Archbishop's blunder may open up long overdue debate on contraception

Archbishop Desmond Connell has caused a major furore with his speech on contraception. His remarks about children and family planning touched a very raw nerve.

To be fair to him, it has been reported as if he said that all children of unions where family planning is practised are in some way inferior or degraded as a result. What the archbishop actually said was: ". . . the child produced by the decision of the parents begins to look more and more like a technological product. This is clear in the case of in vitro fertilisation, surrogate motherhood, genetic engineering, cloning; but it may (italics mine) not be altogether absent in the practice of family planning."

But that he would even go this far in implying that children are in any sense commodities because they are planned causes those who are friendly or even vaguely well-disposed towards the Catholic Church to bury their heads in their hands in despair. Most parents love their children deeply, and would be greatly offended by any suggestion that they regard them as a product or commodity.

If you read on, it becomes clearer what the archbishop is getting at. Children are far too important, irreplaceable and unique ever to be seen as something to be produced when the circumstances suit parents. But most people will not get the opportunity to read on, but will judge from the condensed version produced by the media and the outraged comments on the airwaves.

Many ordinary decent people who are struggling to do the best for their families will be saddened and hurt. From what I know of the archbishop, he would be horrified to be the unwitting source of such pain.

But it illustrates once again that some people in the church have not learnt that how you say something is as important as what you say. This is in spite of much advice from people who are extremely favourable towards the church. Those friendly voices should be listened to, because they are not trying to compromise central church teachings, but to explain them in ways which make sense to men and women today.

The controversy about children is probably all most people will remember from this speech. Yet the archbishop raises other valid points.

Contraception is a classic example of how a long struggle to achieve something makes its advocates unwilling to tolerate any suggestion that it might have negative aspects. Even 30 years on, we have not begun properly to debate whether the contraceptive pill has produced the glorious freedoms we were promised.

If we take it as a given that many have decided to ignore church teaching on contraception, and that that is unlikely to change in the near future, are there still questions which we, as a society, should be looking at?

A few of the claims made for the Pill was that it would usher in a brave new era of liberation for women; that it would end child abuse because every child would be loved and cherished; it would reduce to almost zero the incidence of abortion; it would make sexual relations between men and women more equal and enjoyable.

A few weeks ago on RTE radio, a vox pop was conducted following a large-scale study of the safety of the Pill. Women were asked not only how safe they felt it was, but whether it had lived up to its promises to liberate them. One would have expected most women to be reasonably positive.

Instead, a deep ambivalence emerged, with most of the women concluding that it had simply replaced one set of problems with another. No one would wish to return to the days when extramarital pregnancies were so stigmatised that women were outcasts in their own communities. Yet a recent Employment Equality Agency report showed us what we already know, that pregnancy and child-rearing are still seen as an aberration and a nuisance in workplaces designed to suit no one except ambitious single males with no commitments.

Becoming pregnant if you are fortunate enough to be employed signals to many employers a lack of commitment. So while we may have moved on from one form of stigma, we still have not achieved equality for women. Pregnancy, which is central to many women's lives, is still barely tolerated in the workplace. This is because contraception means the woman could in theory have made another choice.

Though, of course, the myth of infallible contraception is just that. Even when the Pill is used absolutely correctly it has a failure rate, without ever including human error.

Another area of concern is the premature sexualisation of young people. Lessening the risk of unwanted pregnancy removes one protection against early sexual activity for both boys and girls. In Britain, one secondary school in Reading is contemplating distributing the morning-after Pill on Monday morning. Is this the best we can offer teens? As one 15-year-old boy said gloomily to me: "I'm supposed to be sleeping with girls, and I don't even feel comfortable talking to them."

The sex-saturated culture we live in is the direct result of the removal of the link between making love and making babies. We need to start debating whether it has liberated women and men or presented them with new difficulties. It certainly has not ended child abuse, and the idea that it would eliminate abortion is, tragically, farcical. Nor are male-female relationships significantly happier.

If we could be mature enough to stop being so defensive about contraception we might be able to ask serious questions about the negative consequences unforeseen in the 1960s. If so, the archbishop may have done us a favour after all.

Breda O'Brien is a writer and broadcaster