In what should come as no surprise, the US resumed its trend of following Europe in a declining fertility rate. A portion of “Table 1″ is provided above. From the report:

The 2008 preliminary estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR)) was 2085.5 births per 1,000 women–2% ower than the rate in 2007 (2,122.5) (Table 1). The TFR summarizes the potential impact of current fertility patterns on completed family size by estimating the average number of births that a hypothetical group of 1,000 women would have over their lifetimes, based on the age-specifi birth rates obeserved in the given year. The TFR for the United States in 2008 was below replacement after being above in 2006 and 2007. Replacement is the rate at which a given generation can exactly replace itself,k which is generally considered to be 2,1000 births per 1,00 women. The U.S. rate had been below replacement from 1972 to 2005.

Source: Hamilton BE, Martin JA, and Ventura SJ. “Births: Preliminary Data for 2008.” National Center for Health Statistics. National Vital Statistics Reports. 2010;58(16):1-17.

Also, from the Washington Post:

The nation’s overall birthrate fell 2 percent from 2007 to 2008, when about 4.2 million babies were born. The dip pushed the fertility rate below 2.1 per woman, meaning Americans were no longer giving birth to enough children to keep the population from declining.

Here’s a paragraph from an article I recently wrote for The Hausvater Project. Titled “Medicating against Motherhood: As the Pill Turns 50, a New Generation Seeks to Rediscover Marital Chastity,” the article offers an explanation why the Lutheran Church eventually accepted contraception. Included within the article is the connection between Professor Alfred Rehwinkel’s book, Planned Parenthood, and Margaret Sanger, the founder of what today is known as Planned Parenthood. From the article:

[Author Alfred] Rehwinkel’s approach to Scripture, to which he and others had acquiesced in the decades prior to writing Planned Parenthood, is nowadays commonplace among conservative Christians. It is therefore instructive. First, define the moral issue. Second, consult the Scriptures. Third, if the Scriptures do not specifically mention the issue, or they do not specifically prohibit a given practice, then the conclusion: the Christian is free to engage. Savvy believers will recognize that this sort of biblical interpretation has been used by politicians in order to support clear moral wrongs. Recall that President Bill Clinton, a Baptist, suggested, “Nowhere in those Ten Commandments will you find anything about homosexuality.” Of course, the Bible explicitly condemns homosexuality in numerous places, and even says that God’s creation shows that same-sex relations go against nature. But for Clinton, that wasn’t the point. The point was that where he chose to look in the Bible, the prohibitions were not there.

You can read the whole article here.

With this essay, using the language and tools of modern social science, I will articulate the position that contraception is socially damaging. I will also demonstrate that contraception is in fact a sexist practice. Using straightforward microeconomic reasoning, I will unpack the behaviors engendered by artificial contraception. I will show that the contraceptive revolution has resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.

Make sure you read the rest of this important article. If you aren’t one already, click here to become a First Things print or online subscriber.

HT: Dr. Erich Heidenreich.

HT: Rev. Dr. Albert B. Collver, III.

Thanks to Dr. Gerard Nadal for his thoroughly thought-provoking blog and Jill Stanek for the tip.

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 459 (1965)

Hindsight is 20-20. The forty-plus years after Griswold have validated the concerns expressed by social and religious conservatives and constitutional purists regarding the protections afforded the traditional conception of marriage and family. Groups advocating for social change, among them and most notably Planned Parenthood, have been well served by Supreme Court rulings since the 1960’s. While not the first attempt to overturn not only Connecticut law but remaining state laws prohibiting the sale or use of contraceptives, (1) Griswold (2) nevertheless was the necessary first stepping stone laid by the Court (absent a ruling on Poe v. Ullman) paving the way for Eisenstatdt v. Baird, Roe v. Wade, and subsequent federal and state rulings redefining sexual mores and lately, marriage. To wit, Connecticut, which for 86 years prior to Griswold had outlawed contraceptive use among married persons, became the third state to allow same-sex marriage. (3)

To the case. Appellants Griswold (executive director of Planned Parenthood in Connecticut) and Buxton, a physician and professor at Yale, were arrested and fined for giving information about and for prescribing contraceptive devices to marriage couples, in violation of Connecticut law. Writing for the majority in this 7-2 decision, Justice Douglas argued for a substantive protections provided by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, notably the “right of privacy” to be enjoyed by married couples, emanating from “penumbras” derived from amendments to the federal Constitution. The majority invoked the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments as indicating “zones of privacy,” including the marital bedroom. Thus devoid of any compelling State interest, the US Supreme Court invalidated the law, effectively nullifying any remaining state laws prohibiting the use of contraceptive devices by married couples. (4)

I ague with dissenters Black and Stewart. Unenumerated constitutional rights are virtually endless. Using the concept of substantive due process, the majority took upon itself exclusively to protect individual liberties at the expense of properly-constituted legislative bodies. An unintended effect is that, in trying to protect Connecticut citizens, the majority actually took away the rights of those citizens to work through their elected representatives in altering or voiding this law. Griswold also had the unintended negative consequence of privatizing not only marriage, but also sex. If marriage (in 1965, between a man and a woman) is due a “right of privacy” as the majority argued, then when does that right cease to exist? To consensual sexual acts between two adult regardless of sex, i.e., same-sex sex? Today, yes. How about tomorrow? How about sex between children, or between adults and children? I go no further, even though forces are at work to secure also these “rights to privacy.” Since all rights have limits, even those specifically mentioned in the federal or state constitutions, who is to determine when these rights become rather violations even though they reside in the liberty-protecting penumbras of the bedroom?

1) In 1916, “Woman Rebel” editor, socialist, and eugenicist Margaret Sanger, a founder of what eventually became Planned Parenthood, was herself arrested in New York for operating a family planning clinic. See Wikipedia citation below.

2) Ironically, although the Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives by married couples had been on the books since 1879, it had never been enforced. See: http://www.oyez.com/cases/1960-1969/1960/1960_60.

3) See Wikipedia citation on Same-sex marriage below.

4) This section is from Menikoff, pp. 17-23, cited below.

Resources:
————-
Menikoff, Jerry. Law and Bioethics. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001).

Wikipedia: Griswold v. Connecticut. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v_connecticut (accessed October 30, 2009).

Wikipedia: Margaret Sanger. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger (accessed October 30, 2009).

Wikipedia: Poe v. Ullman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe_v._Ullman (accessed October 31, 2009).

Wikipedia: Roe v. Wade. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v_wade (accessed October 31, 2009).

Wikipedia: Same-sex marriage in Connecticut. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Connecticut (accessed October 31, 2009).

prevents a pregnancy the same way that a birth control pill does. It is believed that Next Choice prevents the egg from being (1) released from the ovary (ovulation), (2) fertilized by the sperm (fertilization), or (3) attached to the uterus (implantation). Implantation occurs about 7 days after ovulation.

When ACP information is examined against research conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, it is evident that demographic changes in our country have been the major shaping force of our membership numbers, not outdated methodologies nor a generation gap in the leadership of our churches and institutions. . . The data show that membership and baptism figures are in large part the products of a declining birthrate among Whites [the predominate SBC population] as well as the suburbanization of America. . . A quantitative analysis will confirm what is evident by sight from comparing the two graphs: The trends for the White, non-Hispanic population in the U.S. and for the SBC’s membership pretty much share the same path.

I wonder if other denominations will be willing to make the same analysis?

Contraception advice is crucial to poor countries’ battle with climate change, and policy makers are failing their people if they continue to shy away from the issue, a leading family planning expert said on Friday.Leo Bryant, a lead researcher on a World Health Organisation study on population growth and climate change, said the stigma attached to birth control in both developing and developed countries was hindering vital progress.

“We are certainly not advocating that governments should start telling people how many children they can have,” said Bryant, an advocacy manager at the family planning group Marie Stopes International, who wrote a commentary in the Lancet medical journal on Friday.

“The ability to choose your family size…is a fundamental human right. But lack of access to family planning means millions of people in developing countries don’t have that right,” he told Reuters.

Although the report goes on to mentions the WHO’s projections for worldwide human population at 9 billion in 2050, it does not mention current data showing many countries already falling below their “replacement rate” needed to sustain populations, nor does it mention that the WHO also anticipates a decline in worldwide human population following its peak of 9 billion.

Having fewer and fewer children is just part of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.