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Catholicism and International Family Planning

Catholics for Choice provided us with the following summary about Catholic views on international family planning. More information is available on their website, www.catholicsforchoice.org.

Throughout the world, women, men and their families suffer because they lack the resources to plan their families, and the comprehensive information and education to keep them safe and healthy. The Catholic hierarchy’s powerful lobby plays a huge role in influencing public policy and affects everyone—Catholic or not—by limiting family planning services worldwide. However, the great majority of Catholics disagree with the Vatican and the bishops on matters related to sexuality, contraception, and parenthood.  For more than 35 years, Catholics for Choice has worked in the United States and around the world to make sure that decision makers understand that Catholics do, in fact, support family planning and freedom in reproductive choices.

The morality and the legality of modern family planning is an important personal and political issue worldwide. Catholic support for contraception is grounded in core principles of Catholic theology, which respect the moral agency of all women. It is bolstered by respect for the religious freedom and rights of people of all faiths and no religious faith, by respect for plural and tolerant democratic societies and, most importantly, by adherence to the Catholic principle of standing with the poor and marginalized of the world who are disproportionately women.

Deciding when and whether to have children is one of the most important decisions individuals and couples make. The debate within the church is not about whether to limit family size based on capacity to care for and love children; it is about allowing men and women the freedom to decide which methods of family planning to use. In spite of the Vatican and many bishops’ opposition to most methods of family planning, Catholics throughout the world use modern methods of contraception and believe that using such methods is exactly what good Catholics should do.

An overwhelming majority of Catholics worldwide disagree with the hierarchy’s ban on the use of contraception. 97% of U.S. Catholic women have used some form of contraception banned by the Vatican during the course of their reproductive lives. In Bolivia, 70% of married Catholic women have used some form of modern birth control and in Colombia over 90% of Catholics have used a modern family planning method at some point in their lives. Catholics have rejected church-approved family planning methods in favor of reliable, modern methods of contraception, with less than 3% of sexually active U.S. Catholic women using church-approved methods as their primary form of family planning.

Despite the overwhelming Catholic support of modern family planning, the Catholic hierarchy has taken the lead on some of the greatest challenges to sound reproductive health and rights laws around the world, blocking everything from access to therapeutic abortion to the availability of emergency contraception and basic family planning. The Vatican uses every means at its disposal, most often wielding its financial strength and political clout, to block consensus and pressure policymakers to abandon support for family planning both domestically and internationally, as well as at the United Nations. Using false claims that its positions are universally accepted by Catholic constituents, the hierarchy actively lobbies against measures to improve access to reproductive health care. 

In 2008, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbied Members of the United States Congress during negotiations on spending for PEPFAR – a U.S. program to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria through treatment, care and prevention-- and were ultimately successful in having family planning removed from the $48 billion spent on HIV/AIDS prevention. They were also successful in strengthening so-called conscience clauses which would allow groups like Catholic Relief Services—the third largest recipient of PEPFAR funds—to opt out of distributing or even mentioning condoms. The decoupling of vital family planning services from HIV/AIDS prevention programs meant a loss of critical services that can prevent the transmission of HIV. This is a needless and tragic setback for HIV/AIDS prevention efforts and for the families who want and need access to family planning. More recently, the bishops lobbied against much-needed support for family planning in the economic recovery proposals here at home and for the work of the United Nations Population Fund abroad.

Catholics use contraception, Catholic legislators support family planning and the majority of Catholics believe that you can be a good Catholic without obeying the church hierarchy’s prohibition on modern family planning methods.