‘Womb Service’ is a disservice to young women

As a woman and as a mother, I was both disgusted and saddened by this recent NBC headline: “A Student ‘Womb Service’ Works Covertly to Deliver Contraception at a Catholic College”.

The story covers the actions of a DePaul University student who proudly distributes contraception to students and who has her “handoff down to a science: a text message, a walk to a designated site, and a paper bag delivered with condoms and Plan B emergency contraception.”

All this in the name of “reproductive health care”.

The article then goes on to mention other college campuses, including Loyola (also in Chicago) and Notre Dame (my alma mater), that also prohibit the distribution of contraceptives on campus, so students take matters into their own hands and put these covert systems into place. According to the Students for Reproductive Justice at Loyola, “they receive as many as 20 orders in a single night.”

The tone of the NBC article makes it sound as if Catholic schools that adhere to Catholic teaching about this subject are an affront to the students matriculating at the college and that students should be entitled to contraception.

Indeed, the article quotes a misguided Loyola student who clearly has neither read St. Ignatius’ writings nor studied Church or Ignatian teaching. The young woman stated, “Loyola’s motto is ‘cura personalis,’ care for the whole person. . . . And this is just an example of Loyola not living up to what it promises.”

If this is what she believes, Loyola has done a poor job of educating its students in the Catholic Faith.

But in this respect, Loyola is living up to its motto. Cura personalis does mean care for the whole person—body, heart, mind, and soul—and by banning contraception for students, the school is showing that it does care for women in each of these areas.

It is caring for their bodies by not encouraging women to consume harmful and abortifacient chemicals. One of the mechanisms of Plan B and the birth control pill is that they thin the lining of the uterus, rendering a newly created baby unable to implant and thus causing its death.

It is caring for their hearts by maybe making women think twice about promiscuity.

It is caring for their mind because, believe it or not, hormonal birth control affects your brain.

And it is caring for their soul because the use of contraception as a method to prevent pregnancy is a mortal sin.

Catholic teaching

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “‘every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil.”

It goes on to say that contraception “leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.”

Giving yourself completely to another person is an immense gift—one that should not be taken lightly or given with reckless abandon. Contraception encourages people to use each other for pleasure, and all too often these people are then discarded after a “fun night”.

Contrast this with the self-giving love of a married couple who are open to life, who hold nothing back, and who both love each other unconditionally.

This is the kind of love we should all strive for. It is the love we all deserve.

The dangers of hormonal contraception

But the fact that it is against Church teaching is not the entirety of the problem with contraception. Many people have no idea that, aside from not always protecting against diseases or preventing pregnancy, condoms carry their own side effects.

Jason Evert—author, speaker, and founder of the Chastity Project—explains them in this informative video. I urge you to watch and learn.

And hormonal contraception causes many dangerous side effects. Risks include cancer, depression, blood clots, radical mood changes, heart problems, and more. Honestly, there are too many to mention here, so I advise parents and anyone who is taking or thinking about using hormonal birth control to read this article and this book entitled This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, written by a secular psychologist who spent 20 years researching the side effects of hormonal birth control. One of the most telling quotes from her book is this: “Changing women’s hormones changes women. . . . You are a different person on the birth control pill than you are when you’re off the pill.”

What she discusses within the pages will both shock and scare you. It’s a book men and women should read.

If a woman truly cares about her body, she will not want to add synthetic drugs to it. And if a man truly cares about a woman and her body, he will not ask her to put synthetic hormones in it.

But all too often today, both women and men are reduced to sexual beings who are told that they should be able to do what they want with their bodies. They are told that being able to have sex wherever and whenever and with whomever they want is freeing.

But is it?

Women, is being beholden to a pill or having something implanted in your body so that a man can use you for pleasure the kind of freedom you want? Ask yourself: If my partner wants me to use birth control, does he actually care about me? And if I said no sex until we were married, would he still want me?

If he answers “No” to those questions, he is not worth your time. And he is certainly not worth your body.

Men, you can ask yourselves the same questions.

Our society has sunk to such a low that it not only devalues marriage and the marital act, it also directly devalues both men and women. Human beings are not toys to be used and then discarded, and we must teach our children (and maybe ourselves?) that they have value and that they should not debase themselves by allowing others to use them for momentary pleasure.

If we want to combat the “reproductive justice” lies of people like the DePaul student, we must teach our children and our friends the truth. Hormonal contraception kills babies, destroys families, harms both physical and mental health, and it turns people into objects to be used for pleasure.

Every human being is worth so much more than a one-night stand or a fling. Each is worth waiting for and protecting—body, mind, heart, and soul.