JILL FARRIS writes:

My husband and I are Protestants. Twenty years ago, we were the proud parents of two children; a girl and a boy. Our family was “complete.” We were against abortion, involved in Right to Life and volunteering at pregnancy centers. Then we were loaned a book called The Way Home by Mary Pride, whose hard-hitting writing educated us in the history of birth control and “planned barrenhood.” To our dismay (and discomfort), we learned that the Catholic church had not stood alone against birth control for centuries. No, indeed, both Protestant and Roman Catholics had wisely understood that choosing to control the timing of pregnancy was a dangerous (and ungodly) choice and would quickly lead to the widespread acceptance of abortion.

After much heated discussion,we humbly (and, admittedly, with fear and trembling) repented of our use of birth control and told God we were willing to raise up many children if He chose to send them to us. We were blessed with six more children.

How can I describe or explain the awe and wonder we have experienced as we look at the children we could have missed? (more…)

TOM B. writes:

Thank you for your blog. My wife and I both “survived” the divorce holocaust of the seventies. We are now ten years married, and homeschooling our four children, ages 8,7,6,6.

We live in Silicon Valley, and sometimes feel like partisans in an insidious ideological war. Our life experiences made us conservative; having children compounded the effect. (more…)

  JOSH F. writes: Just imagine that at the same time those decrepit old slobs in Congress and professional sports officials RAIL INCESSANTLY about athletes using PEDs (performance enhancement drugs, particularly artificial hormones) and claiming  the poor example it sets for our children, we have "American"  universities and society at large practically shoving artificial  hormones down the throats of our daughters from the very start of  puberty well into their twenties. Our daughters are taking steroids to  overstimulate their reproductive systems in order to render their reproductive capabilities non-functioning. All the while these  "elite" stuff their faces with Viagra, Xanax, Prozac and the like -  all considered performance enhancement drugs by anyone with some intellectual honesty.

PENTAGON officials announced today – with a perfectly straight face, as if they were talking about serious military affairs instead of an immense public folly – that 14,000 combat-related positions will be formally opened to women this summer, pending approval by Congress. According to the LA Times, women will “serve in non-infantry battalion jobs, such as radio operators, intelligence analysts, medics, radar operators and tank mechanics. They could be placed together with combat forces, such as supply convoys in areas of fighting.”

The move, which makes a less formal arrangement to that effect official, was not greeted warmly by representatives of female advocacy groups. But then have these martinets ever greeted anything or anyone warmly? Imagine the burden of trying to accomplish what no country serious about defending itself has ever accomplished. No wonder they are grim. They said the Pentagon should open all combat positions to women. As is typical, they did not offer a single substantial reason why women in combat would help the military better fulfill its mission. Sure, women in the military have helped soldiers frisk women in burqas but that is no reason to open tens of thousands positions to them.

No one wants a soldier for a mother. That’s something they also never mention. Nor do they mention how the very appearance of a female soldier, however capable she may be, is one of the most depressing and demoralizing sights in the world, tangible evidence if there ever was any that the spirit of feminine nurture has been trashed.

Reader Henry McCulloch writes: (more…)

ACCORDING to the Associated Press:

Students at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania can get the “morning-after” pill by sliding $25 into a vending machine, an idea that has drawn the attention of federal regulators and raised questions about how accessible emergency contraception should be. [emphasis added] [OH MY, QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN RAISED!!]

(more…)

ANOTHER READER sends proof of her failure to use contraception. Her daughter was born just over a week ago.

When contraception is widely available, when it is embraced as normal, when births are planned and scheduled, when deliberation replaces surrender, when convenience replaces hardship and struggle, every child seems like a choice, the product of human will and desire. This delusion represents immense hubris. No child is chosen. What is chosen in this face? It’s a gift too good to be true.

(more…)

LAUREN writes: 

JAMES P. writes:

Bruno claims that Catholicism is a “very harsh doctrine” because it requires that one sacrifice materialistic pleasures like buying a new car or new home or taking a vacation in order to have children. Even if one accepts the argument that the requirement to procreate and raise children is “very harsh” (though humans throughout history have somehow happily done this), what exactly is the point of belonging to a Church that makes no demands on its members? If all you want to do is what makes you happy, why belong to a Church at all? No doubt Bruno will respond that this is exactly why he does not belong to a Church. However, he appears blissfully unaware of the numerous moral and practical objections to his philosophy of selfish hedonism.

(more…)

MANY CATHOLICS encountered official outrage at church yesterday over Obama’s recent ruling that under his healthcare plan, Catholic hospitals must include coverage for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans for employees.

As Christopher Badeaux argues at RedState, this outrage on the part of America’s bishops is in many cases highly hypocritical.

Where were the bishops and pastoral leaders when Obamacare was proposed or when Obama, a candidate who clearly supported abortion, was running for president? Better yet, where have the bishops been for years while Catholic politicians who openly supported abortion received communion, as have those who admitted to voting for them? (more…)

KIMBERLY writes:

IN RESPONSE to complaints by Seattle area parents that their children are being exposed to hard core porn when they walk by library computers,  Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association’s intellectual freedom office, said last week, “Sometimes, in a library, you’re going to see information that’s going to make you uncomfortable.”

The freedom of an adult to do anything he desires is more important to our morally-stupefied elites than the freedom of a child to visit a public library and return home with his innocence intact.

According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, one mother’s ten-year-old daughter was reduced to tears and unable to sleep after viewing violent sex while walking past a library computer in use by an adult patron. The woman was told by a librarian “the library is a public space; it’s more like a bus stop than a safe haven.”

(more…)

  A READER sent this proof of her own failure to use contraception.

JOHN PURDY writes:

First let me thank you and your participants for some very fine, well-argued writing in the post “Contraception and the Culture War.”

Speaking as someone who, regrettably, was never able to have children (though not for wont of trying) I have a hunch that, as society ages, we’re going to see a lot of rather sad and despondent seniors. I, myself, will most likely die alone and have very few people at my funeral. I feel cheated out of something. I, of course, took many actions myself but rejecting marriage and family, after I had grown up a bit, was never one of them. (more…)

  I HAVE quite a few comments, many of them excellent, regarding the recent post, "Contraception and the Culture War." I will be posting them over the course of the next few hours.