FGF E-Package
The Confederate Lawyer
April 23, 2009
Ban Contraceptives from Interstate
Commerce
by Charles G. Mills
Pope Paul VI prophetically observed that wider availability of contraceptives would increase, not decrease, the number of abortions. History has vindicated him. Decreasing the availability of contraceptive drugs and devices decreases the number of innocent babies unjustly killed.
Decreasing their availability has other benefits. The present birth rate in the United States is inadequate to prevent the bankruptcy of our Social Security System within a generation. Such bankruptcy could well lead to the murder of hospitalized Social Security retirement benefits recipients. The low birth rate is attributable in part to the ease with which contraceptives can be obtained. Anything done to decrease the availability of contraceptives will prevent unjust killing of both the unborn and thevery old.
The large number of immigrants who enter illegally and without documentation poses a substantial problem. If we could reduce the use of contraception and increase our birth rate, we would have more native-born Americans to do the jobs that now attract illegal immigrants. More children would also produce more young men and women ready to serve in our Armed Forces, state militias, police and fire departments, foreign services, and other institutions of national defense and public safety.
Finally, couples who do not practice artificial contraception are known to be happier than others. There are several book-length discussions of this phenomenon, including Nona Aguilar’s The New No Pill, No Risk Birth Control (Scribner, 1986).
A step in the right direction would be to ban contraceptive drugs and devices, and the advertising for them, from interstate commerce and mail. Violating the ban would be a crime under federal law.
One objection to this is that such a ban distorts the free market. The free market is, however, a good thing primarily because it produces more food, shelter, clothing, books, art, means of transportation, and the other goods of a free and ordered society than any other economic form. If the free market starts producing more pornography, contraception, hatred, and other evils, it has failed in its purpose. Banning evil from the free market does not distort it in a way significantly contrary to its true purpose.
A second objection is that such a ban would interfere with the privacy rights of married couples. This is actually a baseless objection. Such a ban would not involve spying on people in their bedrooms. It would not prohibit the possession of contraceptives or authorize their seizure. It would simply regulate commerce among the states and regulate the mails, both functions of the federal government under the Constitution. The states would remain free to encourage or discourage contraception, except in manners an overzealous Supreme Court has placed off limits.
The greatest obstacle to such a ban would be a hostile press. An unmarried woman recently gave birth to octuplets after a doctor implanted in her uterus numerous unborn babies, who had been created Frankenstein-style in a laboratory. The press deplored the activity of the doctor — not for the artificial creation of life or for encouraging pregnancy outside of marriage — but for implanting so many babies in one mother, especially one who already had children. There was not a word about these eight babies being saved from an unjust death. The press is basically against fertility. It simply wants to curtail the number of babies our country has.
Furthermore, the press has an irrational belief in goodness of condoms. This was exhibited by the fanatical attacks on Pope Benedict for stating the obvious fact that condoms are less effective than abstinence at preventing sexually transmitted diseases from illicit sexual contact.
We need, contrary to the culture our press inculcates, to welcome every baby as a gift from God and to recognize the parents of large families as a special form of patriot. A first step in this direction would include a ban on contraceptives in the mail, similar to the existing ban of fireworks. A similar measure existed when there was a national consensus against contraception. It would also include a ban on transporting contraceptives across state lines or exporting or importing them. We come close to such a ban on privately owned machine guns, and we once had such a ban on pornography and certain contraceptive literature. Given the present state of the precedents of an over-reaching Supreme Court, we cannot ban the prescription and possession of contraceptives, and we cannot ban pro-contraceptive propaganda from the mails and interstate commerce, but we should ban the drugs and devices themselves.
See this column at News Blaze.
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The Confederate Lawyer column is copyright © 2009 by Charles G. Mills and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, www.fgfBooks.com. All rights reserved.
Charles G. Mills is the Judge Advocate or general counsel for the New York State American Legion. He has forty years of experience in many trial and appellate courts and has published several articles about the law.
See his biographical sketch and additional columns here.
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