New for Spring- The Malthusian Belt!

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Pharmaceuticals

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Free to be You & Me through Chemistry!

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Pills Grim Progress

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You Complete Me, Chemistry!

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One Tiny Pill Prevents Pregnancy AND Dignity!

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Love Me, Love My Fertility!

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Organic Vegetables in the Age of In-Organic Orgasm

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Death before Dignity!

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Pill-Ow Talk

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Fighting the Sexist Bigotry of Nature!

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Chemically Engineering Women Who Are Properly Free!

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How Margaret Sanger Killed Mother Nature

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Is “The Pill” More Natural than Nature?

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Don’t Worry About the Risks to Your Physical Heart.  They are Nothing Compared to the Risks to Your Emotional Heart.

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Lighter Periods for Heavier Question Marks

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Brave New World?

                The “Malthusian Belt” can be defined as a stylish bandolier filled by the state with the woman’s ration of contraceptives in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  One can read Brave New World as Humana Vitae on steroids if we only would.  Huxley was anything but a Catholic author and yet he read the logical conclusions of certain courses of action with the effect of strengthening and reinforcing the logic of Catholic teaching.  In Brave New World the populace is dictated to through passivity inducing pleasure, not the fear of George Orwell’s 1984. Sex is not only recreational but something less than that.  It is given its place as the pinnacle of human interaction, it is to be used for calming oneself and interacting socially but this ultimately insulates the act from any depth of feeling, the whole of society is scientifically bred to lack any real depth of feeling at all, so they don’t envy other’s status or employment they are engineered to desire what they are given by the state.

                The idea of having a family or children of one’s own is seen as pornographic.  In the society of Brave New World everyone belongs to one another.  This would seem to echo the call of Christianity but in the most destructive way.  In Brave New World no one fears death because they recognize their insignificance and so they spend their life filling up their time with sex and Soma, the state’s hallucinogen which created a quasi spiritual experience in the Social Clubs.  While as Christians we are called to recognize the individual’s worth and sacrifice of ourselves in awe of this reality of God’s loving goodness and so we are allowed through the recognition of human dignity to experience love and love allows us to sacrifice ourselves as Christ has through His Passion, death, and Resurrection.  Creating a society not bound together through selfish usage but bound together by the depth of individual sacrifice.

                Huxley’s Brave New World was an anti-thesis to the utopian works by authors such as H.G. Wells.  Wells created worlds of societies governed by science which among other things served as propaganda for eugenics, of which he was an avid supporter, works such as A Modern Utopia (1905), In the Days of the Comet (1906), Men Like Gods (1923), and The Shape of Things to Come (1933).  The degraded man of the future in The Time Machine (1895) is a warning of what man is destined to become sans eugenic engineering.

                Eugenics is not really the whole story it propelled the story for a time; what Huxley rightly surmises is that sex divorced from its intent is a strong opiate of the masses; beer was advertised with illustrations of pelicans in Huxley’s day.  Of the woman who greatly aided the descent of sexual meaning H.G. Wells said this upon her death, “When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine.”

                Margaret Sanger was a Socialist inspired by the writing of Anarchist Emma Goldman.  She published a paper herself “Woman Rebel” with the logo “NO GODS, NO MASTERS” upon its masthead, the phrase “No Gods, No Masters” was already a well used slogan of the Anarchist; it is the Anarchists equivalent of “In God We Trust”.  She saw the key to woman’s liberation as being birth control and first tried to broaden the scale of her message as a suffragist.  After the vote was won for women she attempted to redirect the women’s movement into the arena of birth control; she found little support among suffragists.  Carrie Chapman Catt, a suffragist leader, scolded Margaret, “Your reform is too narrow to appeal to me, and too sordid.”  The feminist movement of the time sought to diminish the role and importance of sex as to free women from the role of “sex slave”.

                The chastisement of the suffragists made Margaret incredibly mad writing, “The American woman, in my estimation, is sound asleep, Suffrage was won too easily and too early in this country.”  She turned her attention to the Eugenicists, a movement growing in power and formidability.

            In her book “The Pivot of Civilization” (1922) Sanger wrote:

The lack of balance between the birth-rate of the ``unfit'' and the ``fit,'' admittedly the greatest present menace to the civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty- stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem to- day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective. Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism.

To effect the salvation of the generations of the future--nay, of the generations of to-day--our greatest need, first of all, is the ability to face the situation without flinching; to cooperate in the formation of a code of sexual ethics based upon a thorough biological and psychological understanding of human nature; and then to answer the questions and the needs of the people with all the intelligence and honesty at our command. If we can summon the bravery to do this, we shall best be serving the pivotal interests of civilization.

                It is the second paragraph which is so interesting for we understand the neurological operations which actually undercut the position she puts forth, if we are able to face the situation without flinching that is. 

                It just so happens that Steve Bollman discussed this topic this morning in That Man Is You, a group designed to produce well formed and supported Catholic men- check it out! Quoting from the programs booklet, a publication of Paradisus Dei; "The posterior superior parietal lobe orients the person in space by defining self versus non-self.  The sympathetic system controls the body’s arousal system.  The parasympathetic nervous system exerts a calming/ stabilizing effect (the quiescent system).  During intercourse the arousal system initially dominates- using testosterone and adrenaline.  As climax approaches, the quiescent system is deprived of input.  The quiescent system reacts by shifting into overdrive.  At climax the arousal and quiescent systems are simultaneously in overdrive creating a feeling of ecstasy (testosterone/oxytocin).  Because the mind is overwhelmed by input from the arousal and quiescent systems the prefrontal cortex (the attention area) is forced to operate at maximum.  The posterior superior lobe (self vs. non-self) is deprived of input and thus an experience of transcending oneself in union with another is felt."

               

One flesh! How can we not see the power of this expression? The biblical term "flesh" calls to mind not only man's bodily nature, but his overall identity as body and spirit. What the spouses achieve is not only a joining of bodies, but a true union of their persons. A union which is so deep that it in some way makes them a reflection of the "We" of the three divine Persons in history.  Jubilee of Families, Homily of John Paul II, Sunday 15 October, 2000.

What Sanger sees is a cycle of oppression based upon her tyrannical fertility a cycle, no pun intended, in which she gains rights in the society at large but is shackled and made small within her home.                 
The effect of this line of reason turned Margaret Sanger from supposed defender of the underclass to their reproductive authoritarian.
No one has forced women to get married in America at any time in its history.  The answer, it would seem to me, would be long and chaste courtships.  Just who is one marrying?  Is one marrying an authoritarian?  Women have the ability to shape a positive relationship; the neuroscience is on their side.  Men can bond with women and rise above their urges and learn discipline, but women have to want it more than short term goals of generating attention for themselves and superficial feelings of acceptance.

Sanger herself did not value marriage; she had many lovers outside of her marriages including trysts with H.G.Wells.  She would have loved the State of Brave New World.  Because she valued herself above all else she truly felt herself equal to men.  What is set up by this “Survival of the Fittest” mentality is not equality but rather inherent inequality.  Inequality flourishes in the way it always flourishes whether one is talking about individuals or the sexes or the races those who are willing to use their advantage dominate.

Christian love requires us to deny ourselves the advantages we deem we merit in the name of that love; to sacrifice our superficial lusts for the sake of deep and enduring love in which family life might flourish.  During the Jubilee of Families, Homily of John Paul II, Sunday 15 October, 2000 our blessed Pope stated:



"It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him" (Gn 2: 18). So it is that in the Book of Genesis the sacred author describes the fundamental requirement on which the marital union of man and woman and, with it, the life of the family that flows from it, is based. It is a requirement of communion. Human beings were not made for solitude; they bear within themselves a relational vocation, rooted in their spiritual nature. Because of this vocation, they grow to the extent that they enter into relationships with others, fully discovering themselves only in "a sincere giving of self" (Gaudium et spes, n. 24).

Purely functional relationships are not enough for human beings. They need interpersonal relationships that are rich in inner depth, gratuitousness and self-sacrifice. Fundamental among these are the relationships created in the family:  between husband and wife, and between them and their children. The whole great network of human relationships flows from and is continuously reborn from that relationship by which a man and a woman recognize that they are made for one another and decide to join their individual lives in a single project of life:  "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gn 2: 24).

Thus we can understand how much is at stake in Jesus' discussion with the Pharisees in Mark's Gospel, proclaimed a few moments ago. Those who were speaking with Jesus considered this a problem of interpretation of the Mosaic law, which permitted a man to put his wife away, leading to debates on the reasons that could justify it. Jesus rises totally above this legalistic view, going to the heart of God's plan. In the law of Moses he sees a concession to their "skelerokardia", their "hardness of heart". But it is to this hardness that Jesus is not resigned. And how could he be, having come precisely to dispel it and to offer to man, with Redemption, the strength to overcome the resistance due to sin? He is not afraid to remind them of the original plan:  "From the beginning of creation, "God made them male and female' " (Mk 10: 6).

4. From the beginning! Only he, Jesus, knows the Father "from the beginning" and also knows man "from the beginning". He both reveals the Father and reveals man to himself (cf. Gaudium et spes, n. 22). For this reason, following in his footsteps, the Church has the task of bearing witness in history to this original plan and of showing its truth and feasibility.

In doing so she does not hide the difficulties and tragedies which concrete historical experience records in the life of families. But she also knows that God's will, wholeheartedly accepted and fulfilled, is not a chain that enslaves, but the condition for a true freedom which achieves its fullness in love. The Church also knows - and our daily experience confirms it - that when this original plan is obscured in consciences, incalculable harm is done to society.

Certainly, there are difficulties. But Jesus provided married couples with sufficient means of grace to overcome them. By his will marriage has acquired, in the baptized, the value and power of a sacramental sign, which strengthens its characteristics and prerogatives. For in sacramental marriage the spouses - as the young couples whose marriages I will bless will shortly be doing - commit themselves to expressing to each other and to bearing witness before the world to the powerful and indissoluble love with which Christ loves the Church. It is a "great mystery", as the Apostle Paul calls it (cf. Eph 5: 32).

5. "May the Lord, the source of life, bless you!". God's blessing is at the origin not only of marital communion, but also of a responsible and generous openness to life. Children really are the "springtime of the family and society", as the motto of your Jubilee says. It is in children that marriage blossoms:  they crown that total partnership of life ("totius vitae consortium":  CIC, can. 1055, 1), which makes husband and wife "one flesh"; this is true both of the children born from the natural relationship of the spouses and those desired through adoption. Children are not an "accessory" to the project of married life. They are not an "option", but a "supreme gift" (Gaudium et spes, n. 50), inscribed in the very structure of the conjugal union. The Church, as you know, teaches an ethic of respect for this fundamental structure in both its unitive and procreative meaning. In all this, it expresses the proper regard for God's plan, sketching an image of conjugal relations that are marked by mutual and unreserved acceptance. Above all, it addresses the right of children to be born and to grow in a context of fully human love. In conforming to the word of God, families thus become a school of humanization and true solidarity.

6. Parents and children are called to this task, but, as I already wrote in 1994 for the Year of the Family, "the "we' of the parents, of husband and wife, develops into the "we' of the family, which is grafted on to earlier generations and is open to gradual expansion" (Letter to Families, n. 16). When roles are respected, so that the relationship between husband and wife and between parents and children develops fully and peacefully, it is natural for other relatives such as grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, also to become significant and important. In these relationships marked by sincere affection and mutual help, the family often plays a truly irreplaceable role, so that persons in difficulty, unmarried people, widows, widowers and orphans can find a place that is warm and welcoming. The family cannot be closed in on itself. The affectionate relationship with relatives is an initial sphere of that necessary openness which orients families to all of society.

Amen, Blessed John Paul the Great! Pray for us and our families!  Amen.

North Carolina vs. Mississippi

Today Mississippi votes on a “personhood” amendment.  Yesterday victims of a sterilization program in North Carolina spoke out on “Rock Center with Brian Williams”.  These two articles strike me as: one) they are both about reproductive rights, but two) they are also both about “personhood”.

                “North Carolina was one of 31 states to have a government run eugenics program.  By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized as a result of these programs. 

Eugenics was a scientific theory that grew in popularity during the 1920s.  Eugenicists believed that poverty, promiscuity and alcoholism were traits that were inherited.  To eliminate those society ills and improve society’s gene pool, proponents of the theory argued that those that exhibited the traits should be sterilized.  Some of America’s wealthiest citizens of the time were eugenicists including Dr. Clarence Gamble of the Procter and Gamble fortune and James Hanes of the hosiery company.  Hanes helped found the Human Betterment League which promoted the cause of eugenicists. 

It began as a way to control welfare spending on poor white women and men, but over time, North Carolina shifted focus, targeting more women and more blacks than whites.  A third of the sterilizations performed in North Carolina were done on girls under the age of 18.  Some were as young as nine years old."

For the past eight years, North Carolina lawmakers have been working to find a way to compensate those involuntarily sterilized in the state between 1929 and 1974. During that time period, 7,600 people were sterilized in North Carolina.  Of those who were sterilized, 85 percent of the victims were female and 40 percent were non-white.”  (Rock Center, 7/11/11)

                So what we have here is classic victimization.  Women and minorities bore the brunt of the forced sterilizations, although anyone deemed “undesirable” would have fallen under the “guidance” of the governmental program.  Suffice it to say none of the victims would have been the daughters of industrial or governmental officials, they were the wheat which meads out the judgment to the chaff.

                It reminds me of abortion.  “How pray tell is that?”  The answer is obvious; the baby will drain the parent’s resources, the baby is unwanted, the baby is a psychological hardship, the baby will cause the mother to suffer physically, the baby is just like a good for nothing so and so that drains our society of all its goodness, like someone who would qualify for the eugenics program in North Carolina in the 1960’s.

                The baby is not a result of miraculous conception.  The baby is a result of two people having sex, unless it was conceived using In Vitro Fertilization which is also a eugenic process.  People who are pro-choice should be pro-choice and recognize that 99% of the pregnancies aborted are simply incredibly cruel forms of birth control.   Abortion is not actually pro-choice at all but an attempt to invalidate a choice; just as the powers that be seek to invalidate the lives of the victims of forced sterilization.

                To sterilize a person is to extinguish that person from the infinity of time.  I believe it is in the Midrash of the Jewish faith in which it is explained that to kill a person is not only to kill that individual but also all the persons of his or her lineage and so it is an incredibly grave matter, in other words every murderer is a serial killer with an infinite number of victims over an infinite number of lost generations.  The state has tried to erase that person who was sterilized from the fabric of time.  A mother who terminates her otherwise viable pregnancy faces the same reality; do you see how sick abortion is?  It erases a son or daughter out of time for all eternity.

                If one does not believe in the personhood of the baby in the womb then forced sterilization is a victimless crime.  For what is taken from the individual but their fertility and fertility only means one thing, a womb will never grow money.  What has been taken, as Governor Perdue also states, is more valuable than money it is our children.   

  

Down’s Syndrome and the Eugenic Holocaust

                Nine of every ten fetuses diagnosed with Down’s syndrome are murdered in his or her mother’s womb.  Some might wonder aloud if the test given has been proven to be 100% accurate because of the very small margin for error.  That is not what I wonder because those children deserve to live regardless of their genetic makeup. 

                We are living in a society of decreasing tolerance and of decreasing empathy.  What we desire are not so much children as perfect children.  We certainly could not be burdened with the care of a child over his or her lifetime!  We are too shallow for that calling; give me children that can provide some utility. 

                Total care requires someone with the propensity to be totally loving and devoted and we are just not those people.  We deny the potential that we might grow as human beings through this blessing of human life God has placed within his or her mother’s womb and we pluck it and throw it away, unless its cells could be useful to somebody who rates care.  Nine out of ten times the world loses an opportunity to love deeper and nine out of ten times an actual child loses his or her actual life.

                The OB/GYN will provide the prenatal testing and the advice we need to take advantage of services which can take care of this little genetic mishap but we are the ones who will have to meet them after our own life ends.  We will have to explain to them why their lives do not matter and God will also be listening from His judgment seat to see if our explanation may also damn our soul too; to see if we can escape our own judgment.  I do hope you are comforted in the assurance that whatever our pithy explanation of why the individual soul in front of you could not live, it will be that soul that will intercede for us, that heroic soul will beg God for mercy on our souls.  So perhaps if the irony strikes us hard enough in the face we will ourselves be saved from the sort of disposable love we lobbied for during our lives.

                Some would propose that souls such as these are an evolutionary burden, but this eugenics argument misses the fact that we must not only evolve our bodies and our genetics we must evolve our sense of compassion and empathy.  In order to build a strong species we must have strong interconnections in our society.  The eugenics trend which seems to seek to build a stronger species fails because it undercuts the empathetic tendencies which bring humans together on a meaningful level.

                No one has ever cured a disease by simply killing everybody who contracts it and Down’s syndrome is no different.  Simply killing every child which pops up with Down’s is a solution only individuals with the ethos of Hitler could approve of.  The “final solution” for genetic disease cannot be murder.

                So as we go through our day if we should happen upon a parent of a Down’s child be especially kind for they are actually preparing for their eternal reward and we may need their good word one day.