Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Breaking News! God Foiled by Shocking Plan Involving Latex, Hormones!

I'm always amused by religious folk (Catholics are notorious for this) who claim that contraceptives are somehow morally wrong or fundamentally "evil." This would, of course, be more amusing if the stance didn't ensure that dozens of young kids would end up getting pregnant and (since abortion is obviously a no-no) having children which could both endanger their lives and effectively wipe out any future that shone promisingly in the distance. Clearly it's better to have an unwanted kid than to prevent said kid from being conceived, right?

The arguments about why contraceptives are a tool of the Devil vary in their hilarity. By far the most absurd one that I've heard is this:

We dont support birth control because we believe marriage and sex are a gift from God, and we need to keep the sanctity of it. Sex is for love and procreation, not just for pleasure as society is today making it. If you want to have sex, you should be ready for a child to come with it. If God wants to make you a parent, he'll do it when he wants to, not when you want to.

- courtesy of the Abortion Debate livejournal community.

Does anyone else find it funny that god, a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient being, is foiled by a piece of latex or some hormones? I mean, honestly. Some god! This entire argument is shot down by the supposed omnipotence of god. If s/he wants you to get pregnant, then kablammo!, the condom breaks, or the 0.1% chance that your oral contraceptives fail is brought into play. Or the spermicide doesn't work. Or WHATEVER, really.

This is the god who supposedly stuck an entire baby into a virgin, right? No help from teh SeXx0rZ, even. I mean, that's why it doesn't even seem right to me to say that it'd be impossible for someone who'd had a hysterectomy to conceive (according to this viewpoint, obviously; I wouldn't go so far as to say that there's an actual medical chance that someone sans uterus could get pregnant).

So if god is all-powerful, then where's the concern? There's no reason to be anti-contraceptive! It doesn't make any sense, really; by doing so, these people are pretty much belitting their deity.

The abortion debate isn't one I'm going to touch. I'm pro-choice, no ifs-ands-or-buts. But the contraceptive debate? That's easy - there is no contraceptive debate.