RICK SANTORUM, whose political shortcomings are serious, deserves immense credit for his statements on contraception in recent months. Santorum is making points that no mainstream politician has dared to make, principally that artificial contraception has led to a catastrophic increase in illegitimacy and single parenthood. Furthermore, he has said, artificial contraception is harmful to women’s health. This is true. According to the Abortion/Breast Cancer Center, approximately half of the increased cases of breast cancer in recent decades is attributable to oral contraception, abortion and delayed childbearing.

In a column yesterday at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto praises Santorum and seems to agree with his points. But then he makes this stunningly clueless statement:

Santorum has come under particular attack for saying that contraception is “harmful to women.” It may reasonably be said that this is an overgeneralization: There are many women for whom birth control has not been harmful–those who don’t want children, who prioritize career over family, or who have [not] been able to find husbands in the post-sexual-revolution mate market.

Is there any clearer way than this to express the idea that a child is of no value unless his mother wants him before he is born? The millions of women who find themselves non-mothers or almost-mothers are not losers. They have benefited from having careers instead of children.

In effect, motherhood is not of the essence of femininity. It’s a beautiful hobby for those who choose to undertake it. Children are just another consumer good.

No wonder women have lost confidence in their innate qualities and try so hard to perform and live like men. The very thing that gives them purpose has been demeaned and reduced to a matter of individual desire.

— Comments —

Clark Coleman writes:

Numerous entries over the last few months have examined illegitimacy rates and their consequences among various groups, from blacks and Hispanics to the whites of Lorain, Ohio. I wonder if those of us who decry the problems have the stomach for their solution.

I see the matter as being pretty simple. Most women have some maternal instincts. They want to have children. If they look around and find no men who are both willing and fit to be husbands and fathers, they face the hard decision of having no children or having children by one of these men. Government assistance in various forms makes it possible to have children by one of these men, satisfying the maternal instinct, while making up for the lack of fatherly support.

So, we have a pair of problems that must both be addressed: unsuitable men and government assistance. I will shorten this comment by deferring discussion on how to make more suitable men appear in our society. The only solution to the problem of government assistance being the enabler of illegitimacy is to eliminate government assistance to unwed mothers and their children. This requires a degree of toughness that I doubt will be found in the sappy, sentimental “conservative Christian” community today. It also means that we must face the likelihood that denial of welfare benefits could lead (in the short term) to more abortions. Given the fact that the “pro-life” community consists largely of people who would choose a pro-life political candidate who openly promised to destroy America in every conceivable way over a candidate who was weak on his pro-life commitment but terrific in every other way, I cannot envision the conservative community having the resolve to persevere in the denial of welfare benefits after the leftist media begins running sob stories about some poor mothers who wanted to give birth but opted for abortion because of the new welfare policies.

I do not counsel despair. Rather, I think we have our work cut out for us if we want to persuade our fellow conservatives to deal with illegitimacy and the pathologies it unleashes on society. I would like to challenge your readers to have the backbone to advocate a solution to the problem, or stop whining about the problem and make their peace with it if that is the easier path.

Laura writes:

Since the very beginning of this website, I have said many times, including just the other day, that all subsidies for single mothers should be stopped, including food stamps and WIC, which provides free or reduced-price infant formula to women capable of breastfeeding. As I wrote about the New York Times’s recent reports on illegitimacy:

The Times gives only passing notice to one of the major factors behind single motherhood: government welfare. The first of the two articles includes this:

Others noted that if they married, their official household income would rise, which could cost them government benefits like food stamps and child care. W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, said other government policies, like no-fault divorce, signaled that “marriage is not as fundamental to society” as it once was.

White women in large numbers have discovered what black women already knew: that they can trade their dependence on a man for dependence on the government. The first Times piece reports:

“Women used to rely on men, but we don’t need to anymore,” said Teresa Fragoso, 25, a single mother in Lorain. “We support ourselves. We support our kids.”

This is baloney. Women are as dependent as ever.

I do not agree with Mr. Coleman that significant numbers of women would choose abortion if welfare were withdrawn. I think they would turn to family members and boyfriends are first. And eventually, once the reality sunk in, many more women would think before having sexual relationships outside marriage.

Most of the women who receive entitlements strongly reject abortion. That’s precisely why there is so much illegitimacy. Yes, government welfare is an inducement but there are still serious sacrifices to becoming a single mother. The reason why women do it is because they want children.

As far as the no-good men Mr. Coleman mentions, welfare creates them. Welfare indirectly demoralizes men. It makes them extraneous to the family and encourages selfishness, which is not conducive to happiness. Men are less attached and have fewer responsibilities. But these realities are not to their benefit.

A Faithful Reader writes:

I suspect a typo in the James Taranto piece–should it have referred to women who have not been able to “find husbands in the post-sexual-revolution meat market”?

James Taranto writes:

Santorum has come under particular attack for saying that contraception is “harmful to women.” It may reasonably be said that this is an overgeneralization: There are many women for whom birth control has not been harmful–those who don’t want children, who prioritize career over family, or who have [not] been able to find husbands in the post-sexual-revolution mate market.

The “[not]” is incorrect; I meant women who HAVE been able to find husbands. I am arguing that contraception is bad for women who want children because they are more likely either not to have them or to have them out of wedlock. By and large, that does not apply to women who do marry (although it’s true that there are harms associated with later marriage).

Your broader point may be right, but I am wary of false-consciousness arguments.

Laura writes:

I’m sorry. I truly didn’t understand. I even looked for a correction because I was so sure you meant women who were not able to marry. That’s why I added the parenthetical “not.”

So you mean women who are married and use contraception are not harmed by using it. Logically, that means that a child is a form of harm if he is not consciously desired at the time of conception, that childbearing is harmful to married women who believe they do not want it. Aside from devaluing children, your point presumes that married women who use artificial contraception know what they want; are able to fully anticipate what they will desire in the years ahead, when they may no longer be fertile; and can dissociate themselves from the cultural and economic pressures not to have children and from the low status of committed motherhood. It also presumes that the use of artificial contraception has no effects on the marital bond and that childbearing is not in and of itself physically beneficial to women.

The divorce rate suggests that artificial contraception is harmful to the marital bond and the dramatic increase in breast cancer, as a significant number of cancer studies now prove, is one negative effect of artificial contraception on the health of married women and women who prioritize career over family. The low fertility rate indicates that, regardless of what harm children may bring to their mothers, the disinclination to bring life into the world is detrimental to prosperity and cultural survival.

But I maintain that women are oriented toward motherhood, sometimes without realizing it. Artificial contraception has hurt married women, single women and women who say they do not want children. To contend otherwise is to suggest that something is terribly and irretrievably wrong in the fundamental nature of women, that procreation is unnatural and that children are an undue burden.

Alissa writes:

Please follow and like us: