# The Roman Catholic Church on Viagra? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 13, 2012, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702 "2012-02-13T13:02:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2012, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702/61 "2012-02-18T12:24:53Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > And that’s the cultural difference you’re not seeing. A woman living in Sudan would think, “Of course my children will support me - **I’m family**!” They have a whole different set of realities to deal with, and they make their assumptions and decisions accordingly. > > These women know what causes pregnancy. They’re not ignorant or stupid. Most of the time, they know how to prevent pregnancy, whether that be by extended breastfeeding, knowing their fertility cycles, or contraceptives from a local clinic. But they often don’t \*want \*to prevent pregnancy. Preventing pregnancy is a really bad idea, in the world they live in. Prevent pregnancy, and you’ll have starving homeless elderly people instead of starving children. Things might always get better next week, and those starving children may have enough food. So you have more kids in the hope that you’ll manage somehow (just like people here do, honestly), and when some of them die, you cry, you mourn, you feel the loss, and then you move on with your life. Children dying, while always sad, is not the worst thing in the world, especially when it’s so common. And if your culture places more value and honor on productive adults and experienced elders than it does on children, then having dying children is preferable to having dying adults and elders. In a way you are making my point,and that is sort of what the RCC seemed to over look, such is the case with many places and people that they teach that Birth Control is a sin. Not taking into consideration the results of their teachings, and I use Haiti as an example because of those poor people who die trying to get to the USA by boat and many do die. I just don’t see how that is being pro-life. To me being pro-life means helping the already born to a better life, and only having children you can care for, I realize there are exceptions to every rule. unseen circumstances do come up in a famlies life and if it happens after the children are born they should deserve help, But a responsible person will not bring a child into the world when they are already in dire circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702/62 "2012-02-19T22:54:45Z")
Thing is, birth control does not lengthen the amount of time you can’t get pregnant. The entire reason why you have on days and off days is not because it is medically necessary, but in order to try and appeal to Catholics. The idea being that, if you are still fertile the same amount of time during the month (that one week period), then they couldn’t object. What it honestly seems they rejected was reducing how fertile you were even in those three weeks that you take the pill. The rhythm method is only allowed because it has X% chance of failure, and anything that reduces below that is wrong. And what’s the point of birth control that makes you just as likely to get pregnant? The thing that is considered unnatural is reducing the chances you will get pregnant beyond what happens without any aid. In other words, the entire concept of birth control itself. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702/63 "2012-02-19T23:14:17Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > And that’s the cultural difference you’re not seeing. A woman living in Sudan would think, “Of course my children will support me - **I’m family**!” They have a whole different set of realities to deal with, and they make their assumptions and decisions accordingly. > > These women know what causes pregnancy. They’re not ignorant or stupid. Most of the time, they know how to prevent pregnancy, whether that be by extended breastfeeding, knowing their fertility cycles, or contraceptives from a local clinic. But they often don’t \*want \*to prevent pregnancy. Preventing pregnancy is a really bad idea, in the world they live in. Prevent pregnancy, and you’ll have starving homeless elderly people instead of starving children. Things might always get better next week, and those starving children may have enough food. So you have more kids in the hope that you’ll manage somehow (just like people here do, honestly), and when some of them die, you cry, you mourn, you feel the loss, and then you move on with your life. Children dying, while always sad, is not the worst thing in the world, especially when it’s so common. And if your culture places more value and honor on productive adults and experienced elders than it does on children, then having dying children is preferable to having dying adults and elders. You may want to revisit your understanding on the rights of women to control sex in the rest of the world. > [@](#): > > 3.5 Can women reject sex? > As illustrated in Table 2, only 34.4 percent of the women gave an indication that they > can reject sexual intercourse from their husbands if and when they so desire, while the > remaining majority (65.6 percent) believed it is impossible for a woman to reject sexual > advances from her husband. [http://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol12/2/12-2.pdf](http://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol12/2/12-2.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702/64 "2012-02-19T23:20:42Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Thing is, birth control does not lengthen the amount of time you can’t get pregnant. The entire reason why you have on days and off days is not because it is medically necessary, but in order to try and appeal to Catholics. The idea being that, if you are still fertile the same amount of time during the month (that one week period), then they couldn’t object. No, that’s not correct. For one thing, you’re not fertile during the placebo week on the Pill. That would pretty much defeat the entire purpose of taking the Pill. You get your PERIOD that week, which you won’t if you skip the week of placebo pills. That wasn’t to appeal to Catholics, but to doctors, who were terrified of the idea of women never getting their periods. Such a thing was obviously unnatural and dangerous, and could not be allowed to happen, so the week of sugar pills allows for something that looks very much like menses (but technically isn’t, hormonally speaking.) We know now, of course, that there are no ill effects to not getting a monthly bleed, and in fact not menstruating all the time may be the more “natural” rhythm of women’s bodies, anyhow. The “natural” appeal to the Catholics was that women are normally infertile 25 days in each 28 day cycle. The pill makes you infertile for 28 days in the 28 day cycle. It’s taking the natural infertility of women and extending it to include the whole month. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702/65 "2012-02-26T12:45:51Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I don’t understand the assumption in the OP that we can compare Viagra to Birth Control. Viagra is more accurately compared to infertility treatment, IMHO. > > The RC church is just fine with many infertility treatments. They are not okay with IVF. They are fine with hormones to induce ovulation, with progesterone to maintain a pregnancy during a short luteal phase, they’re hunky-dory with tracking cycles and timing intercourse, they’re all over that stuff…as long as the actual chance for conception involves a penis inside a vagina. IVF is not okay not because it’s “unnatural”, but because it divorces conception from sexual intercourse. > > In the church’s eyes, Viagra most certainly does not divorce conception from sexual intercourse. > > And, to bring it back to the OP, the RC church does not disallow birth control because it’s “unnatural”, but because it divorces conception from sexual intercourse. The “natural” or "unnatural"ness of birth control arose not from the RC church, but by the scientists developing the first birth control pills. They hoped to make their product acceptable to Catholics by emphasizing the “naturalness” of the Pill (based on their claim that the Pill simply lengthened a woman’s natural infertile cycle to include all the days of the month)… This didn’t work, of course, since the RC church doesn’t give a crap about “natural”, they just want every act of intercourse to contain the potential for making a baby. I have a relative who is a RC priest, and he told me that because it wasn’t natural,and the couple was supposed to be open to any child God sent them;they were holding back the will of God! Now having sex doesn’t mean (in my opinion) that a good loving God would want a couple to have children they don’t want, or can’t care for. Idon’t believe that God want’s the people of Haiti to live in such poverty, I don’t see anything that proves what God wants, just what the RCC wants. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702/66 "2012-02-26T16:21:00Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > I have a relative who is a RC priest, and he told me that because it wasn’t natural,and the couple was supposed to be open to any child God sent them;they were holding back the will of God! Exactly. Because 90 microns of latex is stronger than their omnipotent God, and birth control never fails. :rolleyes: \<----rolleyes at people who think birth control thwarts the will of God, not at you, **monavis**. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702/67 "2012-02-26T17:44:39Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > I have a relative who is a RC priest, and he told me that because it wasn’t natural,and the couple was supposed to be open to any child God sent them;they were holding back the will of God! Should I be surprised that the “will of God” is so very feeble? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roman-catholic-church-on-viagra/612702.md?page=3)