Listen to this early Christian church father St. Augustine (354-430): "Any woman who acts in such a way that she cannot give birth to as many children as she is capable of, makes herself guilty of that many murders ..."
Early church fathers made birth control on an equal footing with murder. The current Quiverfull christian movement makes the same argument 16 centuries later. The catholic church still forbids as a mortal sin the use of birth control and sterilization and forces that dogmatic stance on any man or woman who receives care or is employed by any one of their 648 Catholic hospitals in america. Hospitals are a very profitable enterprise and the local diocese and the vatican is made wealthy by these hospitals and clinics and yet they do not respect free choice in the very private realm of family planning. When I think of the multitudes of women who died over the centuries for complying to a church edict at their own peril when pregnancy and delivery were in fact a deadly proposition for both the mother and the baby makes me weep. Multiple pregnancies are dangerous for any female and sterilization becomes a safe and life extending option for almost any woman after age 40. Haitian women die at or about age 45 after having 5 to 6 babies and leave behind orphans. The Haitian healthcare system has been dominated and run by the catholic church for hundreds of years. How can they call themselves Pro-Life when the outcome of no birth control and no sterilization procedures are so deadly? This is just the subjugation of women by male dominated religions that are blinded by the dogma of aged popes and church fathers.
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