First Canadian birth control clinic marks 70th year. (News in Brief: Canada).

Hamilton--Birth control types in the Hamilton, ON, area raised a toast at a party on November 8, 2002, to mark 70 years since the founding of Canada's first birth control clinic, with keynote speaker and TV sex guru, Sue Johanson, leading the way. Known in 1932 as the Maternal Health Clinic, and now called the Planned Parenthood Society of Hamilton, the clinic struggled for support and faced opposition from doctors and clerics in its early years. It illegally distributed birth control devices for some 35 years after its founding until the law was changed in 1967.

On November 7, 2002, the Hamilton Spectator featured a full-page spread on the occasion, claiming that the Hamilton clinic "inspired" countless others while finding "clever ways to skirt the law." The clinic's popularity, it quoted Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw as saying, grew with "every moralistic blast from the city's Catholic priests."

In recent years. author Rob Faulkner reported, the clinic has been ducking "aggressive anti-abortion types." He goes on to claim that the clinic has done much to make life better for women. The Planned Parenthood Society of Hamilton office persists in its work and displays posters about "Mr. Right being wrong," if he won't wear a condom.

Comment:

The claim that birth control centres have "made life better for women," seems odd in face of the evidence: a high teen pregnancy rate in Hamilton; a jump of 38 percent from 1999 to 2000 in the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia already sky-high; rampant sexual promiscuity; the ruination of many marriages; the destroyed health of many women through the 50-odd side-effects of the Pill (including breast cancer), not to mention the atrocious IUD.

History

Let us briefly recall a little history. Until 1930, Protestants and Catholics were unanimous in rejecting birth control methods. However, in the summer of 1930, the Lambeth Conference held in England every ten years for all Anglican communities throughout the world, approved the use of contraceptives. With the Anglicans leading the way, every Protestant denomination or congregation in the world eventually abandoned its opposition to birth control, leaving only the Catholic Church to continue the defence of the family in the intellectual and spiritual realm.

Pope Pius XI (1923-1938) responded immediately with the encyclical on Christian Marriage (Casti Connubii, December 1930). This still makes for informative reading today, covering subjects such as the dignity of parenthood, the duty to educate, and the unity of marriage ("Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh"), ("What God has joined together let no man put asunder," (Mt 10:9).

Pius XI also refers to the earlier encyclical on marriage by Pope Leo XIII (Arcanum, February 10, 1880). The Church's moral teaching never changes but allows for responses to new developments. The famous encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae vitae (July 1968), simply builds on the foundation laid by the earlier encyclicals and the moral principles developed before them since the earliest days of the Church.

Pope Pius XI saw the source of the many evils besetting matrimony in the denial that marriage was instituted by God and raised by Christ to the dignity of a true sacrament (no. 49). Instead, they argue, he says, that marriage is a social construct which can be changed by man at will. So one can speak of a marriage that is "temporary," or "experimental." (Editor: Today, of course, "homosexual" or "bisexual", or whatever.)

The heart of the attack, Pius XI wrote, comes with the attack on "offspring." He repeats St. Augustine's observation that "sexual intercourse even with a lawful wife is unlawful and shameful if the conception of offspring is prevented" (no 55). This, he states, is "an offence against the law of God and nature, and those who commit it are guilty of a grave sin" (no. 56).

As for the direct attacks against unborn human offspring justified by whatever reason (and here he includes the racist or eugenic reasons put forward at the time), they are to be condemned outright (no. 63). Under "remedies," the Pope recalls the need for obedience to God and the God-given commandments protected by the Church. Without it "frail human nature is so easy a prey to carnal passion and can be so readily deceived and corrupted by it" (no. 107).