I want to take a moment to address one more thing from Marc\u2019s recent post<\/a>\u00a0on chastity and contraception, written as a rebuttal to one of my own posts<\/a>:<\/p>\n I can think of quite a few other reasons contraception could be, at the very least, a contributing factor to marital dissolution, though I don\u2019t have the studies to back me up. For instance, consider that the weight of contraception falls unfairly on women. Men have to wear a free condom. Women have to suppress their menstrual cycles with hundred-dollar pills. There is one contraceptive device for men, and it comes without health risks. There is\u00a0no end<\/em>\u00a0to the contraceptive devices we\u2019ve developed for women, no drop of\u00a0ingenuity\u00a0wasted on developing the plethora of caps, sponges, pills, IUDs, patches, rings, and female condoms that have become \u201ca woman\u2019s responsibility.\u201d This gender inequality inherent to contraception would be bad enough even if most female contraceptives\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0include health risks (like decreased sex drive. (4)(5)(6)(Not exactly a key to an easy marriage.)) So no, it\u2019s not ridiculous to think contraception could be linked to a greater risk for divorce.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n How does a couple using a birth control method like the pill or an IUD, which are taken by or inserted in women, lead to a higher risk of divorce? Even if we\u2019re honestly concerned about the health risks artificial contraception poses to women (which are, by the way, far, far,\u00a0far<\/em>\u00a0lower than the health risks of pregnancy), how does that lead to a greater risk of divorce? I\u2019m seriously not seeing the mechanism here, and I\u2019m not trying to be dense. I think the argument must be that women would end up resenting their husbands because they face health risks while their husbands don\u2019t, but I think that\u2019s something people like Marc must imagine happens, because I\u2019ve never felt it and I\u2019ve never seen it.<\/p>\n But if Marc really is worried about the burden of contraception falling on the woman, why is he pushing Natural Family Planning? Is he unaware of how much\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0work NFP is for a woman, or that the vast majority\u2014vast, vast majority\u2014of the effort of NFP falls on the woman? I have used NFP. I used it for the first four years of my marriage, actually. And in the end, I concluded that using NFP is like making your birth control into\u00a0a hobby<\/em>. That is how all-consuming it is. So I honestly don\u2019t buy that Marc is actually concerned about the fact that the burden of contraception falls primarily on the woman. If he were, he would actually be advocating for male forms of contraception, or for making contraception even more effortless for women (spreading awareness of the effectiveness of IUDs, for instance) rather than advocating for NFP.<\/p>\n This whole thing about how contraception being designed for women being some sort of \u201cgender inequality,\u201d or that contraception somehow oppresses women is something Marc does this a lot. He frequently tries to turn feminist rhetoric back on itself, and it never works out well. In the past, for instance, Marc has tried to warn women about the health dangers of contraception, as though women don\u2019t hear the litany of possible side effects from doctors and yet choose to take the pill anyway. It\u2019s like Marc thinks we\u2019re children who need hand holding, not big girls who know that contraception has health risks and yet choose to take it anyway for some reason Marc can\u2019t comprehend (Hint: We like being able to have sex and not get pregnant\u2014shocking, I know!).<\/p>\n I don\u2019t see Marc running around warning women not to get pregnant because of all the health risks associated with pregnancy, or talking about what a problem it is that the burden of procreation falls on the woman and not on the man. The health risks of pregnancy are far higher than the health risks of contraception, but plenty of women run those risks anyway. It\u2019s not that they don\u2019t know the risks, it\u2019s that they choose to face them anyway because they have decided the end result is worth it. And it\u2019s the same with contraception. Similarly, with regards to Marc\u2019s concern about the burden of contraception falling on the woman,\u00a0would someone please remind Marc that\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0of the effort of pregnancy is on the woman? And pregnancy is\u00a0not easy<\/em>. Nor is labor. Is Marc concerned about the fact that all of that work falls on the woman, and about the \u201cgender inequality\u201d that represents? I highly,\u00a0highly\u00a0<\/em>doubt it.<\/p>\n Now let me address Marc\u2019s claim that (artificial) contraception lowers women\u2019s sex drives (which, by the way, can be a side effect of some hormonal birth controls but is not always, and is not for every woman). What Marc seems oblivious to is that some women might be just fine with a lower sex drive if that\u2019s the price they have to pay to choose when and if to become pregnant (once again, Marc\u2019s paternalism comes into play as he assumes that women are children who are unaware of the\u00a0trade-offs\u00a0they may make when using birth control). He also seems oblivious to the fact that\u00a0the risk of pregnancy<\/em>\u00a0might actually inhibit some women\u2019s sex drives\u2014or that having small children taking up time, attention, and energy might lower a woman\u2019s sex drive.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve\u00a0written before about how<\/a>, when I used NFP (and I used it for four full years), my fear of messing it up and getting pregnant severely inhibited my sex life and my enjoyment of sex. One way I could tell how strong this effect was that each time I got pregnant (both were planned) those first few months of pregnancy were an amazing haze of sexual bliss. All of a sudden my husband and I could have sex and enjoy it, without the constant worrying about pregnancy. The difference was incredibly, incredibly huge and undeniable. I\u2019ve since gotten an IUD, and it\u2019s the same sort of thing\u2014I now don\u2019t have to constantly worry about pregnancy, or to scan my chart over and over trying to decide whether to risk it or wait another day. And that\u2019s mindblowingly amazing. (And for the record, my IUD has not caused me a single health problem.) And I\u2019m not the only one<\/a> who has had<\/a> these experiences<\/a>, either.<\/p>\n Look, if Marc is honestly concerned about the health risks of female contraception, and the relative dearth of male contraceptive methods, I am all for him starting a campaign for female contraceptives that have fewer health risks, and for greater variety in male contraceptives. These are both things I\u2019m in favor of, too. But then, I suppose I shouldn\u2019t have added that \u201ctoo\u201d there, because I seriously doubt Marc is actually in favor of either of these things. He\u2019s a Catholic who totally embraces the Church\u2019s ban on (artificial) contraception, so when he pulls out the bits about (artificial) contraception having health risks or about how there\u2019s only contraception for women, he\u2019s not doing that because he actually wants to fix those problems. He\u2019s doing it because he wants to throw out (artificial) contraception altogether. And I suppose that\u2019s why his twisting of feminist rhetoric makes me rather\u00a0angry<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marc is a Catholic who totally embraces the Church’s ban on (artificial) contraception, so when he pulls out the bits about (artificial) contraception having health risks or about how there’s only contraception for women, he’s not doing that because he actually wants to fix those problems. He’s doing it because he wants to throw out (artificial) contraception altogether. And I suppose that’s why his twisting of feminist rhetoric makes me rather angry.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[119,23,244],"class_list":["post-15358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-uncategorized","tag-birth-control","tag-catholicism","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n