About the Author
Dr. Brian Clowes has been HLI’s director of research since 1995 and is one of the most accomplished and respected intellectuals in the international pro-life movement. Best known as author of the most exhaustive pro-life informational resource volume The Facts of Life, and for his Pro-Life Basic Training Course, Brian is the author of nine books and over 500 scholarly and popular articles, and has traveled to 70 countries on six continents as a pro-life speaker, educator and trainer.
A Personal Story Years ago, I had the privilege of accompanying Human Life International’s founder, Father Paul Marx, on several of his parish weekends. His homilies usually covered the complete range of Church teaching on sexuality, from contraception to abortion to homosexuality. Several times after these Masses, I witnessed irate parishioners publicly berate him, telling…
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Introduction One of the most prominent features of the culture of death is its short-sightedness. It puts grand plans into action and makes sweeping promises about how many lives will be saved or improved by its initiatives. And then its architects are invariably shocked and surprised when a galaxy of negative unintended consequences quickly emerge,…
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There are times when priests, ministers and pro-life activists encounter what might be called the “ultimate hard case” involving condoms. This is the situation where a husband and wife are serodiscordant; one is HIV positive and the other is not. The question inevitably arises as to whether or not they may use condoms to prevent…
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What Is Emergency Contraception? Even with all of the different contraceptives and abortifacients on the market today, women forget to use their birth control, think their birth control method might have failed, or were coerced into sex. Many of these women resort to “emergency contraception,” a term that covers several drugs or devices that are…
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Some people refer to sexual sterilization as “Catholic birth control.” This erroneous term, along with the misguided assertions of a number of well-known dissenters, has led to significant confusion regarding the Catholic Church’s teaching on sterilization. Because it separates the marital act from the transmission of human life, sterilization is condemned on the same grounds…
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If pressed, many “family planners” admit that in an ideal world, all young people would refrain from sexual activity before marriage and remain faithful to their spouses after. Such a society would have no HIV-AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases, very little unwanted pregnancy (and few pregnancies among unmarried teens!), and most likely a very…
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Human Conception: The Beginning of Life There is much confusion and disagreement today about when human life actually begins. The official and public face of the medical profession insists that life begins at implantation — yet every embryology and fetology textbook in use today states that it begins at the instant of fusion between sperm…
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What is the best way to conquer a nation and subdue its people? The great Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote in his classic The Art of War, “All warfare is based primarily on the deception of an enemy. Fighting on a battlefield is the most primitive way of making war. There is no art higher…
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There is a very high level of confusion among Catholics regarding the abortifacient action of various forms of birth control. Unfortunately, this uncertainty is actively promoted by the very profession that should be trying to clarify health issues to the public. Misinformation Regarding Contraception The modern medical profession acknowledged for decades that the beginning…
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About 25 years ago, I bought a complete set of Margaret Sanger’s journal The Birth Control Review and ambitiously set out to read every one of its 5,631 pages. The strange experience left me just a little uncertain about what is real and what is not. Sanger’s world has that effect on a person, because…
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