Jennifer Brinker | jbrinker@archstl.org
A group of area Catholic physicians is responding to a recent Washington University study that shows offering free contraception contributes to a decrease in abortions.
The Contraceptive CHOICE Project provided more than 9,000 women and adolescents in the St. Louis area with free birth control, including intrauterine devices (IUDs), birth-control pills, patches and rings, between 2007 and 2011. The results of the project, which were published online Oct. 4 in the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, showed that providing these methods to women cut abortion rates by a range of 62-78 percent, compared to the national rate.
Members of the Catholic Medical Association’s St. Louis Guild, however, have concerns about the study, ranging from how these contraceptives will be paid for in the long run to the disregard it shows for the dignity of women and unborn human life.
“The study, at best, demonstrates that supplying widespread ‘chemical sterilization,’ paid for by someone else, reduces population-wide birth rates and repeat abortion rates,” said Dr. Michael Dixon, president of the St. Louis Guild and an OB/GYN and founder of St. Gerard Obstetrics and Gynecology at St. Anthony’s Medical Center. “Eliminating abortion is the ultimate goal here, but it cannot be achieved at the cost of early human life, and while trampling on patient consent rights and religious liberty.”
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(article excerpt taken with author’s permission from the St. Louis Review.)