Contraception and Erectile Dysfunction

Another day, another meme… Here’s a picture which a friend posted last week:

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As with all memes, before clicking “Share”, it’s worth taking a moment to fully-articulate the argument which is being made. So, what does this meme claim?

The meme draws an equivalency between pregnancy and impotence. We are told that if pregnancy is God’s will, then so is impotence. It implies that Christians are inconsistent if they’re okay with tax dollars being available for the purchase of viagra, but not for contraceptives or abortions.

So…does this argument hold water? There are three points which I think are worth making.

1. Ordained or “ordered towards”
Is it true that “pregnancy is God’s will”? My suspicion is that what we have here is a misunderstanding (or, at worst a caricature) of the Christian understanding of sex. Sex has two ultimate purposes: the union of the spouses and the the siring of children. We would say that the sexual act is ordered towards procreation. By this, we mean that a natural consequence of the sexual act is the conceiving of children.

So, we can say “pregnancy is God’s will”  insofar as God invented sex and children are the natural result of sex. However, the very fact that women have periods of infertility during the month shows that God does not will that every sexual union result in the conception of a child.

2. Both diseases? 
Now that we’re spoken a little bit about sex in the natural order, it can hopefully be seen how ridiculous it is to compare pregnancy and impotence. Pregnancy is not a disease! If a couple has sex and the fruit of this union is a child then everything is working as it should! It is a natural consequence of the sexual act.

Impotence, in contrast, is a malfunction, a disruption of the intended sexual union. A better parallel would be to compare impotence with ovarian cysts, since the presence of these cysts prevents a woman’s body from functioning properly.

3. Different consequences
Finally, if this meme is being used as an argument in favour of abortion, it is hopefully clear to see the massive disparity between the moral consequences of paying for medication to allow a couple to have a heathy sex life and paying for medication which causes an unborn life to be snuffed out.

Music Monday: Lay it all down

Bring your worry, grief and pain
Every cause you have for shame
lay it all down, lay it all down
When your cares have buried you
and there’s nothing left to do
lay it all down lay it all down
at the feet of jesus, at the feet of jesus

Carried on but your heart was tired
Feared the worst and felt the fire
lay it all down, lay it all down
Filled with all those anxious thoughts
all your doubts became your god
lay it all down, lay it all down
at the feet of jesus, at the feet of jesus

Lay it all down
Lay it all down
Lay it all down
Lay it all down

at the feet of Jesus
at the feet of Jesus

When we’ve given up on better days
there are memories we can’t erase
lay it all down, lay it all down
We’ve come to fear what we can’t explain
there’s nothing here that can ease the pain
lay it all down, lay it all down
at the feet of Jesus, at the feet of Jesus

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