Contraception question

Question: I know that the Church teaches that contraception is sinful, but surely abortion is a much worse sin, since it cuts off the life of a human being which has already been created by God. Should we not support contraception because it cuts down on abortion?

Answer: The idea that contraception helps cut down on abortion is promoted by every pro-abortion and population control group in the world. This is a concept that seems to make sense, since contraception is indeed designed to prevent pregnancies.
Of course, contraception would cut down on abortions if only two conditions were met — if the contraception worked perfectly, and if human beings were perfect as well.
These conditions will never be met considering the state of science and human nature.
When contraceptive manufacturers and promoters talk about their products, they always refer to the "method effectiveness rate," which is how well contraception works if it is used perfectly every time by perfectly healthy and perfectly attentive men and women. A more useful and honest measure is the "user effectiveness rate," sometimes called the "real-world effectiveness rate," which includes human error.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) does more than any other organization to spread abortion and contraception around the world. Its first Medical Director, Malcolm Potts, said that

As has been pointed out, those who use contraceptives are more likely than those who do not to resort to induced abortion. ... The epidemiological evidence that has been surveyed in this and preceding chapters points to the fact that induced abortion services are most needed by those adopting any form of fertility regulation. ... No developed country has brought down its birth rate without a considerable recourse to abortion and it appears unlikely that developing countries can ever hope to see any decline in their fertility without a massive resort to induced abortion — legal or illegal.1

As contraception use goes up, so does the demand for abortion, since contraception fails so often. In the United States, where all forms of modern contraception have been widely available for nearly half a century, nearly two-thirds of women obtaining abortions were using contraception when they became pregnant.2
It is also interesting to note that more than one hundred nations have legalized abortion to one extent or another — and every single one of them first legalized contraception, because the "family planners" and population controllers know full well that contraception use and failure will lead to demands for legalized abortion.
Perhaps the most direct way that contraception leads to abortion is that, when couples use it, they are consciously and deliberately closing themselves off to the gift of life. When their contraceptive method fails, as it so often does, they see the resulting child not as a gift from God, but as a "mistake," and thus feel that technology has let them down. They feel entitled to an abortion, since they had already made an effort to avoid having a child.
During this kind of discussion, we must absolutely not lose sight of the fact that the Catholic Church has always taught that the use of contraception is mortally sinful. Indeed, those couples who use it are generally unhappier than those couples who use natural family planning (NFP) and suffer a much higher divorce rate.3
As it has been said so often, "God always forgives, man sometimes forgives, but nature never forgives."

1. Malcolm Potts, Peter Diggory, and John Peel. Abortion [Cambridge University Press, 1977], pages 491, 496, 498 and 526.
2. Stanley K. Henshaw and Jennifer Van Vort. "Abortion Patients 1994 1995: Characteristics and Contraceptive Use." Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1996, pages 140 to 143; Rachel K. Jones, Jacqueline E. Darroch and Stanley K. Henshaw. "Contraceptive Use Among U.S. Women Having Abortions in 2000 2001." Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, November/December 2002, pages 294 to 303.
3. The United States divorce rate among married couples using contraception is almost fifty percent. Several studies of NFP users show a divorce rate of anywhere from one percent to six percent [author's personal survey of fourteen large NFP teaching groups and leaders in the United States].

 See Chapter 21 in The Facts of Life on Human Life International's Library Compact Disc, "Contraception," for a more detailed scientific explanation of the various types of contraception, and for the history of the Catholic Church's teachings on it.

This can be found in the Seminarian Black Book by HLI