By Frosty Wooldridge

Notre Dame University found itself at the epicenter of controversy concerning President Obama’s speech at their 2009 graduation commencement.  Concerned anti-abortion demonstrators protested that a “pro-abortion” president should not speak at the Catholic university that condemns the procedure.

Passions boiled around campus with national news coverage.  Students demonstrated while airplanes flew over campus with banners depicting aborted fetuses.  Police handcuffed preachers and former presidential candidates for demonstrating without permits.

Ironically, the Catholic Church and other religious institutions around the world constitute the main cause for 46 million abortions performed planet-wide each year.  Doctors perform 1.3 million abortions in the USA annually.  Source: http://www.abortiontv.com/Misc/AbortionStatistics.htm#Abortions%20Worldwide

The reason for so many abortions: without birth control to prevent conception, abortion becomes the only  reproductive option.  Many might say that women should practice abstinence, but the harsh reality remains that in most male-dominated societies, abstinence fails at every level.  Not only that, ‘sex’ proves the most powerful driving force on this planet.  It’s beyond foolish to think that abstinence would ever work, especially among countries that suffer huge illiteracy rates.

Why?  The Catholic Church condemns birth control, which, in turn, yields millions upon millions of babies that cannot be cared for, or survive starvation and starvation related diseases. According to the World Health Organization, eight million adults die annually of starvation, but the greatest tragedy stems from a lack of birth control that explodes with 10 million children under 12 dying every year of starvation.

In a ground breaking book by Lawrence Harrison, Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind, the author chronicles Catholic dominated societies that suffer from population overload, poverty, illiteracy, disease and futility.  Those women birth so many babies so fast and so many—they cannot begin to feed, educate and care for them.  It becomes a self-destructive feedback loop of human wretchedness.  While the Catholic Church pretends to administer to the poor worldwide, its policies on birth control create and extend the problem.  Harrison gave example after example in his book.

It appears the Catholic Church in its quest for more followers augmented by birth rates does not care about the long term consequences of poverty and illiteracy.  As long as it fills the pews with bodies, no matter how miserable, the Pope boasts of many followers.

According to “Abortion Statistics”:

Where abortions occur:
78% of all abortions are obtained in developing countries and 22% occur in developed countries.

Legality of abortion:
About 26 million women obtain legal abortions each year, while an additional 20 million abortions are obtained in countries where it is restricted or prohibited by law.

Abortion averages:
Worldwide, the lifetime average is about 1 abortion per woman.

While Notre Dame and the Catholic Church condemn abortions, but maintain continued condemnation of birth control—Catholic women in the U.S. average 1.9 children.  In Italy, where the Vatican dominates, the birth rates runs 1.6 children. Clearly, Catholics in first world countries trump the church’s outdated and dogmatic stand against birth control by engaging the practice.  Thus, first world countries run very small abortion numbers while poverty-stricken countries engage abortion as a primary means of birth control.

The gnawing question grows:  why does the Catholic Church continue its 1^st century doctrine in the 21^st century when overpopulation clearly creates human misery on a scale unheard of in mankind’s history? Why would it facilitate the deaths of 18 million people along with other religious institutions like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and others annually when it could change that horrible outcome by advocating and even distributing birth control worldwide?

Yes, abortion remains a great tragedy.  And, the scale of 46 million abortions annually would turn the most devout Catholic into questioning the church and why it clings to the past.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to promote birth control?

If I sat down to the table with the Pope, I would ask, “Sir, I assume you to be an educated, rational and logical man.  You care about humanity.  You make decisions based on facts and reality for the good of humanity and your followers.  Therefore, with the reality of 46 million abortions annually, year in and year out, and all of them caused by lack of birth control, wouldn’t it make more sense to you to promote birth control?”

“No my son,” the Pope might say, “it’s our tradition….”

“Yes Pope, but it doesn’t make sense,” I would respond.

“God works in mysterious ways,” the Pope might say.

“If God and you think 46 million abortions annually are a picnic for all those women,” I would say, “you need a class in the use of logic and reason.”

Therefore, instead of demonstrating and screaming out about abortion, how about the Catholics of the world creating a new discussion about birth control?  How about the Church pull out of the 1^st century and move into the realities of the 21^st century?  Let’s face it, we used to think in terms of a flat earth.  The Church condemned Galileo for saying that the earth revolved around the sun.  The Church arrested and damned Galileo for the rest of his life.  The Church was wrong!  Today, the church condemns millions to poverty and grinding misery with its stand against birth control.

It’s time for the Pope, Catholic Church and all religious institutions to stop the misery of starving people and human degradation worldwide—by advocating for birth control.  It’s simple, it’s smart, it’s safe and it’s infinitely better than abortions.

It follows that God, being all wise and logical, would agree with such rational action rather than abortion.  Since the Pope enjoys a direct line to God, it follows that the Pope and other religious leaders would advocate birth control to end 46 million abortions annually.

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