happen. If a baby did result, it was because of your freely chosen action, and so you were likely, not necessarily, but likely, to feel a certain kind of responsibility toward that child.

The contraceptive revolution changed all that. It led to the prevailing assumption that babies really shouldn’t have anything to do with sex. That is, not unless you wanted a baby to have something to do with sex, not unless you allowed that. Or as Dr. Morse said, not unless you’re into that kind of thing.

Now couples who think this way do know that keeping a baby out of the picture doesn’t just happen by itself; you have to do your part. You have to do something to the sexual act to make sure that a baby won’t be conceived. That’s what, quote unquote, taking responsibility for your actions now means with respects to sexual activity.

But if a couple has this kind of attitude, then when the contraception fails, as it often does, and there’s a pregnancy, they’re not going to tend to think the baby’s there because of their actions. They’re going to tend to think the baby’s there in spite of their actions. In other words, their mindset is not so much that this is their child that they conceived. Rather, they’re going to tend to think it’s an invader that they failed to repel. This kind of thinking is likely to foster quite a different sense of what’s the responsible thing to do next.

Now, I realize, we’re not talking about abortion, yet. Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, and not everyone who uses contraception goes on to have an abortion when it fails. What I’m saying, though, is that contraception, by its very nature, and as a broad social phenomenon, tends to incline the heart of a nation toward abortion. As John Paul II put it in "Evangelium Vitae," Latin for the "Gospel of Life," the contraceptive mentality strengthens the temptation to abort. Contraception and abortion are not the same thing, but as John Paul put it, they are as closely connected as “fruits of the same tree.”

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A woman for our time?

CATHERINE PEPINSTER

It was one of the most poignant photographss o far of the US presidential race. Sarah Palin, the Republican Party’svice-presidential nominee, cradled herbaby, Trig, in her arms. A classic Madonnaand Child pose. But it was one for which MrsPalin was particularly vilified, simply becauseTrig is a Down’s syndrome baby.

 

Rather than be applauded for the courageand hard work it takes to raise a child withspecial needs, Sarah Palin was, according toCarol Fowler, the chairwoman of the DemocraticParty in South Carolina, chosen becauseher “primary qualification seems to bethat she hasn’t had an abortion”, while CintraWilson, a columnist for the online Salonmagazine, said that Trig was “the anti-abortionplatform that ensures [Palin’s] own politicalambitions”.

Mrs Palin is not the first woman in the publiceye to raise eyebrows over her decisionabout her baby. Cherie Blair chose not to havean amniocentesis test when she was pregnantwith her fourth child, Leo, because of the riskto the baby, despite the relative likelihood ather age of having a child with Down’s syndrome.This was a view that went right againstthe grain. As a newly published report fromthe worldwide charity Down Syndrome Education International (DSEI), reveals, government policy and pressure from themedical establishment has led to screeningfor genetic abnormality becoming the normin Britain. The study by DSEI shows that thisscreening, requiring invasive techniques,leads to miscarriage in between one in 100and one in 50 pregnancies, and that arounda startling 95 per cent of positive screeningsare wrong.

But what the charity is really concernedabout is not just the “normal” babies who arelost through this screening but whether geneticscreening for physical and mentalabilities and disabilities during pregnancy isacceptable. For behind that screening policylies a conviction that abnormality, any deviationfrom the “perfect”, has no place in oursociety. For years the political and medicalestablishment has promoted the idea thatscreening is a sensible, rational option. It isa given that if abnormality is found, then thechild’s life should be terminated. And just howthat view came to be so popular owes its rootsto a woman whose life and work is this monthbeing given what one might call, literally, astamp of approval. Marie Stopes is beinghonoured with a stamp issued by the RoyalMail.

Stopes is, of course,  best known for being a birth-control pioneer. The correspondencebetween Stopes and thousands of letterwriters who contacted her afterpublication of her bestselling volumes, MarriedLove and Wise Parenthood, reveal thedesperation many felt at having large familiesthey struggled to raise, the despairwrought by sexual ignorance, and the compassionfelt by her for their plight. But MarieStopes was not all that she seemed. (Indeedeven her title was misleading. That she wasDr Stopes suggested she had a medical background;in fact she had a PhD in fossilbotany.) Like many of the early pioneers ofabortion and birth control she was a eugenicist.Eugenics, while long associated with NaziGermany, has a lengthy history in Britain. Theword derives from the Greek, meaning wellborn,and its followers advocate the improvementof the human race throughintervention. Its beginnings can be linked toThomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle ofPopulation”, published in 1798, which expressedthe fear that the poor, unless checked,would outstrip food supplies. During the nineteenthcentury, as the size of richer familiesdeclined, followers of Malthus feared that thepoor would start to predominate in society.The solution was segregation of the poor inworkhouses, where husbands and wives were kept apart so that they had no more children.By the beginning of the twentieth century,the belief that those unfit to breed shouldbe stopped from doing so began to grow inpopularity. Preventive methods proposed includedsegregation, sterilisation, euthanasia,and abortion, as well as birth control. Thisdesire to control population was not entirelyfocused on the poor; while the working classesshould limit their families, many eugenicistsand Malthusians were dismayed that themiddle classes were having fewer children.

The well-off woman was seen as shirking herduty by not improving the stock.While the Eugenics Education Society was formed in 1907, it was during the 1920s and1930s that the eugenics movement grew, attractingwell-known intellectuals such as Sydneyand Beatrice Webb and Bertrand andDora Russell. Although the society’s leadinglights were on the left, and an unsuccessfulbill was put forward in 1931 by a Labour MP to sterilise the unfit, there was a certain suspicionamong Labour Party members that eugenicswas focused on eliminating theworking class. As indeed it was: ProfessorF.A.E. Carew, when giving evidence to the1937 Birkett Enquiry into abortion, urged thatthe “slum womb” be abolished.In contrast, as Ann Farmer recalls in hernewly published study of abortion and eugenicsBy Their Fruits, the WestminsterCatholic Federation told the Birkett Enquirythat it was social conditions, not the child,that should be changed. It was a plea thatwent unheeded among the proponents ofabortion. Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and oneof the staunchest advocates of the right toabortion in this country, revealed in a paperon abortion given at Kent University that policymakers long focused on limiting the childrenof the poor, right up to the passing ofthe 1967 Abortion Act.“Parliamentary discussion of the AbortionAct explicitly discussed its use in preventingunfit mothers from having unsuitable families,”she told the one-day conference. “Contemporarymedical journals discussed thevalidity of legal abortion alongside the needfor a birth control plan for Britain to limitthe numbers of the poor.”Back in the 1930s, as Ann Farmer’s meticulouslyresearched account reveals, a networkof campaigners made up of Eugenics Society members belonged to a wide rangeof other organisations and worked across party political lines, pushing for abortion andsterilisation for just these reasons. 

In the midstof all this was Marie Stopes. Stopes came toprominence in 1918 with the publication ofMarried Love, which had sold 400,000 copiesby 1923. In 1921, she and her husband, theaviator H.V. Roe, set up London’s first birthcontrolclinic in north London and formedthe Society for Constructive Birth Controland Racial Progress. Her views went well beyondan interest in people’s sexual wellbeing.“Are these puny-faced, gaunt, blotchy,ill-balanced, feeble, ungainly, withered childrenthe young of an Imperial race?” she askedthe readers of The Daily Mail in 1919 in anarticle entitled “Mrs Jones does her worst”.“Mrs Jones”, she went on, “is destroyingthe race!” 

The following year, in her book RadiantMotherhood, she urged that “the sterilisationof those 

totally unfit for parenthoodbe made an immediate possibility, indeedmade compulsory.” Marie Stopes’ beliefs affectedher own family. She cut her son outof her will for marrying a short-sightedwoman, outraged at the harm it wouldcause to her own bloodline. “Mary andHarry are quite callous about both thewrong to their children, the wrong to my familyand the eugenic crime.”These beliefs took Stopes to Germany, whereshe attended the Nazis’ Berlin congress onpopulation science in 1935. They were beliefsshe maintained throughout her life, leavingher money to the Eugenics Society andhelping to set up the International PlannedParenthood Federation in the 1950s, arguingthat no society should allow “the diseased,the racially negligent, the careless, the feeble-minded and the very lowest and worstmembers of the community to produce innumerabletens of thousands of warped andinferior infants”.

Such extreme language might seem outdatedtoday, but Stopes would no doubtapprove of the 

screening for congenitalabnormality so heavily promotedby the NHS, whose end result is frequentlytermination. And yet the numbers of childrenwith Down’s is increasing. The number of babiesborn with the condition has risen by25 per cent in the past 15 years in Britain. Accordingto Frank Buckley, chief executive ofDSEI and co-author of the charity’s new report:“More people are living with Down’s syndromethan ever before, with over 600,000across Europe and North America andmaybe 4 million worldwide.”All kinds of reasons could explain the increasein the number of Down’s children.Women are having children later in life, thusincreasing the likelihood of chromosomal abnormality.They feel encouraged to have thembecause other parents and charities have lobbiedhard for better healthcare and better opportunities for their children.

Above all, these figures are a sign that wehave made progress in the twenty-first century– not because of genetic screening butbecause, unlike Marie Stopes, people havelearned that they need not fear those who they deem less than perfect.

Marie Stopes,honoured on a new postage stamp, is well known as a pioneer in the field of contraception.What is less well known is the influence on her work of her belief in eugenics – that bylimiting the numbers of the poor by birth control it would be possible to improve the English ‘race’A woman for our time?The Royal Mail’s stamp featuring MarieStopes: her belief in eugenics took her tothe Nazis’ Berlin congress on populationscience in 1935

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Catechism on Family and Life Issues Celebrating 40 years of Humanae Vitae

“We are called to seek and embrace the truth. In ethical matters, this demands a willingness to understand the natural law and the moral code that is derived from it. When Jesus said “I am the truth” he was affirming the fact that this truth is of vital importance to each one of us. If we are seriously to come to grips with truth, then we need to find a way of dialoguing with one another which is devoid of any ambiguity. That is why words and the meaning of words matter.” (George Cardinal Pell, Endorsement of Lexicon).

Introduction

Forty years ago, on July 29, 1968 Pope Paul VI issued the Humanae Vitae against the expectations of the Secular World and even some Catholic circles. His words have proven prophetic. Since then the Church has waged a continuous battle in defense of the family and human life against the Population Control Movement’s racist agenda to pursue universal access to contraceptives and abortion. These enemies are determined to transform our laws and institutions into instruments for attacking the family and the sacredness of human life through a manipulative political process. Lest the Church people are caught unaware when a double-speak language cleverly used with words sweet to the ears but hiding a dangerous intent, the Pontifical Council of the Family published the Lexicon.[1] These essays written by experts on various issues of Family and Life to explain beyond ambiguity the meaning of confusing terms and jargon. This Catechism is therefore both a review of Humanae Vitae and a clarification of selected terms relevant to the current political issues the country is now facing.

What is the difference between Procreation and Reproduction?

Reproduction strictly refers to the biological reality implying that man is no different from animals. Procreation on the other hand is the proper term for human generation since it refers to the appearance of a new person and points to collaboration of parents with God as the ultimate source of this new life.

What is Responsible Parenthood?

Due to the profound link between the conjugal bond and the gift of life Humanae Vitae emphasizes the vocation of married couples to be parents and insists on openness to life. It is neutral concerning family size. Responsible parenthood refers to the decision to procreate or not to procreate signifying the following:

a) Exclusion of the use of contraceptives for every fertile conjugal act

b) Knowledge, primarily on the wife’s part of her own cycle of fertility/infertility;

c) In the case of an ethically justified decision not to procreate, abstinence from conjugal relations during the wife’s fertile period and the restriction of conjugal relations to the wife’s infertile period.

d) Exercising control over one’s sexual impulse to render it truly and exclusively expressive of conjugal love and the self-giving of persons. This decision to procreate or not to procreate is just (it is responsible) when two things are taken into account:

a) That the parents have the necessary and sufficient resources to secure a dignified life for their future child (including basic education);

b) That there are no grave considerations of health on the part of the spouses, especially the wife;

In the UN language Responsible Parenthood is the will, ability and commitment of parents to respond to the needs and aspirations of the family and children more particularly through family planning. Since family planning is understood as enabling people who wish to limit the size of families the term Responsible Parenthood is associated to family size limitation.

Why is contraception morally wrong?

Contraception is any action taken before, during or immediately after the conjugal act which is aimed at impeding the conception which the conjugal act itself is capable of. Contraception therefore separates the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act. Conjugal sexuality by its very nature is an expression-realization of the total gift of self. In contraception the conjugal sexual act excludes from the gift of one’s person the gift of the capacity to become father/mother (it is the person that is fertile, not the body). Contraception makes the conjugal sexual act a lie.

Why is natural methods of birth control not contraception?

These natural methods simply enable the wife to ascertain when she is fertile and when she is infertile—scientific information placed at the service of either a procreative decision or a non procreative decision by the spouses.

What is Reproductive Health?

The UN defines Reproductive Health as the state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. This implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life, that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so, provided that these are not against the law. This further implies that women and men are afforded equal status in matters related to sexual relations and reproduction. (Cairo, Program of Action)

Strictly speaking reproductive health focuses on the biological dimension—when all the organic components of the reproductive apparatus are present and whole. It is therefore ridiculous to attribute “mental” and “social” dimensions to what is a purely biological reality. The surreptitious addition of these terms is connected with the stated aim of reproductive health—to have a satisfying and safe sex life. If having a satisfying sex life results in an unwanted pregnancy, the mental anguish this on the woman causes will negatively affect her mental and social well-being unless one has access to contraception and abortion. This is the convoluted reasoning behind the UN’s insistence that Reproductive Health necessarily presupposes access to artificial contraception and abortion. Thus in the Church judgment reproductive health is an ambiguous term. Despite of all avowals that abortion is illicit the inclusion of reproductive health in any law provides a backdoor for eventually legalizing abortion.

What is Reproductive Rights?

The term Reproductive Rights (RR) goes very often with Sexual Rights (SR) producing Sexual Reproductive Rights (SRR). Defined in terms of power and resources the latter refers to the power to have access to the necessary information and make sound decisions about fertility, procreation and child care, gynecological health and sexual activity, as well as the resources to proceed in a safe and efficient manner.

There are no international texts on human rights that mentions reproductive rights. The most fundamental document on human rights in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. The Population Control Establishment claims that Article 2 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights introduces the generic “right to have rights” rather than providing a list of concrete rights. It is further claimed that the content of these rights can be determined through democratic activity of nations. Subsequent UN Conferences—Cairo, Beijing, etc. reinforced the idea that the right to make decisions about reproduction and the right of access to health services were fundamental human rights. Both men and women should have equal access to health servic es including those related to family planning, the right to decide family size as well as spacing of children.

The erroneous ideology that defines a law making process based on the will of the majority is Legal Positivism can lead to unjust laws because the will of the majority can be manipulated by interest groups. Society runs the risk of enacting into law something that is against the natural law—what is wrong becomes right. Abortion legalized through a referendum does not cease to be wrong just because of a majority vote. This approach has permitted the UN to use its formidable financial resources in the advocacy process to provide universal access to contraception and legal abortion in line with its racist pursuit of fertility decline in third world countries.

What are Sexual Rights?

Sexual Rights is difficult to define and is best illustrated by the list of rights that tend to be included in this category. The 1996 International Planned Parenthood Declaration of Sexual and Reproductive Rights include among others (there are eleven of them) the following:

· The right to exercise and enjoy sexual independence, according to one’s preferences as well as the right to due legal protection;

· Pleasant and recreational sex, independent of reproduction

· Appropriate knowledge and information sex and reproduction.

· Freedom from fear, embarassment, guilt and other imposed beliefs that inhibit the sexuality of a person or diminish his/her relationship.

Underlying this view is the radical separation of sexuality, procreation and the connection between men and women. Pleasure is identified as the ultimate goal of sexuality and procreation is reduced as a function of the health care systems. Men and women relate in temporary and modifiable agreements.

Men and women are persons before all else, and for this reason sexual behavior cannot be used only for pleasure for this would mean using a person as a source of pleasure. Moverover since God specifically designed that the conjugal bond be profoundly linked with the gift of life sexuality can be exercised only in the context of married life. The exercise of rights gives rise to corresponding duties. Sexuality has to be curbed within the limits of marriage for the sake of wife and children.

What is Abortion Rights

The right to abortion was defined and acknowledged for the first time in the ruling of the US Supreme Court in the Roe vs. Wade case—giving women the free choice to interrupt pregnancy because the right to do so is a fundamental element of the right to privacy. Previously abortion was allowed in some cases as an exception to the norm on the defense of human life. After this ruling the law ceased to be interested in the conceived child as a victim, and shiftedits interest to the mother.

The right to abortion is called many names—interrupted pregnancy, menstrual regulation, etc. mainly out of a desire to hide the truth about the nature of abortion itself. But the truth is brutally simple—it always concerns the killing of the conceived child and the destryong of his/her life.

What is Reproductive Education

In the language of the UN Reproductive Education is the process of acquiring complete, accurate and relevant information on all matters relating to the reproductive system, its functions and processes and human sexuality; and forming attitudes and beliefs about sex, sexual identity, interpersonal relationships, affection, intimacy and gender roles. This also includes critically evaluating and discussing the moral, religious, social and cultural dimensions of related sensitive issues such as contraception and abortion.

Thisdefinition shows the propagandizing aims of Reproductive Education. It is meant to overhaul society’s values, attitudes and beliefs regarding sexuality and procreation. It is meant to make young people see the religious and moral values taught by their parents as myths on sex and sexuality deserving of ridicule and disdain.

Though countries in the West do not have any population control programs their sub-replacement fertility is so low that they now run the risk of population implosion. This was a result of a drastic change in sexual morality due to sustained sex education programs. The Sex Education Program has been in place in the Philippines since the 1970’s. The current 3rd edition is now entitled Reproductive Health and is much more explicit on sexual techniques rather than values education. These modules were patterned after the Sex Information and Education Modules of the U.S. ( SIECUS) originally developed by Mary Calderone and Alfred Kinsey of Kinsey Institute implemented in the American schools in the 1960’s. In plain language its content is pornographic; Kinsey Institute supports materials like Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler based on the research work of Eichel and Judith Reisman.

It assumes that young people are also subject of sexual rights and therefore they have a right to value free information about human sexuality, contraception, etc. Ultimately the objective is to encourage early sexual activity among the adolescents and create a demand for contraceptives and abortion among the young.

Parents have a duty to teach their children how to live the virtue of chastity. Giving the age-appropriate biological information hand in hand with the moral significance of sexuality parents educate their children live their vocation to love responsibly.

What is Safe Sex?

The term “Safe Sex” created in California and New York—the hotbed of HIV/AIDS—designates the condom as the best method against contamination by HIV during sexual activity. The expression refers to all precautionary measures taken to diminish the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted disease.

The media hype that has promoted use of condoms as safe sex ignores the scientific findings that shows that the male sperm can comfortably pass through the pores of the condom and the HIV virus which is even smaller, has an even easier passage. The facts also show that in countries such as Thailand, where condom usage is widespread, the incidence of HIV infection is reaching epidemic proportions.

What is Safe Motherhood?

The concept of “Safe Motherhood” is actually loaded with unmentioned elements making it a dangerous expression. The idea is that there is no Safe Motherhood without granting the mother the right to abort freely. This conclusion is arrived after a manipulation of statistics on maternal mortality rates to suggest that much of it is a result from illegal abortions performed in “unsafe conditions”. This is meant to lead to the conclusion that in order to reduce the risks inherent in motherhood it is necessary to liberalize abortion. The aim is of course to incite authorities to liberalize abortion.

Restoring the exact meaning to “Safe Motherhood” means defining it as the set of health requirements for pregnant mothers that would give women the ability to have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery. Safe motherhood is therefore a desirable goal and providing better treatments and equipment adapted for and available to an ever larger number of mothers all over the world is something everyon should work for.

What is Informed Consent?

The relationship between doctors and patients should be an interpersonal relationship and full of trust. In a society which has at its disposal all the resources this ought to imply that patients should be well-informed regarding the numerous side effects of contraceptive drugs, the long term consequences of procedures performed on them, etc. But the history of family planning is fraught with instances where patients do not receive complete information regarding the side effects of contraceptives:

• —Side-effects of the Pill:Premature hypertension, Heart Attacks and Strokes, Embolism; Carcinogenic (breast, cervical, liver cancer); leg cramps, nausea, infertility, bloatedness.
• The pill and the IUD are abortifacient;
• The condom has a high failure rate in preventing pregnancy, STD and HIV AIDS
• Tubal ligation: high risk for ectopic pregnancy
• Vasectomy: auto-immune response disorders
  

In some cases patients are even made to undergo, without their knowledge, interventions that mutilate them—for example surgical sterilization—and which are often irreversible.

Informed consent is a principle of medical ethics. The dignity of the patient implies a right to decide autonomously whether to accept or reject what is done to him both as to diagnosis and treatment. “Informed consent” consists is explaining to an alert and mentally competent patient the nature of the illness, the relation between its effects and the risks and benefits of the recommended procedures in order to obtain the patient’s approval or rejection of those procedures.

• The presentation of information should be understandable rather than cursory.
  
• The patient’s cooperation should be obtained without coercion and without the doctor taking advantage of his scientific prestige.
  
• The doctor should be attentive to the patient’s attitude (if she is well-reasoned, compatible with the principles of his life, that the decision is voluntary and free, not based on ignorance and that the patient is mentally competent to make the decision.

What is Gender and Sex?

Sex refers to nature and implies two possibilities—man and women; gender comes from the field of linguistics and includes three varieties—masculine, feminine and neuter. According to this radical gender feminist view masculinity and feminity are not determined by sex but by culture, a product of socially constructed roles and stereotypes that each society assigns to the sexes. This view capitalizes on the fact that in the past exaggerations led to discriminations and injustices for many women. Women were considered inferior and excluded from public decision, higher education and economic opportunities.

Breaking away from the natural concept of masculinity and femininity radical feminists assert the existence of four, five or six genders: male heterosexuals, female heterosexuals, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality and trans-gendered. Any sexuality is permissible; heterosexuality would just be one of the possible sexual practices—its procreative role does not make it preferable. To achieve universal acceptance of these ideas the strategy is to achieve gradual cultural change through the ”deconstruction” of society beginning with the family and the education of children. Ambiguous language is used ot make new ethical presuppositions seem reasonable.

Experts tell us in the human person sex and gender—the biological principle and the cultural expression are not identical. This is particularly clear when looking at the three aspects of the process by which they are normally and harmoniously woven

together.

• “Biological sex” is the bodily aspect of the human person determined at the moment of fertilization by the XX chromosomes in the female and the XY chromosomes in the male. Medical science shows how different each cell of the female body is from each cell of the male body, including structural and functional differences between the male and female brain.

• “Psychological sex” refers to the human psychic experiences as man and woman—consisting in the consciousness of belonging to a determined sex. This is profoundly affected by education and environment.

• “Sociological sex” is the sex assigned to a person from the moment of birth. It is expressed as it is perceived in the surrounding persons. It signifies a specific way of acting of a man or a woman. It refers to functions, roles and stereotypes which are assigned in each society to diverse groups of persons.

These three aspects are not isolated from each other. They must be integrated into a wider process in the formation of one’s own identity. Persons progressively acquires, during infancy and adolescence, a consciousness of “being oneself”. They discover their sexual identity and in it each time more profoundly the sexual dimension of their own being. Coming to realize bio-psychological factors of one’s own sex and the difference regarding the other sex, they gradually acquire a gender identity and discover the psycho-social and cultural factors of the role that men and women have it society.

Intersexual states are anomalies with various clinical characteristics that tend to occur at a very early embryonic stage of human development. They are defined by a contradiction of one or more of the criteria of sexual definition. Transexual persons have a pathology in some of the links of the biological chain leading to sexual differentiation. They should not be used as propaganda to obtain the “deconstruction” of the foundations of the family and society. They deserve respect and appropriate medical treatment.

What is Gender Equality?

Capitalizing on the discrimination and exclusion of women from public decision making and from access to education radical feminists aim at gender equality—the elimination of the differences between male and female. Since they claim that gender is merely a social construct they attribute the discrimination against women to the physical difference between male and female. This is what makes reproductive health and full access to contraceptives and abortion a very important in the feminist agenda.

Since the human person is either man or woman “in the unity of body and soul”, masculinity and femininity extends to all areas of his/her being: from the profound significance of the physical differences of man and woman and their influence in corporeal love, to the psychic differences between both and their different ways of manifesting their relationship with God. It is not possible to determine with scientific exactness what is typically masculine or typically feminine. But men and women experience the world in different ways, carry out their tasks differently, sit down, plan and react differently, and each of the latter has a solid foundation in the biological constitution of both man and woman. Men and women have the same human nature, but theyhave it in different ways. In a certain sense they complement each other; they mutually need each other to fully develop their humanity. In the husband-wife relationship, the “submission” is not unilateral, but reciprocal.

It is a biological fact that only a woman can be a mother and only a man can be a father though to be a woman or a man does not consist solely in being mother or father. . God did not create men and women so that we can engender new human beings. Man created in the image and likeness of God, is capable of engendering so as to express and perpetuate that divine image reflected in his sexual condition.

What is Gender Equity?

Radical feminist make an issue out of the fact that women have been excluded from economic life and advocate women empowerment.

It is evident that many injustices against women have existed historically and some continue to exist in the world. This long list of different kinds of discrimination has no biological foundation, but rather cultural roots, and these must be eradicated. Social functions cannot be considered as irremediably united to genetics or biology. It is desirable that women assume new roles that are in harmony with their dignity. We have to reject the fixed biological notion that all roles and relationships between both sexes are fixed in one static model. The incorporation of women in the labor market is an advance that certainly creates new challenges for both sexes.

The term gender correctly describes the cultural aspects that surround the construction of functions of men and women in society. Yet not all of these functions are things that are biologically constructed. Some have larger biological roots. There one can appreciate the presence of a certain diversity of roles is in no way bad for women, since that diversity is an expression of what is specifically masculine or feminine. More than a privilege or a discrimination sex is always an opportunity for one’s personal development. Hence we should all aim to promote the welfare of women not only outside the home but within it as well. While it is certain that women are not only wives and mothers, many are or want to be, so one must create the possiblities for them to achieve these desires in a dignified manner. Women who have an active external professional life cannot be the sole model, the only ideal for feminine independence.

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[1] “Lexicon, Ambiguous and debatable terms regarding family life and ethical questions” published by the Pontifical Council of the Family in Italian. The English version was published by Human Life International in 2006.