The "Contraceptive Effect"

The vast majority of women we see have used various forms of contraception, sometimes more than one at a time, and various "emergency contraception", i.e. abortifacients, yet still found themselves pregnant.


Alongside these women, however is a small but growing number of women who come to us unexpectedly pregnant but having not used anything to (supposedly)"protect themselves". Now we are totally opposed to contraception, but we ask these women (most of whom have no moral problem with contraception) "Why didn't you use contraception if you didn't want to have a baby?".


Their answer invariably is "Well all my friends are sleeping with their boyfriends and none of them are pregnant. I just didn't think it would happen to me."


Of course many of their friends have become pregnant but they just got rid of their babies quietly - abortion statistics suggest that in the UK depending where you live 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 women have had an abortion. And others have taken the morning after pill or some other early abortifacient.


In the end though, the Contraceptive Effect on these women is to make them ignorant of the true realities of a sexual relationship. We have the strangest situation where we have the most promiscuous population in living memory, yet they are more naive about sex than ever. They don't expect to become pregnant until they want to, they don't have a clue about when they are fertile or how contraceptives work.


We will of course finish by explaining to these women that contraception damages them physically, frequently fails and ruins relationships, and that chastity is the moral and safe way to a happy future. But it is mindblowing that more and more graphic information and more and more freely available contraception continues to make men and women more and more naive and more vulnerable.

Clare McCullough