Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E129: Why Contraception is Harmful w/ Dr Janet Smith
Transcript
- 0:00People say that access to birth control equals less abortions.
- 0:02Can you explain why you have seen that to not be true?
- 0:06Walk us through some of the harms of contraception that
- 0:09people need to know about. Contraception tends towards
- 0:12moving us towards using the other person as opposed to
- 0:15respecting the other person and seeking what is good for the
- 0:18other person. Sex doesn't become the only way
- 0:21of spending time and being intimate with each other.
- 0:24So women will Revere by their husbands and women Revere their
- 0:28husbands that get a special kind of.
- 0:34Hey guys, welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
- 0:36Today we're talking to Doctor Janet Smith, who is a
- 0:38philosopher, moral theologian, PHDA professor who has been
- 0:42working for decades and tackling questions about sexual ethics
- 0:45and contraception. Now in today's episode, we're
- 0:48going to break down the topic of contraception from a non
- 0:51religious point of view about why and what the harms are of
- 0:55contraception. I think this topic is so
- 0:57important because today birth control is is being presented as
- 1:00a solution to people. It's something that's the safe
- 1:03or the smart thing to do. And even there's arguments
- 1:06saying that birth control will help reduce abortions, it'll
- 1:08make society better. We get into the details about
- 1:11why that is surprisingly often not the case and some of the
- 1:15other cultural myths about birth control.
- 1:17Please check out Doctor Smith's work.
- 1:18In fact, her work was really instrumental in opening my eyes
- 1:21over a decade ago. You can check out her work at
- 1:23the link in the bio. I hope you enjoy this episode as
- 1:25we break down the question of contraception.
- 1:27Why not Doctor Janet Smith? Welcome to the podcast.
- 1:31Great to be with you, Lila. So First off, I love for people
- 1:35to learn more about you. I've been a fan and admirer of
- 1:38yours for almost 20 years. I think when I first learned
- 1:41about you, well, maybe 15 years, but I was in my late teens and I
- 1:45was very inspired by your work. I found it really life changing
- 1:49actually. So I'm really excited to
- 1:50introduce you to the audience. For those that don't know you,
- 1:53you are a moral theologian, you're a philosopher, you're a
- 1:56PhD. Can you give some of your
- 1:58background and why you started to study sexuality,
- 2:02contraception, these issues with our audience?
- 2:05Yes, well, it's a, it's a long story and I get it's, it's worth
- 2:08hearing, but not only only have a short period of time.
- 2:11So I, I would tell you that my, my degree is actually in plus
- 2:15the languages Latin and Greek. But when I was a young person,
- 2:19it was when they were liberalizing the laws on
- 2:22abortion, and I got very interested in it and held some
- 2:27of the first demonstrations ever outside an abortion clinic in
- 2:30Iowa City and Iowa. And the more I did that over the
- 2:34years, I made a connection between contraception and
- 2:37abortion. All right.
- 2:39But I could see that contraception completely changed
- 2:42people's understanding of sexuality to the point where
- 2:46they were ready to have sex with individuals, men, women with men
- 2:51and men with women with whom they had no intention of having
- 2:54a child. And so that when a pregnancy
- 2:56occurred, it was a disaster and and hence a great need for
- 3:02contraception. The fact that contraception,
- 3:04that abortion was legalized not long after contraception became
- 3:09widely available is not an accident.
- 3:11There's actually kind of a causal effect there.
- 3:14There's many contributing factors, but this is a major
- 3:16factor at the same. So I started looking into the
- 3:20question of contraception. I mention I'm a philosopher at
- 3:23the time, not a theologian, but at that time not so much a more
- 3:26theologian, but I started looking into the Catholic
- 3:29Church's teaching on contraception.
- 3:31A number of my friends and I were becoming more faithful
- 3:33Catholics and that was a major objection that people have.
- 3:36How can you be intelligent person?
- 3:38How can you be a graduate student?
- 3:40How can you be a professor and accept the Church's teaching on
- 3:43contraception? So I started looking into it and
- 3:47not just its teaching, but it, you know, first the reasons for
- 3:51the teachings. And people think that the church
- 3:53sometimes just sits in a room and makes up something like, we
- 3:56have to prevent people from having pleasure.
- 3:58And so we, they have to have less sex.
- 4:01So let's not let them use contraception.
- 4:05It's not the way it works. It's really it, it's very
- 4:09experiential thing. What sort of damage does
- 4:13contracept what, what benefits are there to contraception?
- 4:15What, what damages are there from a contraceptive lifestyle?
- 4:21And as I worked on that, it became the, I just learned so
- 4:24much about how contraception was really just horrible for women's
- 4:29bodies, for our psyches, for our relationships.
- 4:35And it it, and as I tried to explain, and now we know how
- 4:38much damage it does to the environment and how many other
- 4:43difficulties it leads to acceptance of say, homosexuality
- 4:47and transgenderism. All these things are connected
- 4:50conceptually. And so I, I just became that
- 4:53fascinated. There was almost nobody who was
- 4:56speaking about this. And so one of my brother in laws
- 5:01once said to me when they eat her hump much, I spoke, he said,
- 5:04oh Gee, I'd like to be as successful as you are someday.
- 5:07And I said, well, when you're the only person in town that's
- 5:10talking about this, you get a lot of invitations.
- 5:13So it wasn't there a lot of competition to beat out.
- 5:16So it's probably been almost maybe 35 years now that I've
- 5:22been speaking on this topic. And yeah, what I've learned and
- 5:28what people have told me based on their own experience is
- 5:32remarkable. Well, I'm excited to break that
- 5:35down in this podcast. I promised our listeners they
- 5:37could count on this as a kind of an introduction or a primer to
- 5:41that question that you've asked in an amazing essay that you
- 5:43penned years ago, Contraception. Why not?
- 5:46And not just this religious case for against contraception.
- 5:49Like there's a bunch of religious fundamentalist.
- 5:51You just want to, like you said, stop people from having fun and
- 5:53pleasure. But really from a practical
- 5:55perspective and a philosophical perspective about what is really
- 5:58the consequence of these different actions that we take
- 6:00as human beings or as adults. But I want to start with one
- 6:03thing that you said, which was very interesting.
- 6:05You said one of the things that got you to explore this topic of
- 6:08contraception was abortion. Actually.
- 6:10And typically speaking today, people say there's a narrative
- 6:15that says that abortion is actually reduced when
- 6:18contraception, when birth control is made more available.
- 6:21In fact, unfortunately, the Republican Party, the GOP just
- 6:25plat, just changed their platform to include that we need
- 6:30more birth control. When they talk about abortion,
- 6:32they say we're against, you know, late term abortion.
- 6:35So they've watered down the platform and they're saying
- 6:37people need more access to birth control.
- 6:38So this idea is access to birth control equals less abortions.
- 6:42To explain, for starters, Doctor Smith, why you have seen that to
- 6:47not be true based on the research and based on common
- 6:51sense. Well, if it's worth looking up
- 6:56for, people just look it up. Look it up on the Internet.
- 6:59Most of the time where you find a, a reduction of abortion
- 7:02because of contraception, it has to do in a country where
- 7:05abortion has been the means of birth control, where people
- 7:08didn't have access to contraception.
- 7:11And so when they got married, I mean cut pregnant when it was
- 7:14inconvenient, abortion was the solution.
- 7:17So if you introduce contraception into a culture in
- 7:20which there was no contraception, it may reduce for
- 7:23a period of time the, the number of abortions.
- 7:26For instance, when I was looking at this many years ago at the
- 7:30average woman in Russia would have 8 abortions in her lifetime
- 7:35because it was the means of of contraception.
- 7:38You introduce contraception that will decline and in a culture
- 7:42like and not that it's there's the other harms, aren't there?
- 7:46The harms to a woman's body, the harms to relationships,
- 7:49etcetera. And, and possibly over time,
- 7:52excuse me, a kind of a increase in abortion because again, it,
- 7:58it facilitates relationships that are not receptive to a
- 8:02child. And So what happens in a you can
- 8:07look at our culture. Just look at the number of
- 8:08abortions throughout the 20th century.
- 8:11And as contraception became more and more available, the number
- 8:15of abortions climbed and climbed and climbed.
- 8:18And it, it makes perfect sense. Just you could predict that
- 8:23because the major reason for centuries why women would not
- 8:28have sex outside of marriage and men.
- 8:31I just a little pause for a minute.
- 8:33My father probably died about 10 or 15 years ago and for his coal
- 8:38Fort, about 85% of them were virgins when they got married,
- 8:4685% right now. Why weren't people having sex in
- 8:51all those decades when my dad grew up?
- 8:54He was born in 1921. Well, the reason was they
- 8:58reason, lots of reasons, lots of reasons that the culture didn't
- 9:01accept it. It didn't promote premarital
- 9:04sex. There was not pornography
- 9:06everywhere. The entertainment world would
- 9:09glorify marriage and family much more than single relationships
- 9:13and promiscuity, etcetera. And so people, that was the
- 9:17value and they would not have sex before marriage.
- 9:21They would think that this was being not true to the person
- 9:25you're going to marry that you are, but in a certain sense
- 9:30defiling a gift that you're meant to give to the person that
- 9:33you marry, that I belong to you and you alone.
- 9:37And sex is for building a family.
- 9:41And I, I wouldn't want to risk anything before we get married.
- 9:45I wouldn't want to risk for man. I wouldn't want to risk
- 9:47impregnating a woman having children that I'm not going to
- 9:51be in their lives for people. My father had a very high sense
- 9:54of indeed, he had a sense of his responsibility.
- 9:57So the the thought of having a child out of wedlock for him
- 10:00would have been that he was a scoundrel in a sense that he was
- 10:05not going to be there for, for the children that he he had
- 10:10fathered. And so he tried to pass that on
- 10:12to my, to my brothers, the responsible male, All's in love
- 10:17with a woman that he wants to be with for the rest of his life.
- 10:20He can wait for he can do that and the children they have will
- 10:25be within marriage. Will you enter contraception
- 10:28into a scene and into the scene of the 1960s?
- 10:31I mean, the pill was basically invented late 1950s, early 1960s
- 10:37and it it just was an absolute Dom, if you will, explosion.
- 10:43It combined with a rise in feminism that women were had no
- 10:48value unless we were in the workplace and competing with
- 10:51men. And so that if we were going to
- 10:53be having babies, we weren't going to be able to do that.
- 10:56So we needed to have contraception, fear that the
- 11:00world was greatly overpopulated and responsible human beings
- 11:04would have no children or very few children.
- 11:07Well, those those were other pressures, but it made people
- 11:10think there's no reason not to have sex outside of marriage.
- 11:14A pregnancy don't happen. But when I was in high school,
- 11:18it was in the mid, late 1960s and the whole sense was
- 11:23certainly they were girls and and boys were having sex out
- 11:26were having sex, but it was framed upon.
- 11:29It was weird. It was like they're kind of
- 11:33rebellious and it wasn't anybody thing talked about.
- 11:37It wasn't anything that they're like it didn't people didn't
- 11:41aspire to having sex. I mean, a few, a few would.
- 11:45Most people thought, no, that's something to wait.
- 11:47That's something to wait on someday.
- 11:50The idea of holding kissing was just fantastic.
- 11:52The notion of having sex was just like that's that's that's
- 11:56for a later time. But you entered contraception to
- 11:59that picture. And honestly, for women, we
- 12:01thought we had no reason to say no and the men thought we had no
- 12:05reason to say no. So just the pressure, the
- 12:07pressure. You couldn't say what happens if
- 12:09I get pregnant? You couldn't say that they
- 12:12should all use a contraceptive. I'll use a contraceptive.
- 12:15And I mean, studies do show that in the 60s, particularly when
- 12:19the pill was being introduced there, there weren't that many
- 12:22abortions. So it exploded once in a
- 12:26contraception became available. But if a, if a young man was
- 12:31pressuring a young woman to have sexual intercourse, she would
- 12:35say, well, what are you going to do if I get pregnant?
- 12:38And then that he would say, well, of course I'll marry you.
- 12:41I love you. That's why I want to have sex
- 12:43with you. And a wise woman would say,
- 12:46well, then of course I'll have sex on our wedding.
- 12:50And there were a lot of I taught.
- 12:53I was a professor at Notre Dame in the in the 80s.
- 12:56I had a lot of students who were the result of sexual intercourse
- 13:01outside of marriage, but their parents married each other,
- 13:04right? Because that's what she did in
- 13:06the 60s when a woman got pregnant, the man would be
- 13:11honored and and marry her. I remember when I was in College
- 13:16in this early 70s, one of my friends was having sex with a
- 13:20really, I thought maybe the handsome sky on campus.
- 13:23And I'm a little bit jealous. I'm asking her, but what happens
- 13:26if you get pregnant? And she honestly said to me, I
- 13:29don't know him well enough to ask.
- 13:33And I thought, oh, boy, what kind of world is this that we're
- 13:38now in? It was seen that that's an
- 13:41absolutely obvious and important question if sexual intercourse
- 13:45is going to be engaged and what happens if I get pregnant?
- 13:48How many women ask that these days?
- 13:51Afraid to ask it because they think if they do, he's gone.
- 13:56All right. And so, and it's, you know,
- 13:59likely the conversation goes somewhere, blah, blah, blah,
- 14:01blah. I thought you were taking
- 14:02precautions. I'll take precautions.
- 14:05Listen, if you get pregnant, I'm a decent guy.
- 14:07I'll pay for half the abortion. Or listen, I'm a really decent,
- 14:11I'll pay for the whole of the abortion.
- 14:14So you want to say is this to the benefit of women?
- 14:16Is this to the benefit that that contraception makes men think
- 14:21that every woman should be sexually available?
- 14:24Again, when I was a college student, before contraception
- 14:27became totally available, there was no such thing as date rape
- 14:32on campuses, right? Where did Date Rick come from?
- 14:36I mean, guys think that every girl is taking contraception,
- 14:41and guys think that that means that every girl is sexually
- 14:44available. And his view was sex with other
- 14:48guys. What's wrong with me?
- 14:50Why not me? All right.
- 14:51And if she's protesting, it's like, what?
- 14:53She doesn't really mean that she's taking contraception.
- 14:57She can't really mean it. Sex is no big deal.
- 15:02That's what contraception has come to make us believe that sex
- 15:06is no big deal. And I, I think that that's the
- 15:10thing that, that it's so much behind all the sadness and
- 15:16difficulty of male, female relationships now where sex used
- 15:21to be a huge deal, right? And it was a huge deal because
- 15:25it was a statement of a lifetime commitment.
- 15:28You did. A responsible person did not
- 15:31have sex with another person unless you intend it to be the
- 15:34lifetime partner of that person. So saying I want to have sex
- 15:39with you was equivalent to saying, will you marry me?
- 15:43OK. Because it was, you know, I love
- 15:47you, so let's get married and love sex and love babies and
- 15:50have a life together forever. Now it's contraception.
- 15:53Well, you know, maybe we should move in.
- 15:55Maybe we won't. Maybe he'll be down in the
- 15:57morning. Maybe he won't.
- 15:59Maybe I'm just one of many, maybe I'm someone special, but
- 16:03maybe I won't be special for long.
- 16:05And it's it, it's just, it rendered human relationships,
- 16:09male human relationships, absolutely without clarity.
- 16:13And once you start having sex with a person, all clarity goes
- 16:16out the window about the nature of this relationship.
- 16:19And you're just waiting to see like, is this really a real
- 16:23relationship? Are we going forward?
- 16:26When do we have those conversations?
- 16:28Are we going to marry each other?
- 16:31Well, this text is pretty good. We don't quite that much.
- 16:34And who wants to start all over again?
- 16:36And that's what I call sliding into marriage that many people
- 16:39are are now doing. It's not as if you started
- 16:43dating with the intention of finding a good spouse.
- 16:46If you're dating with the intention of finding a good
- 16:49spouse, that means, among other things, a good father or a good
- 16:54mother. Or if she took children, you
- 16:57have a whole different standard that if you just want to have,
- 17:00you know, a sexual partner or someone to go to parties with or
- 17:03someone to live with for a period of time, the standards
- 17:07are totally different. And if you make your standard,
- 17:10I, the woman I want a man is thinking is going to be the
- 17:14mother of my children. I want a totally different woman
- 17:19than just saying, I just can't wait to you know, she's hot.
- 17:24I'm going to take her home and we're going to have sex and who
- 17:26knows where we'll go from there As opposed to saying, no, I'm,
- 17:29I'm looking for, I'm looking for the the mother of my children
- 17:32woman saying why we tolerate all sorts of really bad behavior
- 17:36from men if we're not thinking of them is the father of our
- 17:39children. If we're going to think I want a
- 17:40father of my children. I, I had a friend of mine who
- 17:45fell in love with that. She's a graduate student, good
- 17:47Catholic, gone off to Graduate School, fell in love with this
- 17:50man. They were having sex.
- 17:52She was crazy about him. Crazy.
- 17:54And then she she realized it was wrong and she stopped having sex
- 17:59with them. They still had some sort of
- 18:00relationship on the phone all the time.
- 18:03I said, are you still in a relationship with him?
- 18:05She said, yeah, yeah, I am. I don't think over many man
- 18:08fascinates me as much as he does.
- 18:11And I said, well, then why don't you marry him?
- 18:13And she said, well, he hates God and he hates the Catholic
- 18:15Church. He doesn't believe in God and he
- 18:17hates the Catholic Church. He said, I want to marry a man
- 18:20that I can raise my children with inside the church.
- 18:24And I said, would you write it down like somewhere between 25
- 18:27and 100 times and then just see what kind of you want to draw
- 18:31from that? And you'd spent like five years
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- 19:26Doctor Smith, you should do a we should have a relationship call
- 19:29and show with you because that's a great a great piece of advice.
- 19:33Write down a hundred 100 times what you want and then doesn't
- 19:36match what you're, you're doing. I it's so good.
- 19:38OK, There's so many things you just said that I want to unpack
- 19:40because there's a lot of gems in what you said.
- 19:42But one thing that you said at the beginning was a comment
- 19:45about your father. And you made this note about 85%
- 19:48at that time, 1920s or so of high schools, high schoolers or,
- 19:54you know, college grads or just young people in general.
- 19:56When they get married, they were virgins.
- 19:59And I think that's an earth shattering concept today because
- 20:03we are told incessantly by groups like Planned Parenthood
- 20:06and certainly by the sex Ed at large and media that it is not
- 20:09only not normal to have sex, it is not only, excuse me, it is
- 20:15they are told incessantly that it is not only normal to have
- 20:18sex before marriage, but that you should.
- 20:22Sexually experiment before marriage and that if you don't,
- 20:25then you may be repressed or you may be holding on to some
- 20:28repressive fundamentalist beliefs about sex that will harm
- 20:32you. Can you break down so but but
- 20:35according to what you just said in the past, you know our great
- 20:38grandparents, they didn't have sex, many of them until they got
- 20:42married and abortion rates, STI rates were dramatically lower.
- 20:46Can you share your thoughts on this idea of you are repressed
- 20:51if you wait until marriage to have sex or it's not healthy or
- 20:54normal to wait until marriage to have sex?
- 20:57Sure. Well, there's so much to this,
- 21:00but I mean the the marriages of my parents generation lasted are
- 21:05they lasted and they rarely got divorced.
- 21:07And people say, well, many of them were very unhappy.
- 21:10I said no, some of them were. I said, but no, not many were
- 21:14very unhappy. Some of the most of them were
- 21:16quite, quite happy. They were faithful to each
- 21:20other. They appreciated what each
- 21:22brought to the relationship and they raised children and they
- 21:25had good friends that were living the same kind of life,
- 21:28worked hard, etcetera, had a good life.
- 21:32And and that to marry a virgin is to say, I, I'm waiting for
- 21:37you. I'm waiting for you.
- 21:39I expect you to be different from anybody else I've ever met.
- 21:43And there's certain things I want to do only with you, right?
- 21:47And there's especially one thing that I want to do only with the
- 21:50person I'm going to be with for the rest of my life.
- 21:53I don't want to be thinking about some other man and that he
- 21:56was a better lover than you are. And I don't want you thinking
- 22:00that there's other women who are better partner sexual partners
- 22:04than I am. This is something we have a
- 22:06whole life to work out together. There's a lovely movie called, I
- 22:12think it's called A period of adjustment.
- 22:15And it's it's about a man who was was in our at one of the he
- 22:20was one of the buttons, I think is the last naming Jay a very
- 22:23young Jane Fonda. And he was a soldier and he was
- 22:27pretending he was very sexually experienced.
- 22:29They got married and but he he just was on the honeymoon night,
- 22:33he was drinking and he wouldn't have anything to do with her.
- 22:36And it finally came out in the course of the movie and he was
- 22:39not sexually experienced and he was very concerned that he
- 22:43wouldn't perform well. All right.
- 22:45And they have this beautiful scene at the end of the movie
- 22:47where they're they're back-to-back on the bed and he's
- 22:52saying something like, you know what?
- 22:53I just don't, I, I haven't done this before.
- 22:56And she said, the point is, we have a lifetime to get it right.
- 23:00All right. We have a lifetime to get it
- 23:02right. What happens with couples now is
- 23:05what does it mean to have a whole bunch of sexual partners
- 23:07before marriage? What does that mean?
- 23:10Most of the time, you're hurt by this, all right?
- 23:13It doesn't last. He betrayed me.
- 23:16He was mean to me. He used me.
- 23:19Sex becomes something that is not a precious treasure.
- 23:22It's a kind of a bargaining chip.
- 23:25And it's one that you give a part of yourself away to someone
- 23:28and you feel you. You feel pretty rotten, and now
- 23:33you're taking the same body, the same person and giving it to
- 23:36someone else. And you want to say, what kind
- 23:38of a gift am I giving you and what kind of a gift are you
- 23:41giving me? You've given this to many
- 23:43people. Then I even talked to people who
- 23:46had had only had sex with each other before, married, not with
- 23:50other partners, but not it. Maybe it's different now, but at
- 23:53the time they were telling me, they said, yeah, you sort of had
- 23:55to. You had to sneak around quite a
- 23:57bit. There were people you had to lie
- 23:59to about, well, your grandma. You didn't want to let your
- 24:01grandmother know you were having sex.
- 24:03You don't want your younger, younger siblings to know you
- 24:06were having sex. Maybe you're lying to your
- 24:07parents. You're lying to your some of
- 24:10your friends. You've become a liar, right?
- 24:13You notice that your partner's be.
- 24:15He's good at lying. I'm good at lying.
- 24:17Wow. This is a nice characteristic
- 24:19I've developed and I I see it in my future, the person I hope to
- 24:24marry. This couple said something I
- 24:27thought was very important. They said when we were having
- 24:29sex outside of marriage, we had to sneak around and we had to
- 24:32lie. And we were lying to each other
- 24:34about the level of our commitment, the level or
- 24:38assurance of where this would go.
- 24:40And they said once we got married, it was hard to put that
- 24:43away. It was hard to think that this
- 24:45was not naughty in some sense, what we were doing.
- 24:48Sex became something that was naughty, right?
- 24:52Whereas I have other friends that had young friend, a young
- 24:54man and his, he dated this woman for like 5 years and they were
- 24:57virgins when I got married. And I saw him after at the
- 24:59wedding night about couple weeks later.
- 25:01And his, his smile is up to here and he's just going.
- 25:05He was a student of my professor Smith.
- 25:06He said everything's different and everything's OK,
- 25:11everything's good. And so that sense that this that
- 25:14everything about this relationship, no regrets, no
- 25:18past thoughts of of what has happened in the past with other
- 25:21people is the word pure is a good word unsullied, All right.
- 25:26And this person hasn't been hurt and I haven't been hurt and
- 25:30we're not going to hurt each. It's suspected.
- 25:36It is a beautiful thing. I think for many people, they
- 25:38feel it's unrealistic because so many people have had sexual
- 25:41encounters. They had sex, you know, long
- 25:44before maybe they're going to or they would be getting married.
- 25:47And I think there can be maybe some despair that people may
- 25:50feel that if they've had sex once, twice, three times,
- 25:52multiple different partners, what's a few more?
- 25:55What would be your take on that? I think on the show we talked a
- 25:58lot about the importance of redemption and then also that,
- 26:02you know, you are not you. You mentioned this idea of pure
- 26:05being sullied. You know the human person is
- 26:07beautiful and is made good, and our mistakes don't define us.
- 26:12So if those mistakes are in our past or our loved ones past,
- 26:16that doesn't mean we can't love them or that they can't start
- 26:19it. Start again.
- 26:20Good. You're you take it just down the
- 26:22right path. Thank you.
- 26:24Yeah, it's it's very important. We all make mistakes, all right?
- 26:28And we have to recover from those mistakes.
- 26:31Some mistakes are very big. Some mistakes are some mistakes
- 26:34and almost aren't on our fault. A lot of this sexuality stuff,
- 26:37our culture has done this to us. I mean, if they say that the
- 26:41average boy looks at pornography at the 8 years old, how
- 26:48responsible for he is for having this very distorted
- 26:51understanding of reality and of what women want.
- 26:56I've said some very negative things about male hears, but I
- 26:59don't, I don't think that men are constitutionally corrupt.
- 27:04I, I think men are by their nature, I think they're
- 27:07protectors, I think they're providers.
- 27:09I think by nature they're noble. But our culture tries to rob men
- 27:14and instead of developing those characteristics in men, they try
- 27:18to turn them into predators and selfish playboys as opposed to
- 27:22responsible males. And that's the, that's the
- 27:27natural thing. That's where if I can bring God,
- 27:30and that's what God wants us to be, all right.
- 27:33And our culture is trying to make us feel foolish for that,
- 27:36that that we're, as you said, we're repressed as supposed to
- 27:40say, no, I have control over my desires and I'm not going to to
- 27:44just play around, right. But our culture pushes people
- 27:48into that. And there's very few people in
- 27:50our culture that don't succumb, right?
- 27:52They have had to have a tremendous upbringing or
- 27:55tremendous role models. Who knows what kept some people
- 27:59free from the corrupting influence of our culture?
- 28:04Of course, the Catholic Church has the the sacrament of
- 28:08confession. And we believe that if you
- 28:11confess to God, the things that you've done wrong, he will
- 28:14forgive you and he will give you grace that helps you heal,
- 28:18right? It's not automatic.
- 28:20It's not overnight. I mean, most of us, most of the
- 28:23sins that we have, we have for a long time.
- 28:26And even if we're not doing the sins anymore, we still have the
- 28:29consequences of those, those if you, if you want to say bad
- 28:33choices, bad choices that we've made in our life, but we have to
- 28:37learn to make better choices and we have to constitute our, our
- 28:42thinking about sexuality. There's there's a, a video, I
- 28:47think it's called true love waits.
- 28:49It's only 12 minutes and it's about a young man who had been
- 28:52sexually active and he saw a woman at church and he felt ABS
- 28:57a girl and he was a young woman fell absolutely in love with
- 29:00her, asked if he could date her. And she said, well, I just want
- 29:04you to know I'm not having sex instead of matter of fact, I'm
- 29:07not kissing until we get married, until I marry.
- 29:10And of course, that's that's pretty strict, you might say.
- 29:14But she had made some mistakes. She didn't want to make him
- 29:16again. And he had made a lot of
- 29:20mistakes, many more mistakes, but he loved her.
- 29:23So she gave him some books to read on the meaning and purpose
- 29:26of sexuality. He was sure he could wear her
- 29:28down. He was sure that that not that
- 29:31she was going to sort of win this battle, but that he was
- 29:33going to win it. Well, he didn't he completely.
- 29:36And he said it was really, really hard because he had all
- 29:39these appetites that have been out of control that he needed to
- 29:42control. But as he became too Revere and
- 29:46love and think, I don't want to do any harm to this woman, I
- 29:50would never want to touch her in a way that she doesn't want to
- 29:53be touched. I would never put for well-being
- 29:55in in danger. And so eventually they married
- 29:59and had four or five children and they seem to be as happy.
- 30:03I mean, if they're as happy as they seem, they're very happy.
- 30:07So you can see people. She had made mistakes.
- 30:10He had made mistakes, but they got their thinking right and
- 30:14then they they behavior right and they could put things now, I
- 30:18would guess both of you would probably say, I wish we'd never
- 30:21made those mistakes to begin with.
- 30:23And it was hard to reconstitute ourselves and reconstitute our
- 30:29our understanding. But even John Paul the second
- 30:31uses the phrase secondary virginity.
- 30:34Then you can kind of, you can't physically become a virgin
- 30:36again, but you can get your whole view of sex again back
- 30:41into that line of. Everylife.com is America's
- 30:44fastest growing diaper company and America's only pro-life
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- 30:54everylife.com is you're not only partnering with a pro-life
- 30:57diaper company, but they donate and give back to the pro-life
- 31:00movement, donating thousands of diapers to moms and babies in
- 31:03need. So go to everylife.com today,
- 31:06order your subscription. You can become a monthly
- 31:08subscriber so that your diapers are delivered right to your door
- 31:11and use the code Lila at checkout for 10% off your order.
- 31:14That's everylife.com. And use the code Lila at
- 31:17checkout for 10% off your order. And to be clear, I think it's
- 31:20important here for anybody who's listening, thinking about what
- 31:23is the Catholic Church teach on this?
- 31:25What is the Christian view of sex on this question of
- 31:27virginity? If there is, and because sexual
- 31:30violence is so pervasive, if there is sexual violence against
- 31:33someone that doesn't take away their virginity.
- 31:35So you can't in a sense, lose your virginity because someone
- 31:39assaults you. You are still in no way where
- 31:41you blemish, you know, morally, physically even.
- 31:44I mean, obviously there may be physical harm to you, but the
- 31:46point is you're still you're still a virgin in that.
- 31:49And you never chose that. I want to get back to
- 31:52contraception for a minute because there's so much here to
- 31:55talk about. And I love what you said earlier
- 31:57about, you know, our modern view of contraception as some sort of
- 32:01antidote to abortion is so backwards.
- 32:03And the reality is the abortion rate has increased as
- 32:06contraception has become more available.
- 32:08Walk us through some of the harms of contraception that
- 32:11people need to know about. Because as it stands now, you
- 32:14look at the GOP platform to the Democratic platform.
- 32:17So politically and as it stands culturally, you're you're
- 32:21clueless if as a woman, you're not running towards birth
- 32:24control. It's it's clearly an amazing
- 32:26thing for women, is the argument.
- 32:28And we're so we should be so grateful to have it and we
- 32:30should have unfettered access to it.
- 32:32Why is that the wrong view? Yeah, many years ago I was
- 32:38speaking at the feminist conference and there was a very
- 32:42famous feminist there named Jermaine Greer.
- 32:45She was like a six foot tall Australian who was very
- 32:50imposing, brilliant woman. And she was all right.
- 32:54She's very pro abortion but having second plus on
- 32:58contraception. And she said, you know, I took
- 33:00contraception in 1960s and she said nobody really knew what it
- 33:04did to your body. And she said, so if I while I'm
- 33:07standing here, if I should have some huge growth in my forehead.
- 33:10She said, don't be surprised because nobody knew it was
- 33:13massive doses of the same. They've been reduced over the
- 33:16year precisely because of of many bad physical side effects.
- 33:20They still have many bad physical side effects, but
- 33:22they're much reduced from what they were when it first came in.
- 33:25As a matter of fact, three women died in Puerto Rico when they
- 33:29were testing the contraceptive pill, and they have always
- 33:32tested contraceptive pills in third world countries with
- 33:35illiterate women because they can't sue, all right?
- 33:39And three women dying is in Puerto Rico is considered to be
- 33:43a negligible sort of thing. So when did that happen?
- 33:46Most people, I want to pause, just bookmark that, Pardon the
- 33:49Interruption because it's so important.
- 33:50What you just said, the history of the trials of the
- 33:54contraception that we know today as it's evolved, you just said
- 33:58that some of these trials involved third world countries,
- 34:01women who were not literate, at least not in the language that
- 34:03they were being tested in, those that were testing the drugs on
- 34:07them and that some have died. Can you share more about that?
- 34:10Well, yeah, it's, it's, I believe it's still available on
- 34:13the Internet. There was a documentary done by
- 34:16PBS on something like 40 years after the pill and they were
- 34:21looking at the original trials and they were again hoping they
- 34:27would be safe. But if you tested them on
- 34:28American women, then American women were very opposed to it
- 34:32because they, they even stormed Congress at certain point and
- 34:36said these have not been properly tested.
- 34:38They have not been vetted and we don't know what they're going to
- 34:41do to our bodies. So the, the testing that was
- 34:45done is it's still done in third world countries.
- 34:48And after the three women died, they just adjusted the dosage
- 34:53of, of the pill. And so it it's worth what what
- 34:57Jermaine Greer's point was, is that she said this was at a call
- 35:00at, you know, he was college educated people.
- 35:02And she said you're all very bright.
- 35:04She said you can read the insert on any of the contraceptives.
- 35:09He said that at that time, and I don't know what it is now, it
- 35:11was like 33 different contraindications of taking a
- 35:15contraceptive pill. And she saw that most of you've
- 35:17never read it. And she said in your name, these
- 35:20drugs are being pushed in third world countries.
- 35:22Oh, you know, all the highly educated women, very
- 35:26professional, sophisticated women in the United States are
- 35:29using the pill. So it's safe for you.
- 35:32It's just, and she said it's just a lie.
- 35:35She said it. We're just not using the gifts
- 35:38that we've been given to, to have this education.
- 35:40We can go to the library. We can read the pill.
- 35:43She just. I used to know a priest who was
- 35:44dealing with couples who were coming from marriage prep and
- 35:49they'd be talking about the pill and he'd say he'd give them the
- 35:52insert that was in the pill. He'd give it to the young man
- 35:55and he said, would you read down what the the bad side effects
- 35:58are? And he'd sit down and read them
- 36:00and that. And then he'd say, would you
- 36:01take something that has those bad side effects?
- 36:05And he's kind of, and she's looking at him to saying, well,
- 36:07if you wouldn't take it, why would you need to take it?
- 36:12And so, you know, we're in the United States.
- 36:15We're all into this notion of informed consent and we have to
- 36:18take be accountable for our choices and what we're doing.
- 36:22Well, this is a pill that many women take for 10/15/20 years
- 36:27and they've never read what the pill does to them.
- 36:31There's a book out now that's called This is Your Brain on
- 36:35Birth Control by Sarah Hill. It's a fantastic book.
- 36:40She's not altogether opposed to the pill, but she wants women to
- 36:43know what it does. And the studies in the last 40
- 36:48years on what the chemicals do on the contraceptive pill have
- 36:51just uncovered so many things that if women don't know them,
- 36:57we're totally irresponsible. And not just physical ones.
- 37:01The physical ones are very even the minor ones, these are
- 37:03considered minor because, of course, most doctors are males.
- 37:07And if they don't, if you say I've started getting migraines
- 37:11since I took the pill, they say, oh, we'll give you some medicine
- 37:13for your migraines. Well, no, I think it's the pill.
- 37:16No, I don't think so. We'll just give you some money
- 37:18for for the migraines. Well, I've been gaining weight.
- 37:21No, no, no, no. Just watch your food, Mark.
- 37:24Well, I'm, I'm depressed. Oh, I'm, I found myself very
- 37:28irritable. I get my talks.
- 37:30I always say to women, I said, most of us want to be.
- 37:34We want to gain weight, be more irritable, be more depressed and
- 37:38have less of an interest in sex. That's what it does, too.
- 37:42The contraceptive pill reduces your libido.
- 37:45It reduces a woman's sexual desire.
- 37:47So she's taking a pill supposedly to help her to have
- 37:52sex, but it's making her more depressed, more irritable,
- 37:56gaining weight and lowering her sexual desire.
- 38:01It doesn't make sense. I said, we have something for
- 38:04you. It's called the contraceptive
- 38:05pill. I said.
- 38:05Most of the men in this audience, I say, would like the
- 38:07woman you're dealing with to be more depressed, to be more
- 38:10irritable, to gain weight, less interest in having sex.
- 38:13We have something for you. People are not paying attention.
- 38:16And in this book, Sarah Hill gives testimony after testimony.
- 38:20A woman will say, I've been on a pill since I was a teenager when
- 38:24I got married and, and, and I I went off and I was a different
- 38:28person. She said.
- 38:28I dealt with the world very, very differently.
- 38:32Well, you can imagine if you're taking a whole set hormones day
- 38:36after day, week after week, year after year that fundamentally
- 38:40change your Physiology, all right, your sex hormones, your
- 38:45sex hormones, all right, This is one of the many receptors we
- 38:48have of the world around us. And when I mean most of us
- 38:53before you're using contraception, there's a lot of
- 38:55women can't remember who they were before they used
- 38:57contraception. It's been so constant, all
- 38:59right, but you respond to the world differently.
- 39:02I mean, you, you just for instance, you have a lot of PMS,
- 39:06many of us have it ever have it all right?
- 39:09And you know, at a certain period of the month, you're just
- 39:11going to be kind of ferocious and out of control.
- 39:14You can chart that and you can know that's when that's going to
- 39:16happen. And you can prepare for that.
- 39:19When you're using a contraceptive pill, what happens
- 39:22is that it, it puts a woman in a state of pseudo pregnancy,
- 39:26right? It gives a woman the hormones it
- 39:29has the artificial forms are the hormones that are naturally in
- 39:33her body when she's pregnant. All right.
- 39:36So she's not having a normal fertile cycle, which women
- 39:39should have by nature. And she's not pregnant, which is
- 39:43another natural state. She's in a completely unnatural
- 39:47state. I mean, she, she's putting in
- 39:49her body stuff. She wouldn't let me put in her
- 39:51food or in the water supply, all right.
- 39:54But we put it in our bodies again day after day, week after
- 39:58week, year after year, and it so a woman is in a state of pseudo
- 40:02in its state of that whole time. Most women when they're pregnant
- 40:06find that their sex desire goes down.
- 40:09Evolutionary speaking, that makes sense, all right.
- 40:14That sexual whole sexuality that we have is directed towards
- 40:19mating and having children. If you're already pregnant, you
- 40:23have no desire to mate because you're already pregnant and
- 40:27you're not thinking about. Having children make in a sense
- 40:30because you're having a child, you're already in that
- 40:34condition, whereas the pseudo pregnancy and it changes your
- 40:37perceptions just remarkably. And the Sarah Hill goes into
- 40:41this extremely well where she talks about how women choose
- 40:45different men when they're using chemical contraceptives.
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- 42:03It's such incredible research because it has such huge
- 42:07ramifications for everything. And, you know, being on birth
- 42:10control does affect how you select for a partner and that
- 42:15you may not be as attracted to that partner if you are no
- 42:18longer on birth control. I mean, there's so many
- 42:20ramifications of even just that point.
- 42:23Everything you're saying is so compelling.
- 42:24There's a lot more research I know that Doctor Sarah Hill has
- 42:27uncovered and she includes in her book and you're referencing
- 42:30some of it. I am curious if someone is, you
- 42:33know, maybe they've read her book or maybe they've looked at
- 42:35all the research on the harm of birth control on the female
- 42:39body. Not just the immediate harms,
- 42:41but the long term harms because it's also been linked to cancers
- 42:45and to, you know, stroke. You know, Haley Bieber suffering
- 42:49stroke because of birth control means so many other things.
- 42:52What would be though your position to someone or what
- 42:54would you say to someone? If they say OK I get the
- 42:56physical harm But the reality is I'm willing to take the bet
- 43:00because I really don't want to get pregnant.
- 43:03What would be your response to that?
- 43:05Then really don't have sex. All right #1 All right.
- 43:09You know, it's like I don't want to be fat.
- 43:11Well, then I shouldn't eat a, a gallon of ice cream.
- 43:14You know, the, the acts have consequences, all right?
- 43:17And so if, if you say I'm not prepared for the consequences of
- 43:21this behavior, I shouldn't engage in it.
- 43:23Now there are natural ways to control your fertility all right
- 43:29it for it and they it tends to work only in really stable
- 43:32relationships and that means within marriage.
- 43:36And this is called natural family planet all right some
- 43:39places now call it fertility where fertility awareness.
- 43:43And I actually think every girl as she's approaching puberty
- 43:46should be taught this. And honestly, I think every boy,
- 43:51I think boys should understand how a woman's body works.
- 43:54And he, I've seen men, adult men learn this and they're
- 43:57fascinated. And it's like I she becomes less
- 44:01of a puzzle to him and he begins to understand more how her whole
- 44:06and her Physiology, which effects our psychology.
- 44:09How about how that works? And so natural family planning
- 44:13is based upon, it's very scientific.
- 44:15It's based upon and that there are certain physical signs that
- 44:19a woman has that shows her where she is in her fertility cycle.
- 44:24It's an amazing thing. It's amazing thing that most
- 44:27women don't know this. That's incredible to me, by the
- 44:31way, with all of our advances in science and technology and even
- 44:35the emphasis on, you know, STEM for girls in education and all
- 44:38of this stuff. That fact that so many girls and
- 44:40then women to go on to become women, do not understand how
- 44:43their bodies work, do not understand the basics about
- 44:46fertility and their cycle. Yeah, in, in, in sex Ed classes,
- 44:52instead of learning how the body works, they, they just learn
- 44:55how, what the different contraceptives are, you know,
- 44:58and what the sexually transmitted diseases are.
- 45:01Instead of saying, well, this is how your body works, It's
- 45:06important for you to know because what you're putting in
- 45:08your body changes your whole body.
- 45:11And and a woman is born with all the eggs she's ever going to
- 45:14have. It's amazing a woman can get
- 45:17pregnant only for 12 hours a month.
- 45:21She ovulates only once a month, and the egg lives within her
- 45:24body for only 24 hours, and it's only 12 of those hours within
- 45:29those 24 hours where the egg is alive, that she can get
- 45:34pregnant. Now, it's more complicated than
- 45:36that because male sperm can live in a woman's body for up to five
- 45:41days. So if she has sexual intercourse
- 45:44five days before she ovulates, she might get pregnant from that
- 45:48act of sexual intercourse or four days, three days, two days,
- 45:52one day. But even if she has sexual
- 45:54intercourse on the day that she ovulates, her chances are only
- 45:5843%, right? And then she might get then
- 46:03that. And so and she can different
- 46:06bodily signs indicate when that when that she's entered in to
- 46:11those five days before it. Because what keeps the male
- 46:14sperm alive at a woman's body is a certain kind of mucus, and
- 46:18that mucus carries the spur to meet the egg.
- 46:22A woman can identify when her body starts to produce that
- 46:25mucus, and she knows that she's about 5 days out from ovulating,
- 46:31so she doesn't want to get pregnant.
- 46:32She should not. She should stop having sexual
- 46:35intercourse at that time. Then after she ovulates, if she
- 46:40doesn't get pregnant, that fertile mucus dries up because
- 46:43it has no more purpose. So for the rest of the month,
- 46:46which is generally 12 days, there it 12 to 14 days.
- 46:50There's no more on that she cannot possibly be get pregnant
- 46:54that the egg has come and the egg has gone.
- 46:57If there's no egg, there can be no pregnancy.
- 47:00There's only, you know, one day a month when that egg is fully
- 47:04there and it can be fertilized. But she has to abstain 5 days
- 47:08before and a day or two after to make certain that everything has
- 47:11been calculated correctly. Now that is incredibly healthy
- 47:17for a woman. She's putting no chemicals in
- 47:20her body, none of those side effects, none of those risks of
- 47:23stroke and cancer, etcetera. Abstaining is hard, there's no
- 47:29question about it, but it's a good thing.
- 47:32It's much like dieting or exercising.
- 47:36It's hard. But women who are in
- 47:39relationships with men, and it generally means their husband
- 47:43who are using NFP natural family planning, he it's harder for him
- 47:49usually than hurt. But why does he do it?
- 47:53He does it because he loves. He says, I don't want to take
- 47:56you taking this pill. I don't want your body, your
- 47:59body. I love you so way more than just
- 48:01your sexual availability. And so I can abstain.
- 48:05And I've heard men say, you know, they they it's like
- 48:09building a muscle. I mean, you learn different
- 48:11things to do, go for walks, you paint the garage, you do
- 48:15something, watch a movie and you relate more in a way.
- 48:20Sex doesn't become the only way of spending time and being
- 48:25intimate with each other. And so women will Revere by
- 48:29their husbands and women will Revere their husbands.
- 48:32I get a special kind of guy for you.
- 48:35It's not all about sex. It's all about us.
- 48:37It's all about having a relationship.
- 48:39He doesn't want to put any risk. It's sad because our healthcare
- 48:44system, I think often is very anti child.
- 48:47So if there is high risk pregnancies or children are
- 48:50having multiple children or, excuse me, so if there's high
- 48:53risk pregnancies or people are having multiple children,
- 48:55there's this tendency in the medical system to say, well, you
- 48:58shouldn't have a child or you should use contraception.
- 49:01We just had our third child and this nurse walks in, you know,
- 49:05this is after the delivery several hours later, and she
- 49:08immediately asks about her plan for contraception.
- 49:10And it was just incredible that that is the immediate go to of
- 49:14our healthcare system. It's contraception and then
- 49:17often it's abortion. If there's anything wrong with
- 49:19the baby whatsoever, abortion is recommended or if there's a
- 49:22health complication. So Doctor Smith, what is natural
- 49:25law and why does it matter for the non religious case for why
- 49:29contraception is harmful? Right.
- 49:32Well, I mean, natural law just simply works by saying that
- 49:35nature is good, right? And if you cooperate with
- 49:39nature, things will go well. If you violate nature, things
- 49:41will go badly, right? And we do that in many ways.
- 49:45We know how many hours of sleep people should get.
- 49:47We know how many calories people should should eat.
- 49:50We know also how much exercise. We know all sorts of things.
- 49:54You do those things, you save your money, put this much money
- 49:58aside, do this, show up for work on time, put in.
- 50:01You do these things, things, you prosper, right?
- 50:05You cheat on those things and you're going to start suffering,
- 50:08all right? Things are not going to go so
- 50:10well. Oh, for a while it might seem
- 50:12good, but over a long term, you're, you know, like we know
- 50:16how much alcohol you should or shouldn't drink so well.
- 50:18I, I, I want more. Well, over time, the
- 50:22consequences are pretty severe. I don't want to take my car in
- 50:25for oil. I don't want to get it regularly
- 50:27serviced. I don't have the time.
- 50:28I don't have the money. Before long, that car is not
- 50:31going to be working very well. I, I find it greatly annoying to
- 50:35have to water all my flowers all the time.
- 50:38They don't give me any relief. All right.
- 50:40And I love them. I love they're so beautiful.
- 50:43But if I stop doing all right. So the general principle is that
- 50:46nature is good. If you treat things in a court
- 50:49with their nature, they'll prosper and you'll prosper.
- 50:53So we assume that the female body and the male body are made
- 50:57well that what to and with the environment, we don't want to
- 51:00dump chemicals into the environment.
- 51:03We assume it does terrible harm to it.
- 51:06Why would we dump chemicals into our body?
- 51:08Now that's just talking about the body.
- 51:10The human being is much more complex than the body.
- 51:13Again, the our body and our relationships are very much and
- 51:17you don't sleep, your relationships are not going to
- 51:19go well, right? One reason to get enough sleep
- 51:21is that you're nicer to your friends and your spouse, your
- 51:24children, etcetera. All right, You mess around with
- 51:27the chemical of your body. You're not going to make as good
- 51:30choices again, you again, you're as I said, when you change your
- 51:35understanding of sex, you change your understanding of human
- 51:38relationships. And so you start to use people,
- 51:43you start to treat people as things as opposed to being
- 51:46incredibly precious entities that have free will.
- 51:50And if I really love a person and I want that person to
- 51:54prosper and I want to sacrifice for that, I want to say I want
- 51:58to be in your life and I want to be in your life in order to make
- 52:02your life better, all right? I don't want to abuse you in any
- 52:07way. I don't want to use you.
- 52:08I don't want to hurt you. And of course I don't want that
- 52:11done to me, all right? And so the contraception tends
- 52:15towards moving us and so much towards using the other person
- 52:20as opposed to respecting the other person and seeking what is
- 52:23good for the other person, Treating sex and then go ahead.
- 52:28Well, and then if you have the situation where you got pregnant
- 52:32even with contraception, then you have that temptation because
- 52:36you didn't want to have a baby with this person anyways.
- 52:38There's the temptation now to not only have used this original
- 52:41person for sex, but now that a new life has been conceived to
- 52:44end the new life. So it enables the
- 52:47objectification not only of the sexual partner, but this lethal
- 52:51objectification of a potential new life.
- 52:57Yeah, well, the, as you know, the huge difference between two
- 52:59people who are using contraception and not all of
- 53:04them, not all of them. But it's, it's not an unnatural
- 53:07tendency. If you get pregnant or using
- 53:09contraception, you get angry. All right, get angry.
- 53:12I I was taking precautions. And often the man will get mad
- 53:16at the woman, you know, like, as if it's her fault, Right.
- 53:20And you might feel better. When we got pregnant, we didn't
- 53:22expect to get pregnant. It kind of it's it was an
- 53:25accident. What do we do now?
- 53:26What do we do now? And I'm remembering God into
- 53:29this picture. But I, I again, I think that God
- 53:32wanted the day that any woman got her first positive pregnancy
- 53:35test to be one of the very happiest days of her life.
- 53:39And she sees that test and she says, whoa, I'm pregnant.
- 53:43And she calls her husband says, Darwin, we're having a baby.
- 53:46And they go berserk. You know, they call all their
- 53:49their family and their friends and they look at names and they
- 53:52paint, but they just everything is different.
- 53:54But the joy, the happiness, the expectation is extraordinary.
- 53:58It's like something has happened that will has changed everything
- 54:02forever. All right.
- 54:04And in a in a marital relationship, that's generally a
- 54:07beautiful thing. It.
- 54:09But look, I mean, how many Movies Now but revolve around a
- 54:12woman getting a positive pregnancy test and she's not
- 54:16married and it's a disaster. It's what do I do now?
- 54:22I hope not. Do I marry him?
- 54:24I don't. I hardly know him.
- 54:26Or do I? Oh, I love him.
- 54:28I'd love to marry him. But am I going to feel like I
- 54:30trapped him in the marriage? Right.
- 54:33Do I become a single mother? Well, many women do.
- 54:36They do a fine job at every one of them will tell you they'd
- 54:39rather have a husband in their life helping them with with with
- 54:41their children. So couples who use natural
- 54:44family planning, who very much make a connection between a
- 54:48woman's fertility and sex and babies, it's a natural
- 54:52connection. They never forget it.
- 54:54Sex leads to babies. Contraception tries to take that
- 54:59possibility out. Sex only leads to babies if I
- 55:03wanted to. Whereas couples who are not
- 55:06contracepting, they understand sex leads to babies.
- 55:09They NFP couples generally talk not about she got pregnant.
- 55:14They talk about we got pregnant and they say we had a surprise
- 55:18pregnancy rather than an accidental pregnancy because we
- 55:23knew we knew it could happen. All right?
- 55:26It wasn't an accident. I would say it's not an
- 55:28accident. Getting pregnant through sexual
- 55:30intercourse, it means that something's gone right, not that
- 55:33something's gone wrong. And so you say, all right,
- 55:37somehow we miscalculated the fertility, but we knew it could
- 55:41lead to a baby. We're married.
- 55:44Let's just have it. Let's just enjoy this new gift
- 55:46that we've got. And so and again, it, it just
- 55:49solidifies a relationship as opposed to saying we didn't want
- 55:53a baby. We took precautions against a
- 55:55baby and now we've got a baby, all right.
- 55:58As opposed to saying we love each other.
- 56:00We know that sex leads to babies.
- 56:02We want to build a family together.
- 56:05Sometimes we're going to try to manage when that baby comes.
- 56:08But if it if we don't succeed, it's OK.
- 56:12We know what life is all about. This happens.
- 56:15As I said, those are natural law considerations.
- 56:17We're just looking at the way things are and how to live in a
- 56:21chord with the way things are and how to get the best out of
- 56:25them. It's powerful stuff, and I think
- 56:28it is so refreshing to hear it and to live by it.
- 56:33I know people that have changed their lives dramatically, going
- 56:36from sex before marriage, contraception, all of these
- 56:39things to a different view of the human person that I think
- 56:42works with nature and not against nature.
- 56:44And there's so much peace I've seen and fruitfulness that can
- 56:47come with that. So thank you so much, Doctor
- 56:50Smith, for all of your work on this quite frankly,
- 56:52groundbreaking work over the last few decades and your
- 56:54willingness to speak boldly into the culture when it at times is
- 56:58very unpopular to do so. Where can people find your work,
- 57:00Doctor Smith? I have a website,
- 57:03janetsmith.org, and there's my talks are all over the place.
- 57:08One is contraception. Why not one of the myths of
- 57:11contraception hormones are US. There's a whole bunch of
- 57:15different why premarital sex is stupid.
- 57:19I I don't, I don't, you know, mince my words.
- 57:22So it's all over. I.
- 57:24Love that. Thank you so much, Doctor Smith.
- 57:28You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
- 57:29Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
- 57:32Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it.
- 57:33I thought there was a lot of great gems from Doctor Smith and
- 57:36we're going to be tackling this topic more in the future.
- 57:38So as always, you can e-mail me if you have guest suggestions.
- 57:41That's at lila@gtbmedia.com. Lila at gtbmedia.com.
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