June 2003

Hating Babies, Hating God

When I sat down to write this article, Google reminded me that, when it comes to the issue of contraception, the stakes are very high. To check the date of publication of Dr. Charles Provan’s important work The Bible and Birth Control, I typed “Charles, Provan, Bible, Birth Control” into the mother of all search engines. As fast as my dial-up connection could react, I was confronted with a paid advertisement, spawned by my search criteria, for Ortho Evra, also known as The Patch, the bastard offspring of The Pill. I followed the link and immediately recognized the happy contraceptor from the ubiquitous television ad, who lifts her baby-T to show, just above her pantyline, the flesh-colored patch, which stands up to the ravages of both shower and swimming pool as it pumps norogestromin and ethinyl estradiol into her erstwhile fertile (healthy) body. The Patch, claims the commercial, is for women who just do not have time to worry about taking a pill every day.