The James J. Heaney Institute Presents: A New Study of Religion and Contraceptive Use

by James J Heaney Posted on 24 February 2012

In 2011, the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, published a routine paper analyzing religion and contraception use.  During the past week, that paper has caused quite the little internet brouhaha, in light of the Obama Administration’s new anti-Catholic (it isn’t controversial to call it that anymore, is it?) contraception mandate.  The Guttmacher Institute has been put on the defensive, while Nancy Pelosi and establishment Democrats and media organizations have mutated and wildly exaggerated the Guttmacher Institute’s already controversial findings.  The Guttmacher numbers have been criticized for the sample populations they chose, the transparency of their computations, and for failing to discriminate within various demographics (for example, practicing vs. non-practicing Catholics, married vs. unmarried non-virgins, etc.)

We have long been curious about Catholics and contraception use, and this controversy finally nudged us into action. We decided to address the Catholic blogosphere’s concerns over the Guttmacher study the simplest way we could think of: we did our own study.  The data AGI analyzed were from a major government survey, not a private polling firm, so the entire dataset was available for download on the website of the Centers for Disease Control.  We grabbed it, spent a few days setting up and configuring some statistics software, then headed to the James J. Heaney Institute’s well-equipped computer lab for a week to pore over the numbers.

The full study is attached at the bottom of this post, and I strongly encourage you all to read it.  Here are some of what I view as the key tables in the study (click to view full-size):

      

Some of our key findings:

  • Among all practicing Catholic women ages 15-44, almost exactly half are living in accordance with Church teaching on sexuality, chastity, and marriage, while the other half (49.9%) are using methods of artificial birth control.
  • Since the male and female 15-44 cohorts combined represent 45% of the American population, we can further estimate, ceteris paribus, that about 77% of the people in the Catholic pews every Sunday are living (or trying to live) in accordance with Church teaching on human sexuality.
  • 14% of practicing Catholics age 17 or older have never used any method of artificial birth control.  (17 is the average age of first sexual intercourse for American women, according to the Guttmacher Institute.)  The corresponding figure for non-religious women 17 or older is half that, at 7%.
  • 4% of faithful, practicing Catholic wives, ages 15-44, who are not pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or postpartum, rely on natural family planning to regulate the spacing of their childbearing.  This is four times the rate of NFP reliance in the general population, and fifteen times the rate of NFP reliance among non-religious wives.  11% of faithful, practicing Catholics wives who are not pregnant, postpartum, or actively seeking pregnancy are also not actively avoiding it (no method), and a total of 17% meet Catholic standards for “openness to life.”  The corresponding figure among the general population is 10%, which is nearly identical to the figure for non-religious wives.
  • There is a strong correlation between Mass attendance and contraceptive behavior among Catholics.  Practicing Catholics are significantly more likely to obey Catholic teachings on sexuality than the general population (which is not bound by them).  While sample sizes for highly devout Catholics (those who attend Mass more than once each week) were too small to provide firm figures, it was clear that they, in turn, were significantly more likely to embrace Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” than their every-Sunday counterparts.
  • Interestingly, lapsed Catholics (those not attending Mass weekly) are, in many cases, less likely to obey Church teachings than the non-Catholic general population.  This dragged down Catholic results throughout the original Guttmacher study, which either did not differentiate on Mass attendance or included all who attended Mass more than once a month in their analyses of particularly devout Catholics.

The full study is here (PDF format):

“Countering Countering Conventional Wisdom” – The James J. Heaney Institute

A minor update to the study was released on 29 Feb 2012 at 2035 GMT.  No findings were changed, but some typos were corrected, tables were slightly reformatted, and methodological issues were clarified.  (The study as originally released can be found here.)

Thank you for choosing De Civitate and the James J. Heaney Institute as your source for information on religion and contraception use.  Why not bookmark us, or subscribe to our RSS feed on the right side of the screen, while we’re on your mind?

FRIENDLY DISCLAIMER: Although we have some statistics training, we are not a statistician.  We are a computer scientist.  We just really think statistics are the bee’s knees.

Posted in Analysis, Politics | 6 Comments

Santorum: “If government is going to get smaller, then people have to get bigger.”

by James J Heaney Posted on 20 February 2012

Quote of the day.  A very good reminder to me and many of my friends on the Right, perhaps especially my libertarian-leaning fellow Ron Paul supporters. We can, in our zeal against Big Gubmint, sometimes forget that one of the main reasons we need to get government out of the way is so that we, the People, within our communities, can step back into our lately-usurped proper roles — as the primary agents of charity.

I’m feeling better and better about the prospects of a Santorum candidacy — and a Santorum presidency.

Hat tip to HuffPo, which has the full article here.

Posted in Horse Race, Pith | 963 Comments

A Modest Compromise on the Contraceptive Mandate

by James J Heaney Posted on 20 February 2012

Let’s split the difference:

From now on, the Catholic Church will pay for what its employees want to do in the privacy of their bedrooms. In exchange, all employees will give the Catholic Church a say in what they’re allowed to do in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Call the president, folks.  I’ve just solved his problem for him. 

If liberals need our hard-earned tithing money so they can have sex the way they choose, they give up their right to complete sexual autonomy.  This whole battle is like when your dad threatens to stop paying for college when you get straight C’s and spend all your time partying, and you accuse your dad of violating your right to a free education, so you pass a law forcing his employer to collect your tuition money out of his paycheck and hand it over to you free of charge.  You know, like kids do.

Posted in Pith, Politics | 2,074 Comments

“Let Them Eat Condoms”

by James J Heaney Posted on 19 February 2012

The ever-abrasive Mark Steyn gets it right unsettlingly often:

The U.S. economy is about to be terminally clobbered by $100 trillion of entitlement obligations it can never meet. And, as Chart 5-1 on page 58 of the official Obama budget ‘Analytical Perspectives’ makes plain, your feckless, decadent rulers have no plans to do anything about it. Instead, the Democrats shriek, Ooh, Republican prudes who can’t get any action want to shut down your sex life! According to CBO projections, by mid-century mere interest payments on the debt will exceed federal revenues. For purposes of comparison, by 1788 Louis XVI’s government in France was spending a mere 60 percent of revenues on debt service, and we know how that worked out for His Majesty shortly thereafter. Not to worry, says Barry Antoinette. Let them eat condoms.

Quite.  (Full article here.)  Mr. Steyn also reminds of us a particularly terrifying moment from last week’s Congressional question period with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, which I think is not getting nearly enough attention from anyone:

…at the House Budget Committee on Thursday, Chairman Paul Ryan produced another chart, this time from the Congressional Budget Office, with an even steeper straight line showing debt rising to 900 percent of GDP and rocketing off the graph circa 2075. America’s treasury secretary, Timmy Geithner,,, thought the chart would have been even more hilarious if they’d run the numbers into the next millennium: “You could have taken it out to 3000 or to 4000” he chortled, to supportive titters from his aides…

“Yeah, right.” replied Ryan. “We cut it off at the end of the century because the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.”

Watch the exchange here.  “Feckless, decadent rulers” is an understatement.

Posted in Pith, Politics, Reads & Reactions | 1,232 Comments

READS: NR Gets the Payroll Tax Cut Right

by James J Heaney Posted on 19 February 2012

I was afraid I was the only conservative scratching his head that the House GOP seemed ready to make a tax increase the hill they wanted to die on.  Money quotes:

While we welcome the newfound Republican hawkishness on the deficit, a salubrious result of the Tea Party’s influence, the GOP’s hesitancy in extending the payroll-tax cut was an odd thing. The arguments that some Republicans made against it — that temporary tax cuts have little or no effect on economic growth and jobs, that there were insufficient offsets to neutralize the revenue effects of the tax cut — might have been made against any number of tax policies that Republicans support with good reason, the extension of the Bush tax cuts prominent among them. This is not the moment, economically or politically, for a tax increase…

It is critical that Republicans remain energetically committed to both sides of the ledger-sheet fight: tax cuts and spending cuts. The main problem contributing to the deficit, as the tea partiers have been especially energetic in pointing out, is spending, not lack of sufficient tax revenue. In the long term, no workable payroll-tax rate is going to make Social Security or Medicare sustainable, and no combined level of federal taxation is going to render Washington’s current spending habits anything less than catastrophic. These are problems that are going to have to be solved, and they are going to have to be solved over the worst sort of Democratic demagoguery that one can imagine. If Republicans cede their historical advantage on taxes, the fight will be that much more difficult. Keep cutting taxes, whenever and wherever possible, and then remind voters in November of what is standing in the way of spending cuts and a return to fiscal sanity.

Full article here.

Posted in Politics, Reads & Reactions | 166 Comments

Are Abortifacients Abortifacient?

by James J Heaney Posted on 17 February 2012

Here is an atrocious, obviously biased, and above all badly written piece of dreck from the New York Times.  You should all read it, because, if you can get through the gentle assassination of the English language in the service of Queen Cecile I, it brings up the most important development in pro-life science that pro-lifers aren’t talking about:

Adding to their passionate opposition to the rule that employees of religiously affiliated institutions must receive insurance coverage for birth control, Roman Catholic bishops and some evangelical groups have asserted that it also requires coverage of some forms of abortion.

They contend that methods of contraception including morning-after pills and IUDs can be considered “abortifacients” because, these advocates say, they can act to prevent pregnancy after a man’s sperm has fertilized a woman’s egg.

Continue reading →

Posted in Abolitionism, Mere Opinion | 212 Comments

READS: Meanwhile, In Contraceptive-Occupied Great Britain…

by James J Heaney Posted on 14 February 2012

So five years ago — perhaps longer — the government gave the green light to fit girls with hormone releasing implants that are inserted under the skin of the upper arm, The Telegraph reports. So-called sexual health clinics have performed this minor surgery on thousands of girls — without, of course, consulting their parents. They have been administering the contraceptive jab, as well.

According to the NHS Information Centre, about 7,400 girls aged 15 or under had implants or injections last year, up from 2,900 in 2005/6. This included 2,500 who had injections last year, up from 2,100.

The aim is to get the number of pregnancies down. It doesn’t matter that the girls are below the age of consent and are being “protected” from the consequences — correction, only one consequence and not necessarily the worst — of statutory rape.

Source.  Original source.

Posted in Mere Opinion | 1,285 Comments

Why Liberals Lie to Themselves about the Contraceptive Mandate

by James J Heaney Posted on 14 February 2012

I’ve noticed that liberal sources (not to mention Facebook friends) have consistently made the mistake of calling the Church’s refusal to pay for employees’ contraceptive drugs a “denial” or a “deprivation” or an “attack on women’s rights.”  This is, of course, absurd; by that standard, my employer is depriving me of my fundamental right to bear arms because it hasn’t purchased me a handgun.  I couldn’t figure out WHY they kept making this obvious error, though.

It clicked with me this morning while reading the New York Times incandescently ignorant piece on the subject: Liberals have to convince themselves that the Church is exercising coercion against women in order to internally justify using coercive power against the Church.  They then talk to each other across the left-wing echo chamber so they can forget, as quickly as possible, that they are affording the Catholic Church fewer First Amendment rights than they afforded Fred Phelps, burying the Constitution under a nice froth of anti-clerical know-nothingism.  That the Church is not, in fact, exercising any coercive power at all, but merely demanding its constitutional right to refuse to directly participate in immoral activity, is an obvious fact that liberals must not allow into their heads.  If they did, they would see instantly that this is an attack on religious liberty.  Since they refuse to, they instead make it into a conversation about how fantastic The Pill is and how many Catholic women contracept anyway.

Thus my friend’s reaction last night when I pointed out this error: he feigned boredom and quit the thread, which is the Facebook equivalent of plugging his ears and going “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”  This was the first time I’ve ever seen him abandon ship on a civil conversation, which startled me, but now it makes sense. Liberals are doublethinking on this.  They have no choice: one of the core provisions of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) — a provision related to the sacred liberal idol of “reproductive healthcare,” no less — is unconstitutional, and that is not an acceptable outcome to the liberal mind.

That’s my diagnosis.  Prognosis looks bad, but I’m open to a second opinion.

It should be said that conservatives doublethink, too, on different issues.  I’m not angry, just surprised, and I hope someone finds the insight useful.

Posted in Mere Opinion | 136 Comments