I suppose it was inevitable, now that we know that abstinence pledges aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, the Vatican had to try another approach to bad-mouthing sex and how better to do that than to make women feel guilty for taking the pill:
“The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper said Saturday.
The pill “has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature” through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.
“We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill,” he said, without elaborating further.”
While the Vatican provided no evidence to prove their assertion, numerous studies suggest that we should be concerned about the impact of pharmaceuticals and other chemicals on both the environment and on human health. And estrogen and chemicals that mimic estrogen such as pesticides are of particular concern and are likely implicated in gender changes that have been observed in aquatic life. But birth control pills are only a part of that picture which also includes looking at how we treat waste, and to single them out can only be seen as the Vatican’s latest Hail Mary attempt to control women’s lives, bodies and health. Currents Between Shores puts it well,
“Does the Catholic Church, in this day and age, seriously think a world without contraception is a viable option in a planet that is already overpopulated? And who is going to feed and take care of all of these children born from “conjugal love”? The Catholic Church? I’ll believe that when I see the Vatican donate all its gold flatware to poor Catholic countries. How the Catholic church can push an anti birth control agenda when most children born in Catholic countries like Haiti or Mexico, live in dire poverty, is beyond me. . . but, of course, this was an unbiased, scientific study.”
5 Responses to “The Pope, The Pill And Little Things That Swim”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Why aren’t they mentioning all of the Viagra, Extense, etc that I’m getting sick of seeing the commercials for and the millions of spam e-mail I get? Men then have to be polluting the earth too using these male specific pills. Please! How stupid do they think we are? More dumbing down of the less educated on this planet…
Like every other anti-contraception (not to mention anti-abortion) screed out there, this is not about what it purports to be about. It’s certainly not about the environment. It’s just another effort by a male-dominated power structure to keep women barefoot and pregnant and thereby too weak and unhealthy to stand up for our rights.
And, of course, it’s always the woman’s fault (thank you, Nina, for putting your finger on that one!). Men apparently have no role in overpopulation or pollution or anything else.
My mother is 93 years old, when she was born, the population of the earth was just over 1 billion, today it is 6.6 billion. In one persons lifetime the population has increased over 6 times. It gets worse, in fifty years when my granddaughters reach my age, at the present rate of growth the population will be over 16 billion. Is the pope and the rest of the worlds reglious leaders so stupid as to believe that our planet can support 16 billion people? Personally I think they are.
And, in light of current conditons, human infertility is a bad thing, why?
Most environmental and “green” groups won’t mention overpopulation as a major cause of environmental destruction, and species extinctions (habitat destruction) and starvation. The earth can’t support unending billions of people.
The real reason overpopulation is not discussed is because it leads to the realization that women dont have control over their reproduction and dont have full human rights. It would be a direct confrontation to global capitalist patriarchy and male dominance.
If women chose if or when to bear children,women would control the global economy since there could no longer be economic projections based upon the expected number of consumer/worker/breeder/soldier units involuntarily manufactured by women.
The world would run out of cops and soldiers! What if they threw a war and nobody came? Oh my Goddess!