Alright, here’s a topic that I haven’t touched on yet and it’s about time that I engage in the debate so it doesn’t look like I’m asleep at the wheel. For some strange reasons the topic of contraception is a lasting debate in American legislation. I have a very simple answer, but as always, I must dissect the opposition before I make my point.

Now, the majority of the opposition to contraception is based on grounds of morality. I simply see it as another way people are trying to control their peers. The largest opposition to birth control comes from the Catholic Church and the Pope. Catholic position on contraception is that it is an outright violation of god’s natural law because the design used by the Catholics and many religious institutions that sex is to be used for conception and conception only.

That is where I draw the line. Anybody who is has either engaged in sex or simply masturbated would have to agree that any act of sexual gratification is a good feeling. It’s natural because we are nothing more than (some would say) higher evolved mammals and we have animalistic instincts. Sexual gratification is one of those instincts.

Now this debate within the Catholic Church only truly became widespread in 1968 with Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, which is Latin for “Human Life”. The letter was the first real public acknowledgment of the use of contraception and they deemed it vile and sinful because it prevented new human beings from coming into the world. Okay…First of all, this is coming from an institution where its leaders are forbidden to fuck anyway so I think that bit of information should discredit them immediately. Unfortunately it does not.

I do find it strange that it wasn’t until the early 19th Century when contraception was condemned by the Church when it had been used in Rome itself for over a thousand years. I will explain. The Ancient Romans were huge fans of erotica and sexual freedom. If you examine much of the ruins and artwork of the ancient Roman culture you find much depiction of pornography and sexual experimentation present. Romans were far ahead of their time and were great innovators of military might, architectural design, artistic expression, and sexual freedom and experimentation.

There were many, and usually bizarre methods of birth control in the Ancient World. Roman women would sometimes place a pouch, usually leather, filled with cat’s liver on their left foot during sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy. Some women believed that spitting three times into a frog’s mouth was a good method of birth control. Now you can believe that these methods were ineffective, relying mainly on superstition. However, there was an effective method of contraception in the Ancient World. This method was the eating of the fruit silphium.

Silphium, also known as laserwort, was a heart shaped fruit that grew on the coasts of the Mediterranean. This plant was the first proven method of contraception in the Western World and it was a popular money making product. The sale and use of this fruit was so profitable that the plant is now extinct because of its use and reliability. Silphium was also used to treat coughing, fever, indigestion, and epilepsy; but the plant was popular all around Europe for its pregnancy prevention properties. Not only was this fruit used as a contraceptive, the seeds, by several testimonies uncovered, was used as an extremely potent aphrodisiac. Think about that, it prevents pregnancy and gets you exceedingly horny; can you see why it sold so well? I can.

Fast forwarding to the time Europe and the majority of the known world was controlled by the Catholic Church; the use of contraception was considered an act punishable by an eternity in Hell. However, during the Dark Ages, there weren’t many accurate and effective sources of contraception. Let’s continue on to America, if I continued on at the rate I was going, I would have you sitting there for an eternity.

Modern forms of contraception are available for both men and women who are sexually active. Praneem is an effective female birth control agent, even possessing the strength to fight against HIV (don’t think it is 100% though). Duet is a diaphragm that is easily accessible, disposable and does not require a doctor’s prescription or even a visit to a doctor’s office. Vaginal rings that are developed can work (depending on the type) from 4 to 12 months without serious risk. Male contraceptives include condoms, the most common form and most known. The other is simply pulling out. I know it is simple and kind of amusing, but those are the only two forms of birth control available to men. There are more techniques being developed, but that is all that is available to my knowledge, I might be missing some and forgive me if I am.

As we come back to the debate, let me illustrate my position on this discussion. I believe that birth control is a necessary device, a way to keep the human population in check and one of the most outspoken forms of sexual freedom. It is necessary because of several points.

One, sex is sex. It’s pleasing to almost everyone who experiences it willingly and it is something that people take great pride in involving themselves in. who could possibly say that having an orgasm is a bad experience. You might be reading this and it might be offending you but you are simply denying the natural urges and instincts resonating within you. There are sexual addicts in both herds of male and female and we are not the only species who engages in fucking for pleasure.

Two, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (no I don’t call them infections) are halted in their expansion because of certain forms of birth control. The opposition always hides behind the clever guise of morality to oppose and stop people from using birth control. My grandmother was a devout Irish Catholic and because of her devotion to her church and the priest’s condemning the use of birth control she had 12 children (my aunts and uncles) and it ultimately added to her death. This is one of the reasons why I’m on the Maryland Catholic Church’s shit list, I call them out on the fact that they contributed to my grandmother’s death. Moving away from family history and back to STDs, condoms are very effective (I’m beginning to sound like a commercial, I know) against the spread of STDs. However, because of the lax education in this country people are educated briefly about STDs and are still flooded with information about abstinence. Sorry, by the numbers of teenage pregnancies and the orphanages filled to the brim, abstinence education isn’t worth shit.

Diaphragms and condoms are the best ways to prevent STDs, of course if you swap blood then I can’t help you, which goes into freaky shit that just weirds me out most of the time.

This brings me to my second bullet point. Contraception helps weed out the human herd because, if you hadn’t known already, there are almost 7 billion people on this planet; this is a pretty jammed place. If we would follow the church teachings or wisdom of the anti-contraception politicians in America, we would have a lot more people, but a lot more homeless, orphans, abused, and eventually dead filling up our country. This would be because of people unable to control the ability of pumping out a kid every time they knock pelvises with someone else. You might be thinking that abortion might be an option, but remember this is the conservative power base and Catholic Church we are discussing.

My last bullet point is that is a form of sexual revolution. Margaret Sanger is known as being one of the country’s most prominent and important women. Sanger was the founder of what became Planned Parenthood and the leading voice of her generation in support of widespread birth control and eugenics, which includes sterilization and euthanasia. She still remains a controversial figure in American history, but I see her as a visionary that was not afraid to promote something that gave rise to sexual revolution that would be a public spectacle in the last years of her life (she died in 1966).

The opposition will continually bring morality and the sanctity of life to the table to fight against birth control, but it is a losing argument. It is simply an examination of the facts and using some real basic logic to determine the true outcome. I am not slamming all conservatives nor am I abusing the name of every Catholic out there. However, if you are “morally” opposed to birth control…wake up and get with the program. Birth control has been around for a couple thousand years and it is here to stay. That is it. Until next time.