PRACTICES OPPOSED TO
WOMEN'S HEALTH: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS --
There are psychological problems mental
health professionals are seeing in real life. We are a society wounded
psychologically by the culture of death. Women, in particular, reap
disproportionate psychological injury and suffering as a result of
health-related practices which are opposed to the culture of life.
The culture of death was ushered
into American society at the time of the sexual revolution in the 60s and
70s. The sexual revolution promised a new freedom and discovery of self;
in pursuit of freedom, women sought license and unfettered autonomy. In
pursuit of sexual pleasure, women separated sexual expression from its
true meaning within marriage and its connection with procreation. In
pursuit of equality with men, women surrendered the dignity of womanhood
and rejected the value of motherhood. In hopes of "getting in touch with
their inner selves" women embraced psychology, the priority of feelings
over reason, and rejected the constraints of objective morality.
It is particularly ironic that the
generation that embraced psychology adopted a lifestyle and created a
culture that caused so much psychological suffering. What the sexual
revolution and radical feminism promised was that the pursuit of freedom,
sexual equality, sexual pleasure and the rejection of traditional morality
would bring individual happiness and build a more truly human society.
Instead, the reproductive health practices spawned by the sexual
revolution and the women's liberation movement resulted in: a skyrocketing
divorce rate, less stable families, teen promiscuity, teen pregnancy, easy
abortion, a culture of individualism and selfishness, devaluing of
womanhood and motherhood, isolation, and the tendency to use others as a
means to fulfill one's own selfish ends.
We now have a society wounded
psychologically by the practices of the culture of death with women
suffering the greatest psychological toll. Often psychological
difficulties are predictable and recognized side effects of some medical
treatment that is hostile to life. For example, many contraceptives,
including some that are abortifacient, have depression and anxiety as
common side effects. Contraception as an option for married couples is a
sign of the mindset of the sexual revolution: that children are a burden
and an inconvenience, that fertility is a disease to be treated instead of
a gift to be cherished, and that sexual pleasure should be uncoupled from
the creation of new life. Teens and adolescents are entitled to pursue
sexual pleasure, according to this line of reasoning, but the consequences
of fertility, of manhood and womanhood, are to be treated as diseases to
be cured. Consequently, we have medical professionals and social workers
deciding that it is preferable for young women to be given Norplant, the
implanted contraceptive that stays effective for up to three years, rather
than learning to control their sexual impulses. At the same time, they
deem the clinical depressions, anxieties or panic disorders that can
accompany use of this contraceptive as acceptable side effects.
Unassailable medical journals have been reporting the association between
Norplant and psychological problems for years.[1] In every branch of
medicine we have to deal with side effects of necessary medical
treatments. For example, depression can be a side effect of numerous drug
treatments for maladies ranging from high blood pressure to multiple
sclerosis. The difference here is that we, as a society, are choosing to
assume the risk of severe psychological side effects in order to treat
something that is not a disease, i.e. fertility.
The problem of teen pregnancy can
be easily avoided and with no side effects. The solution is called
abstinence. When certain practices violate human dignity and the intrinsic
nature of womanhood and motherhood, they produce psychological problems
based on the denial of the truth about the human person. The more common
and yet more subtle area of psychological damage results not as a medical
side effect of a particular treatment. Rather, psychological problems can
arise as a response to some dehumanizing aspect of the treatment itself.
Expressed in other words, psychological problems result not as side
effects of medical treatment, but as a result of the health practices
themselves. For example, it is a growing practice in obstetrics to
recommend abortion when there is a "chance" that the child might be
"defective." Or, when a mother is carrying three or four babies as a
result of infertility treatments, doctors may recommend killing some of
the babies through a procedure euphemistically called "selective
reduction." The natural inclination of a mother is to embrace the new life
within her and to protect and nurture all of her children, not just some.
Instead she is forced to "choose" to kill, supposedly for the good of some
of her children or because of the mistaken idea that it is better not to
be born than to be born less than perfect. If such actions are contrary to
a woman's inherent nature, just what psychological effect can they have?
Researchers in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
showed that the incidence of depression following selective abortion for
suspected genetic defect was as high as 92 percent among women and as high
as 82 percent among men. The percentage was greater than that usually
associated with elective abortion or with delivery of a stillborn. They
argued that what was needed was better counseling services to help the
parents deal with the guilt expressed.[2]
The culture of death emphasizes
psychological counseling to relieve people's guilt. That guilt, however,
is the natural manifestation of God's law already inscribed in their
hearts. It cannot be counseled away. It must be acknowledged and then it
can be forgiven. The psychological damage wrought by the culture of death
can only be dealt with by first acknowledging that some things are right
and some always wrong, and then seeking forgiveness, and finding happiness
in the restoration of a life lived according to God's plan for us all.
Professor
Robert P. George of Princeton University has spoken about the dualism of
the person promoted by the secular culture. In his book, Clash of
Orthodoxies, he says that when the self is considered in dualistic
terms, the thinking, desiring, conscious self is separated from a person's
biological self. Such a view is the MTV-generation approach to sexuality,
that sees the body as an instrument, a "thing" possessed for pleasure but
detached from their own personhood: "What I do with my body is my own
business." It also is expressed in the depersonalization of sex: "This
isn't about you or me . . . it's just sex." Similarly, the person who has
absorbed this dualism would feel no guilt in selling her ova in order to
make money. A recent ad in one California college newspaper promised to
pay $100,000 for the eggs of a college-educated, athletic coed. Nor would
a woman formed in this view hesitate to terminate the body's biological
life because it cannot provide the conscious self with a life worthy of
enjoyment. This dualism is present in the new reproductive technologies
that depersonalize the ability to father a child or be a mother. It is
found in technologies that extract sperm from dead men, that pay students
to provide sperm or eggs for "banks" that offer them to the highest
bidder, or the push to create artificial wombs. Interestingly enough, from
a psychological point of view the dualistic perspective is fatally flawed,
a fact confirmed by real life experiences. The human person is a
body-person. He is not just a soul captured inside a body. Intuitively, we
all know this. A person's body is part of and expresses the reality of who
he is. Those who posit a dualistic view of the human being need only think
of the horrible situation of rape in order to question their own
assumptions. When a woman is raped, it is the whole person of the woman
that suffers, not just the biological body. The mind reacts, consciously
and unconsciously, and the soul as well. Healing the memories, mind, and
spirit often takes far longer than healing the wounded body. Often
spiritual guidance is sought and needed to heal the violation of the
woman's being.
To delineate this point further, let's examine
the case of Dissociative Disorder. Its is a psychiatric diagnosis documented
in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American
Psychiatric Association. It is considered as the person's response to an
extremely traumatic, ongoing, early and severe childhood trauma. According to
The Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology, Dissociative Disorders serve a
psychological purpose, that of insulating the "executive" self from the full
impact of the abuse, thereby preserving function and normal development.
During this process various elements of the trauma are parceled out to
separate selves. In its severe form of Multiple Personality Disorder, the
selves are disconnected from each other by amnesia barriers that are porous
in nature--and able to be triggered by later life events. Often the process
of parceling out is not complete and it might involve cognitive aspects, such
as dissociative amnesia, or behavioral aspects, such as dissociative fugue,
or affective aspects, such as depersonalization disorder. In this case there
is a dualism that has been created between the conscious or executive self
and the body or parts of the body. However, it is considered a disorder and
not a normal state of affairs, it has an identifiable etiology, which is
pathological in nature, and the treatment consists in the unification of the
self as one integrated unity.The
culture of death continuously communicates the message of this dualism which
rationalizes promiscuous relationships, abortion, sterilization, egg
donation, and many other practices contrary to the culture of life. If we are
to derail the dualistic tendency in society we must articulate, promote, and
live according to an integrated view of the human person--an
understanding of who man is and his essential dignity. This task is essential
not only for the sake of ending the violations of human dignity that occur
each day within the culture of death; it is essential in building the culture
of life.
[1. Wagner, K., Journal of
Clinical Psychiatry 57 (1996): 152‑157; Wagner, K., Berenson, A., Journal
of Clinical Psychiatry (1994): 478 480; Meirik, P., Farley, T., and Sivin,
I., Obstetrics and Gynecology 97 (2001):539‑547.
2. Blumberg, B., Golbus, M., and Hanson, K., American Journal of
Obstetrics and Gynecology 122 (1975): 799-808. At the Podium, Issue No.:
92, Gladys Sweeney; FRC, 25Sept03]