First, the concern for women who need birth control pills as a hormone treatment is a nonissue. As Pope Paul VI’s encyclical "Humanae Vitae" states, medications necessary to treat hormonal imbalances are morally unproblematic, even if infertility is a side effect. Mandating insurance coverage for such treatments would be acceptable from a Catholic perspective. Catholicism is not against treating diseases; it is against treating fertility as if it were a disease.
"Humanae Vitae" is also noteworthy for predicting that liberal sexual ideology, and the “contraceptive mentality” it fosters, will lead to the treatment of women as sex objects. Indeed, our post sexual revolution culture is marked by the objectification of women.
The feminization of poverty (60 percent of those in poverty are single mothers) was an equally predictable result of the higher divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates that came in the wake of sexual “liberation.”
Contraceptive use increases unplanned pregnancies because when you make a risky behavior less risky, people engage in more of it. Two-thirds of unplanned pregnancies occur among women using birth control.
That also means more abortion — the ultimate backup “contraceptive.” Contraceptives fail at least 10 to 15 percent of the time, with 54 percent of women having abortions using contraception the month they became pregnant, according to the Guttmacher Institute. And, it is important to note, some “contraceptives” can themselves cause abortions — for example, “Ella,” which works similarly to the abortion drug RU-486.Catholicism teaches that sex is about committed love. Relationships based on sensual attraction don’t offer what we’re really longing for — love that endures even when age or illness take their toll.
Sex is powerful body language that says, “I give myself to you completely and for the rest of my life.” To say that with your body when you haven’t said it with your heart and mind is like nodding “yes” while thinking “no.”