Contraceptive Emotional and Personality Damage in Women
by Dr. Gerard J. M. van den Aardweg
Systematic contraception — and sterilization — is part of modern life. Tens of millions of women the world over, inside and outside marriage, are on hormonal contraception (mostly, the pill) and as far as powerful organizations as the UNFPA and IPPF are concerned, many more millions must be added. In countries with intensive pill habits like the Netherlands, there are still increases in pill use among adolescent girls (27% between 1990 and 2000), so that half of them are now on the pill. With few exceptions, this does not seem to alarm anyone, because modern contraception is believed to be wonderful progress and beneficial to the woman. However, on the horizon dark clouds are gathering, although those who might spot them prefer not to see: it is becoming increasingly clear that hormonal preparations are not as effective as they are said to be, and even worse, that the medical risks are more serious than had always been assumed. The advantage of less ovarian cancer is far outweighed by substantially increased risks of breast and cervical cancer, and we must add to this the risk of thrombo-embolism and the escalation of Sexually Transmitted Diseases facilitated by contraceptive relationships and increased promiscuity. These dangers are real enough, and will certainly be recognized some day, like the ominous consequences of chronic cigarette smoking are admitted today. But there are other grave effects of contraception which get even less attention, although they are common: it causes damage to the deeper emotional layers of the woman's psyche (soul) and suffocates basic feminine needs. Although contraception is promoted as liberation for woman, in reality it is psychologically traumatizing; initially perhaps in a subtle way, but ever more manifest in the long run. Fundamentally, it thwarts the maturation of the woman's psychological nature, not only sterilizes her biologically, but cripples her psychologically. The result is growing inner dissatisfaction and tension. The connection with the contraceptive relationship may not be obvious to the woman, or denied ("denial" is a common defense mechanism). Contraceptive emotional damage may express itself in a variety of ways, ranging from depressive moods and psychosomatic symptoms to behavioral and relational problems. Put simply and somewhat generalized, contraception may be satisfactory on a more superficial level, satisfying certain more ego-centered needs, but at the same time saps inner happiness and the sense of meaning and personal fulfillment. It offers some immediate rewards, but at the price of a loss of real inner joy.
These things are often not conspicuous at first glance. One cannot "measure" contraceptive psychological damage with a simple poll or questionnaire. However, it may be evident several ways: first, when a woman expresses her feelings without justifications and self-defenses, speaking her mind without reserve to a trusted person, a friend, maybe a doctor, a psychotherapist, or a priest. It may also become evident after a woman stops contracepting and turns to a more natural sex life. Usually, she will experience this as a liberation and a blossoming of her relationship (of course, much more is happening when such a "conversion" takes place, but here I only point to the factor of emotional relief). Secondly, it may be evident indirectly, from the emotionality and sometimes hostility of the reactions of some women when they explain themselves concerning their contraceptive habit. Many are overly defensive, ambivalent, and uneasy. One reason these things are so poorly understood is the prevailing often shallow and defective psychology of women. The importance of educational and professional achievement and "independence" for feminine self-realization is highly overestimated. In fact, fulfillment of these needs only contributes secondarily to a woman's self-fulfillment, provided that they are subordinated to her more essential drives: giving love and life. The deepest aspiration of the woman's psyche is to give love in a twofold manner: as the companion of a man and as a mother. She is not really happy if she cannot do that, either because she herself resists this drive, or because she is pressured to frustrate it (for example, by her lover or husband). By nature then, the soul of the woman tends toward fully abandoning herself out of love; deeper, more sensitively and more totally than a man might do. That implies her special power to sacrifice herself out of love and to suffer for others out of love. Of course she longs for love in return and her power to love makes her especially vulnerable when her love receives no response. Yet she can suffer and sacrifice herself even in that case; she often remains faithful even to an egoistic or difficult husband or to ungrateful children. Contrary to what is often affirmed, these feminine "roles" of companion and mother are not learned cultural habits, but inborn distinctive psychological dimensions. They are related to the women's special sense for the beauty and sacredness of her procreative power. It would be a mistake to view the perception of the sacred nature of sexuality, intimate man-woman love, and new life as a typically Christian notion. It is rather a universal human awareness, which is even more keenly felt in many non-western cultures than in our present society. It is rather our numbness to this natural experience which is the product of cultural conditioning and repression.
The contraceptive relationship frustrates the woman's central "instinct" to abandon herself to giving life and love. Some relationships are more contraceptive than others; living together unmarried, which usually includes maximum contraception, is on the average more dissatisfying than marriage. But likewise marriages that turned contraceptive after one or two children generally suffer from the wife's increasing dissatisfaction, no matter if it is recognized or not. This is so because a contraceptive relationship lacks deeper meaning; the woman does not give herself fully, in her complete femininity: either she does not want to share it herself, or the man does not want this essential part of her person. What remains is the game of playing complete man-woman union, but it becomes ever more impersonal, no idealism is shared, self-centered sensuality replaces tenderness. Especially the woman feels somehow disillusioned, and the relationship cools off and becomes more distant. This is one of the chief reasons so many cohabitation relationships break off. Many begin with the hope — mostly on the part of the woman — that the initial love will deepen, however, as self-giving is blocked, it usually ends in disappointment. Married women, who after one or two children, decide their family is "complete", often become discontented and may seek "new challenges" in careers, educational opportunities, or even new intimate relationships. "When one of my friends unexpectedly told me she was pregnant, I saw in a flash that somehow I too had wished for one or more children", a woman confided to me. She had been on the pill for years and complained about her unsatisfactory, boring, marital relationship. Both of them had thought a long time ago their two kids, one boy, one girl, were just enough, and they continued thinking that way. Sometimes contraception or sterilization means: "I have no feelings for you any more", "I do not love you any more", so "I do not want a child from you any more". In this way, contraception deepens a marital crisis. The wife of one of my clients was disappointed because of his character weakness and modest professional success. Being ambitious and materialistic, she decided she would from now on live her own life, resume her former full time job (their two kids had already attained puberty), and, after years of contraception have herself definitively sterilized. Although she denied it at the time, this rejection of her husband was the direct road to increased tensions between them and eventually they divorced. This woman's self-seeking attitudes made her demanding and merciless; afterwards, though socially rather successful, she was often discontented and hard-hearted, blaming her fate and former husband for her troubles. She had avoided sacrificing herself a bit more for her husband (and children), but her contraceptive/sterilized "freedom" did not bring her happiness. Of course, this is an old story. Why can't the admirers of Margaret Sanger, the mother of modern contraception, see that their own lives exemplify the ultimate consequences of her ideal of contraception-based freedom and independence (money and "fame" notwithstanding): loneliness, depression, and a vain escape in alcohol? Why can't the promoters of women's "independence from men" see that the emotional life of their prophetess Simone de Beauvoir, who vehemently denied the existence of the woman's natural self-giving power as a companion of man and a mother and consistently refused being a wife and a mother herself, was only one of progressive neurotic misery? On the other hand, why is so little attention given to the universal phenomenon that those women who willfully and freely chose to love and give themselves — generously accepting the sacrifices involved — to a beloved husband and as a mother to a larger family, and those unmarried women who devoted their lives to other people with all the love and self-sacrifice of real mothers, are among the happiest and most fulfilled persons in the world (live on average healthier and longer than various other groups of women, and have children who belong to the emotionally most stable and adapted part of society)? Does this reality not give the lie to the image of the emaciated, helpless wreck of the mother of a large family which the contraceptive movement has always inculcated in the minds of young women? Evidently, the larger family must be a conscious and personal choice, for love supposes willful surrender to the beloved. Therefore, some mothers of larger families in former days may nevertheless have had a dose of the contraceptive mentality in that they inwardly protested against their having so many children against their wish. They sometimes warned their daughters: "See to it that you do not have so many children. A few is enough. Enjoy your life, I never had the opportunity". Didn't these complaining mothers then love their children? They did of course, every single one of them. But their love was not fully deployed and lacked the fullness of a love that gives and sacrifices with joy.
Which factors inhibit a woman's self-fulfilling self-surrender to giving love and life? In general, all variants of human weakness; self-centeredness and selfishness, that normally interfere with authentic serving and loving, love of ease, materialism, lack of generosity, exaggerated seeking of self-affirmation in professional work; variants of emotional maturity like fear of responsibility and self-sacrifice, fear of failure and lack of confidence, lack of courage, pessimism. Such motives are tremendously reinforced by the present culture. Girls are under pressure to be independent emotionally, professionally and financially. Married women are more or less forced to take a job because the modern State, the accomplice of the contraceptive movement, does not allow the average father to earn enough to sustain a larger family while his wife takes care of the children at home. There is massive and constant negative image-building concerning marriage, motherhood, and the larger family in the schools, in the media, and often at home. The predominant values are success and money; in contrast, there is little education for love and virtues and the deeper idealistic, spiritual, and religious needs of children and young people are terribly neglected. The predominate "scientific" view of man is a prescription for decadence and unhappiness: you have no soul, you are only a piece of biology, not much more than a higher monkey.
"Sex Education"
Sex education poisons and traumatizes the younger generations. We really should not blame these generations of young women too much for their contraceptive mentality, many of them are simply ignorant of the existence of a more noble and fulfilling alternative or do not see how they could realize it in their own lives. Many have been poisoned, hardened and deformed in their years of youth. The attitudes and feelings of children and adolescents can indeed be distorted by false ideals and propaganda. Young boys in Nazi-Germany could be trained to become enthusiastic followers of a disturbing doctrine, and in a similar fashion, girls in our society are trained to become followers of the false contraceptive ideology. No doubt, under the false flag of women's liberation, modern sex and relationship education is in fact anti-woman. It seduces the mind of the young girl, as her body will soon be seduced by a boy. It tries to make her insensitive to the deeper aspirations of her soul. It tries to destroy her feeling of the sacredness of the life-giving mystery of her body and of a newly conceived life ("just some biological process"). It tries to extinguish the aspirations of real love in her soul.
The contraceptive habit more or less alienates the woman from her feminine self. Her attitude towards sexual intimacy and her sexual functions coarsens and becomes more vulgar, less refined, less respectful, more superficial. By repressing her nuclear, loving, self she in fact nourishes a self-centered and selfish lifestyle and this makes it more difficult to welcome a new, unplanned, pregnancy (for contraception is far from perfect). In short, the contraceptive habit conditions the mindset that makes abortion possible. Surely, many contracepting women shrink back from this step, but not seldom their daughters, who are deeper into the contraceptive mentality (maybe, also by their mothers' example and advice), eventually do not. The connection however is undeniable: the more the contraceptive mentality reigns in a family, or in a social group, the more abortions will take place. It is a bitter reality that every couple who practice contraception reinforce the climate that favors abortion, to a degree. Some women may object, "Oh, no, I am a Christian, I am on the pill but would never abort!" In the same way, young men may imagine they will never commit acts of violence, however, once in a war situation, many might be disappointed in themselves. — Women who never thought they would abort, nevertheless have done it (when they judged their situation "extraordinary"). And all this apart from the fact that modern contraception is more or less abortive itself: IUD's, morning after pills, Depo-Provera, Norplant, and sometimes even the usual low-dose combined pill. Women who know this, and take the risk of a consciously unaware early abortion, make it clear that their threshold to abortion has lowered already.
There is much hidden, or repressed guilt about a contraceptive lifestyle. Feeling uneasy or discontent about oneself, justifications, and various defensive shields may keep a sense of guilt away from conscious awareness. Perhaps there is no peace of mind, but you can live on, and seek compensations. Only when a woman decides to "convert", to listen to the soft but persistent invitations of conscience and to strive after real inner joy and peace, will she recognize guilt about her selfishness and wasted time, and feel sorry. Yet this repentance is liberation and reconciling. The emotional and spiritual circulation is no longer pinched off and the blood can stream again through the whole psychosomatic organism that is the human person. For that reason, Catholic women who live contraceptively will not go to Confession; they avoid contact with their conscience concerning this crucial life area. Because sober and sincere repentance is an essential element in the personal relationship between woman and God (this is quite different from neurotic, masochistic guilt feelings), this avoidance cannot but result in an ossification of the personal contact with God.
Religious practices may go on, but grow increasingly more formalistic. In the end, little authentic religiosity is left — children of contraceptive parents will on average be even less religious. The contraceptive habit is a primary cause of the dechristianization and paganization of the western world.
Many of the above observations are nicely comprised in a recent letter by a (German) woman to a magazine: "From my own most hurting experience I can say that contraception blocks one's complete self-giving in marriage fundamentally and permanently. Through it, the marital act is separated from God. One experiences this as a painful injury of one's human dignity, and there is tremendous danger that the marital act degenerates into pure satisfaction of lust for the two of you. To break away from God that way has incisive consequences: disruption of marriage, divorce, abortion, losing the faith . . . "
What can be done? The key answer is: education — and often re-education — of adolescent girls and young women. They must be shown where their real fulfillment and "wholeness" lies and that the contraceptive lifestyle is an illusion and a deception. That the contraceptive lifestyle is fundamentally anti-woman and that women are exploited by the contraceptive establishment (and the pharmaceutical industry). That the choice is between real meaning in life, and superficiality and disillusionment; between mature love and self-sacrifice, and the cold and emptiness of selfishness. That you need courage, generosity and idealism to make the right choices. If the choice is between "career" and "children" (or: "more children"): choose "children". They must learn to listen to their purest most noble aspirations and longings, to their inner voice of conscience. Especially for Christian women: they must be taught to sincerely seek the Will of God. All this is surely swimming upstream, but many young persons are still idealistic and able to start a courageous rebellion against this contraceptive tyranny that hems them in on all sides.
This item 8274 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
