As I watch all the efforts of corporations to "go green" and the craze in our country to consume organic, natural, or more healthful products, I can't help but see a paradox. Over 30% of women in the U.S. were on the Pill in 2002 (see here), presumably more now. The Pill uses artificial hormones to control a woman's fertility. So as we worry over what hormones are in the meats and milk we consume (see here), we willingly pump our bodies full of hormones to control fertility. I honestly don't get it.
My husband's and my reasons for using natural family planning have more to do with our understanding of the meaning of human sexuality as God-given than not wanting extra hormones coursing through my body to "fix" my unbroken reproductive system, but there is a growing trend of health-conscious people - especially vegans and vegetarians - who recognize the paradox and are using some form of natural family planning or fertility awareness method.
As many are "going green" because they want to prevent global warming, I wander how many people are aware of the possibility of global infertility. Aside from the low fertility rate, that is the reproducing at such a low rate (less than 1.5 children per woman in most first-world countries, as far as I know) such that whole countries are in danger of not replacing themselves, there is another, scarier potential problem. With the high numbers of women on the Pill in addition to the tendency to "flush" pills down the toilet, there has been documented such high levels of synthetic estrogen in natural waterways that there are male fish becoming infertile and producing eggs! The question is how high the levels have to be to effect male humans. (See here, here, and here.)
It's one thing to make a conscious decision not to reproduce, but it is another altogether to have your reproductive capabilities stolen from you. This is the stuff of science fiction. (Has anyone seen Children of Men?) It also reminds me of a hypothetical situation posed in one of my moral theology classes about a tyrant who puts some kind of contraceptive chemical in his country's water supply to prevent his people from reproducing. We tried to determine the moral licitness of actions of different people in such a situation (i.e. the couple who is aware there is contraception in the water and wants to contracept, the couple who is aware but does not intend to contracept, the couple who is not aware, the tyrant). Such a scenario may be less hypothetical than I realized. I wonder if the Culture of Death has become the tyrant.
