Monday is the 61st Anniversary of D-Day, when thousands of Allied soldiers gave their lives during the invasion of Normandy, arguably the most important military campaign of World War II. Coming just one week after Memorial Day, remember in your prayers all the brave men who died that day in the service of our country.
Griswold Remembered
Another anniversary, although one of a very different kind, occurs on Tuesday. June 7 marks the 40th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision that struck down that state’s laws banning the sale and possession of contraceptives. The Supreme Court claimed that such laws violated the “right to privacy” supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution—even though the words “right to privacy” appear nowhere in the Constitution itself.
Writing in Monday’s Chicago Sun-Times, Linn Duvall Harwell, a member of Population Connection, lauds the Griswold decision, saying that “Birth control brought us out of the dark ages.” (Population Connection has joined the ranks of high-profile Culture of Death organizations that have changed their names in recent years; it used to be called Zero Population Growth.)
Harwell begins her commentary by recalling the first time she met “Rosie” and “Butch,” a couple with 11 children struggling to eke out a hardscrabble existence in the public housing of South Norwalk, Connecticut. She met the couple after being urged by a fellow churchgoer to volunteer for Planned Parenthood.
Harwell then recalls how Dr. Charles Buxton, an ob/gyn at Yale Medical School, and Estelle Griswold, executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, fought to overturn Connecticut’s anti-contraceptive laws. She states, “We devised a plan to go door to door in public housing to give clear, accurate medical information, and eventually covered every unit.”
Harwell goes on to say, “By the time I met Rosie and her family, I could not help her, for she had so many children already.”
Children Are Not the Problem
There you have it: In one sentence, Harwell has managed to encapsulate all that is wrong with the pro-contraception movement. To her, and to those who share her misanthropic outlook, children are the problem.
The point is lost on them that what a large, economically poor family really needs are advocates who will work tirelessly to effect social conditions more conducive to raising children. Inhumane, anti-child solutions are no solution at all.
Harwell gets one thing right, however. She correctly notes that the Supreme Court’s Griswold decision set the stage for Roe v. Wade.
Contraception Leads to Abortion
Pro-Lifers, take heed: Contraception paves the way for abortion. We cannot oppose one without opposing the other. Far from “bringing us out of the dark ages,” contraception has unleashed a torrent of disastrous social consequences. We must have the courage to acknowledge the link between contraception and abortion and to call both of them what they are: grave sins.
