How to Flip the False Claim that Contraception Reduces Abortions

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When conversing with pro-abortion people online, I have found that one of their favorite and most popular arguments is to make some sort of statement on how contraception reduces abortions. Oftentimes, they will even claim to be against abortion, while they argue that we should all agree to combat abortion by increasing access to contraception.

Not only are these arguments factually incorrect, but they are also a popular pro-abortion tactic being employed by the abortion industry to promote contraception, in order to ultimately promote abortion. Follow the money. According to their latest annual report, Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S. committed 321,384 in 2016-17 and brought in an income of $1.46 billion. Planned Parenthood also pushes abortion quotas on its regional affiliates and rewards abortion facilities that exceed their abortion targets.

Here are my tips to flip the false claim that contraception reduces abortions and help educate the person you are conversing with, along with all of those who are following the conversation:

 

1. Expose Any Pro-Abortion Allegiance:

  • If someone claims to be pro-life and he or she is making the false claim that greater access to contraception decreases abortions, I recommend first finding out if he or she is truly coming from a pro-life perspective. This is easy to detect by asking: “Are you in favor of making abortion illegal?” and/or “Are you in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood the biggest abortion provider in the U.S.?”
  • This very quickly begins to get to the heart of what he or she truly believes about abortion. If he or she is not actually interested in ending abortion, it is good to point that out for all to see first and foremost. It exposes the false claim of contraception reducing abortion as a pro-abortion tactic right at the outset.

 

2. Quickly Address Any “Evidence” Presented:

  • I have found that those who make this false claim will usually attempt to support it by bringing up some example of how it is “proven” based on one or two specific examples. They will often post an article or two that argues free contraception worked to somehow lower the abortion rate in some particular area. Let them provide their best “evidence,” then draw their attention to the fact that the one or two examples they provided do not offer any proof of causality.
  • Then transition to the overwhelming evidence that debunks their false claim.

 

3. Cite the Science:

 

4. Take the Offensive:

A. Contraception actually increases abortion rates and many abortion promoters and leaders in the abortion industry know it:

  • Here are some good examples:
    • “…women…have come to request [abortions] when contraception fails. There is overwhelming evidence that, contrary to what you might expect, the provision [availability] of contraception leads to an increase in the abortion rate.” -British Abortionist Judith Bury, “Sex Education for Bureaucrats,” The Scotsman, June 29, 1981.
    • “At the risk of being repetitious, I would remind the group that we have found the highest frequency of induced abortions in the groups which, in general, most frequently uses contraception.” -Infamous “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey, 1955
    • “With effective contraception controlled by women, there are still more abortions than ever…[C]ontraception causes abortion.” -Sociologist Lionel Tiger, 1999.
    • “…even if women use 95 percent-effective contraception, seven out of 10 will eventually face an unwanted pregnancy,” -“The Successful Animal,” Science 86.
    • “As people turn to contraception, there will be a rise, not a fall, in the abortion rate…” -Abortionist and international contraception promoter Malcolm Potts, former director of Planned Parenthood of England, Sex and Social Engineering
    • “…those who use contraception are more likely than those who do not to resort to induced abortion…” -Potts, Abortion.
    • My favorite item to share in this regard is the following video clip that exposes how some abortion facilities will use sex education and contraception to raise abortion rates: Abortion Provider Speaks
    • As Physicians for Life aptly points out, “Notice how the same groups (e.g. Planned Parenthood, UNFPA, etc.) push both contraception and abortion. Even in the law, the two are connected; the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade abortion ruling had roots in the earlier Griswold v. Connecticut contraception case. Contraception and abortion come from the same tree: the desire for sex without children.”

B. Hormonal contraception directly causes early abortions:

  • Every so-called “birth control” pill and hormonal device not only has a contraceptive nature, but also causes abortions by killing already conceived human beings (after fertilization) before implantation. These humans are sadly never counted or included in abortion statistics.  
  • One good resource I recommend in regard to the available scientific evidence on this topic is a booklet entitled “Does the birth control pill cause abortions?” It’s written by Randy Alcorn a Protestant Christian and former pastor who came to this issue as a skeptic. Alcorn’s wife had used the pill early in their marriage and he wanted to disprove the claim that birth control pills cause abortions. But when he did the research, it was clear, and he had to admit it was true.
  • One way many abortion supporters and many in the medical community seek to deny this scientific fact is playing a game of semantics based on the fact that in 1965, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) simply changed their working medical definition of conception from fertilization to implantation, despite no change in the scientific evidence. It should be noted that the ACOG’s fields of expertise are pregnancy and childbirth, not necessarily embryology. Yet, this completely fabricated definition of conception occurring at implantation has since been widely accepted and adopted in the medical field and in our federal government.
  • The result of changing the working medical and federal definition of conception means that a medical or government official, or others who have adopted this new definition of conception, can call a pill or device a contraceptive and deny that it causes abortion – even if after fertilization it does function to kill a new human being before implantation – because their new made up definition of conception as implantation allows them this deceptive use of language. Most people have no idea that the medical industry, the pharmaceutical companies, and the federal government are working off of a bogus definition of conception.
  • For example, the RU-486 pill is widely known as the abortion pill because it goes a step further and works to kill the human being after implantation. But a pill that kills a human being between fertilization and implantation is referred to merely as contraception. It is a lie. Both are abortion.
  • So what was going on in 1965 when this fictitious definition of conception was being manufactured and adopted? The first birth control pills were also being manufactured and adopted.
  • A doctor at the 1959 Planned Parenthood/Population Council symposium argued for redefining conception from when fertilization occurs to when implantation occurs, because, as he stated, “the social advantage of [birth control] being considered to prevent conception rather than to destroy an established pregnancy could depend upon something so simple as a prudent habit of speech.”
  • They realized they needed to change the definition of conception, in order to direct the popular language surrounding birth control to reflect its contraceptive nature and deny it causes abortions. The ACOG redefinition of conception from fertilization to implantation was clearly made for ideological reasons, not scientific ones.
  • In 1964, another doctor who would later win the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award for outstanding contributions to the pro-abortion movement, stated that “if a medical consensus develops and is maintained that pregnancy, and therefore life, begins at implantation, eventually our brethren from the other faculties will listen.”
  • Their strategy: gain a medical consensus and others will just go along with it. And sadly, that is exactly what has happened.

C. Hormonal contraception is bad medicine that actually hurts women:

  • The World Health Organization (WHO) lists oral contraceptives (Estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives) as Group 1 Carcinogens meaning they are carcinogenic to humans. Other substances in this same category include: diesel engine exhaust, formaldehyde, tobacco, and welding fumes.
  • Here’s a report from the peer-reviewed academic journal The Lincare Quarterly: The breast cancer epidemic: 10 facts, scroll down to Fact 7: Oral Contraceptives Are an Established Risk Factor for Breast Cancer
  • Here’s a recent study from The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals that concluded “The risk of breast cancer was higher among women who currently or recently used contemporary hormonal contraceptives than among women who had never used hormonal contraceptives, and this risk increased with longer durations of use”: Contemporary Hormonal Contraception and the Risk of Breast Cancer 
  • Taking birth control pills raises a woman’s risk of blood clots and strokes. A comprehensive report from Loyola University Health System concluded the following: “There are about 4.4 ischemic strokes for every 100,000 women of childbearing age. Birth control pills increase the risk 1.9 times, to 8.5 strokes per 100,000 women, according to a well-performed ‘meta-analysis’ cited in the report. But for women who take birth control pills and also smoke, have high blood pressure or have a history of migraine headaches, the stroke risk is significantly higher. Such women should be discouraged from using oral contraceptives, the report said.”
  • Sadly, some women do die as a result of taking oral contraceptives. Charlotte Foster was taking an oral contraceptive to combat acne when she suffered a deadly blood clot as a result of taking an oral contraceptive.
  • Further, I recently asked Dr. Thomas Hilgers, Founder/Director of the Pope Paul VI Institute, during LWEA 35: “Is there any good medical reason for a woman to be taking so-called birth control pills?” He explained, “There’s no medical condition that is effectively treated with birth control pills…There are some symptomatic things that may get temporarily a little bit better, for example, menstrual cramps in a teenager, but as soon as you stop the pill the cramps come right back again because it’s not a definitive treatment for the cause.” He went on to explain that in an ongoing study they’ve been doing of young women (average age 17) with menstrual cramps and have been placed on birth control pills by other doctors, they find 100% of them have endometriosis. And endometriosis is a cause of infertility, and recurrent miscarriage, in the long term so it’s better to get rid of it, especially at a younger age rather than to let it smolder in the body.

D. Finally, I recommend reading and sharing this factual and relatable series of articles on contraception written by Abby Johnson: