“What happens with contraception, and a contraceptive culture, is that people engage in more sexual acts than they otherwise would. If you have something that has a low probability, if you do it enough times, sooner or later the low probability event will happen.”
Morse cited the investigations of Nobel Prize-winning economist George A. Akerlof, who found that the widespread use of contraception and abortion significantly changes the relationship between men and women.
“The pressure on women to be sexually active, just to have a date or compete in the marriage market, just goes through the roof.”
While sexually active unmarried women once could rely on an implicit promise of marriage if they became pregnant, that is no longer the case.
“So you end up with more abortion, more out-of-wedlock childbearing,” Morse said.
Morse also challenged the claim that contraception is medical care. Oral contraception, she said, is “a very powerful pill given to people who are perfectly healthy to stop a perfectly normal healthy process from taking place.”
Oral contraceptives also have medical side effects, she said, and do not prevent STDs.
She criticized the “attempt to sever the link between sex, childbearing and marriage,” recalling that its backers promoted the effort on the basis of choice, freedom, and allowing people to do what they want.
“But this contraceptive mandate proves that that whole premise is false. And it always was false. They have never really been about making people free. They are always really been about creating an alternate moral universe where sex, marriage and childbearing are disconnected.
“They have never been willing to actively, positively affirm and defend what they are doing. They hide behind ‘choice.’”
The mandate, Morse said, is “a demand for conformity.”
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Kevin J. Jones is a senior staff writer with Catholic News Agency. He was a recipient of a 2014 Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship.