Contraceptives Quotes

“It is a simple logic truth that, short of mass emigration into space, with rockets taking off at the rate of several million per second, uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death –rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for ‘natural’ methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.”
― Spike Milligan, Puckoon

“It is especially galling that some of the people who want to cut funding for contraceptives cite morality. In my view, there is no morality without empathy, and there is certainly no empathy in this policy. Morality is loving your neighbor as yourself, which comes from seeing your neighbor as yourself, which means trying to ease your neighbor’s burdens—not add to them.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“…contraceptives are the greatest life-saving, poverty-ending, women-empowering innovation ever created.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“Faith in action to me means going to the margins of society, seeking out those who are isolated, and bringing them back in. I was putting my faith into action when I went into the field and met the women who asked me about contraceptives. So, yes, there is a Church teaching about contraceptives—but there is another Church teaching, which is love of neighbor. When a woman who wants her children to thrive asks me for contraceptives, her plea puts these two Church teachings into conflict, and my conscience tells me to support the woman’s desire to keep her children alive. To me, that aligns with Christ’s teaching to love my neighbor.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“The human population would probably be way less than a thousand, if ejaculation were not usually accompanied by an orgasm.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Astonishingly, the share of students who don't get education in contraceptives is going up, not down. The Trump administration even tried to cut off funding for a teen pregnancy prevention program (lawsuits forced it to continue that funding). What's confounding is that these same officials are often anti-abortion, yet they don't seem to understand that preventing unplanned pregnancies will reduce abortions. They believe that condoms will promote promiscuity, when condoms no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain. These same officials then thunder about the irresponsibility of girls who get pregnant, oblivious to their own irresponsibility.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“Contraceptives save the lives of mothers and newborns. Contraceptives also reduce abortion. As a result of contraceptive use, there were 26 million fewer unsafe abortions in the world’s poorest countries in just one year, according to the most recent data.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“A seemingly simple task like taking a bath or wearing a condom feels like multitasking to someone who suffers from hemiplegia or has only one hand.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“To some believers, being on the pill or using a condom is a nonverbal way of telling God to go to hell.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Some people have made some mistakes … and some mistakes have made some people.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Until the state or the church takes full responsibility for a newborn, without claiming custody, no bill or bible is qualified to even offer suggestions on a woman's right to abortion.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“What I hate is the thought of being under a man's thumb," I had told Doctor Nolan. "A man doesn't have a worry in the world, while I've got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line."
"Would you act differently if you didn't have to worry about a baby?"
"Yes," I said, "but …" and I told Doctor Nolan about the married woman lawyer and her Defense of Chastity.
Doctor Nolan waited until I was finished. Then she burst out laughing. "Propaganda!" she said, and scribbled the name and address of this doctor on a prescription pad.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“One of the longest-running public health studies dates from the 1970s, when half of the families in a number of villages in Bangladesh were given contraceptives and the other half were not. Twenty years later, the mothers who took contraceptives were healthier. Their children were better nourished. Their families had more wealth. The women had higher wages. Their sons and daughters had more schooling.
The reasons are simple: When the women were able to time and space their pregnancies, they were more likely to advance their education, earn an income, raise healthy children, and have the time and money to give each child the food, care, and education needed to thrive. When children reach their potential, they don’t end up poor. This is how families and countries get out of poverty. In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“I knew what I was doing was illegal—in Massachusetts, anyway, because the state was cram-jam full of Catholics—but Doctor Nolan said this doctor was an old friend of hers, and a wise man.

“You’d like a fitting,” he said cheerfully, and I thought with relief that he wasn’t the sort of doctor to ask awkward questions.
...
I climbed up on the examination table, thinking: “I am climbing to freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person, like Buddy Willard, just because of sex, freedom from the Florence Crittenden Homes where all the poor girls go who should have been fitted out like me, because what they did, they would do anyway, regardless . . .”
...
I was my own woman.
...
The next step was to find the proper sort of man.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Some women would not have contracted an STD or STDs had they not been on the pill.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Some men would not still be HIV negative or alive, if they had managed to sleep with some of the women with whom they want or wanted to have sex.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The decision to outlaw contraceptives was made for women by men.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“If a woman is asking for birth control, it's because she needs it. The request itself is enough.”
― Aude Mermilliod, Le Chœur des femmes

“Insanity breeds insanity. And if there’s one place where we really need birth control, this would be it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The blame for the overturning of Roe v Wade does not fall upon the overzealous, vindictive evangelical—either in a pew or judge’s robe—anymore than it does the bruised-knee legislator and his Plus-1, the campaign-financing lobbyist: All are boorish cultural phenomena, buoyed by society’s currents, political inertia determining their every direction. Instead, history will shake its head in disappointment at those who stood idly by and did nothing.”
― Michael Gurnow

“A child is the price of having sex in post-Griswold America.”
― Michael Gurnow

“Male" contraception is something novel for many people. There are still very few people using these methods, so they receive a lot of attention and a certain amount of approval among activist and feminist circles. The fact that you're seen as this cool guy, just because you're pushing up your family jewels...it says a lot about the state of things, in terms of the contraceptive burden. All we're doing is trying to make things more equal. There's nothing heroic about it...it's just natural.”
― Bobika, Le coeur des Zobs

“See? Nothing changes... The media has spent the past 40 years making announcements about some future "miracle contraception." Articles like that aren't helping to bring about change. We use them to justify just waiting around and doing nothing. It's like: "I swear as soon as there's a pill for guys, I'll be the first to take it!" They make us forget that viable and effective methods already exist! And that if we're even remotely attached to any principles of equity and justice...then it's our responsibility to take part in this movement. Step off of the beaten path, get things moving, and make some headway.”
― Bobika, Le coeur des Zobs