http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2179803/posts

Pill creator regrets population decline

Baptist Press News ^ | Feb 5, 2009 | Erin Roach

Posted on Friday, February 06, 2009 19:45:49 by Between the Lines

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--A chemist who led to the invention of the birth
control pill says he regrets the demographic catastrophe that has
resulted from people using the contraceptive device to separate
reproduction from sexuality.

Carl Djerassi, the 85-year-old Austrian chemist who was one of three
whose formulation of synthetic hormones paved the way for the pill,
wrote an opinion piece in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard
lamenting the way the pill has been used.

Austria's population now includes more people over age 65 than under
15, and Djerassi said the country soon will face an "impossible
situation" as the working class becomes too small to support the needs
of senior citizens. Each family in Austria needs to produce three
children to maintain population levels, he said, but on average
couples have 1.4 children.

The fall in the birth rate in European countries, he said, is an
epidemic far worse than obesity, but it receives less attention.

In order to curb the population problem, Djerassi said in the column
that Austrians would have to adopt quickly an immigration policy
designed to counteract the effects of widespread contraception before
the population commits "national suicide."

R. Albert Mohler Jr., in a 2006 New York Times Magazine article,
called the birth control pill one of the most profound developments
ever.

"I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall,
that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill," Mohler,
president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said. "It became
almost an assured form of contraception, something humans had never
encountered before in history.

"Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of
pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act
changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave
incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to
premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and
procreation," Mohler added.

Mollie Ziegler, a Gannett newspaper reporter, noted on the blog
GetReligion.org that Djerassi's comments, made in December, have
failed to make mainstream headlines in the United States.

"U.S. media tend to be a bit American-centric ... but just because
this story broke in Austria is no reason to ignore it here," she
wrote. "And no matter where Djerassi dropped his bombshell allegation
or where he lives, how many millions of women here in the United
States have used oral contraceptives and might be interested in
something their creator has to say about its unintended consequences?
There's just no news justification for obscuring this story."

Mohler, writing in a May 2006 article on his website, said some
versions of the birth control pill have abortifacient qualities.

"Not all birth control is contraception, for some technologies and
methods do not prevent the sperm from fertilizing the egg, but instead
prevent the fertilized egg from successfully implanting itself in the
lining of the womb," he said. "Such methods involve nothing less than
an early abortion. This is true of all IUDs and some hormonal
technologies. A raging debate now surrounds the question of whether at
least some forms of the Pill may also work through abortifacient
effect, rather than preventing ovulation."