Do You Celebrate Life or Death on Mothersday?

This mothersday, ironically falls on the 50 year celebration of the contraceptive pill. How shocked I was when I read all the 'amazing attributes' of the pill. 

Over the past few years I'm intrigued by the bad attitude and sad emotional state of women. Christo and I often debates why women become more and more bitter and depressed, the older they get.

A few months ago I ran into a woman whom we've met about 10 years ago while presenting a marriage enriching seminar. We met a few times over the past years during which she got divorced and remarried. The last time we met, was a few weeks before Michael's birth.  Within minutes after we said our hello's, her eyes became damped with unshed tears as she shared her deep desire to have another baby. But her new husband refused to have a baby.   She's in her late thirties and her children is moving into their teenage years now.  The reason she wanted another baby, was to feel needed again! Her children is growing up and her one daughter moved in with her dad, who also remarried and since had a new baby. She felt she didn't have purpose anymore, although she has a successful career and a new husband who deeply love her and who is at the peak of his career.    

What this woman is experiencing isn't an isolated incident. Since I have a baby every 18 months I constantly hear women's desires, similar to this woman.  The longing to have a baby again!  

But often they don’t see a way to having another baby. It is a universal desire - something God has put inside every women - the desire to have and hold babies!

This brings me to the 'celebration' of the contraceptive pill! The above story and stories of many more women I know, receives e-mails from and talk to, just confirm that over the last 50 years the contraceptive pill has left behind a blood trail of death and destruction. Not only is it killing thousands of babies every year through it's abortion effect, it also kills women in the essence of their creation! 

Woman are created to be Life-givers! We are created in the image of God as nurturers. But the feminist movement of the 1960's has come to make woman believe they've been freed by the contraceptive pill to become whatever they want to and what their sisters before them, could not. Over the past 50 years, due to the contraceptive pill, women have had control over their fertility and very often against their deepest desire prevented pregnancy. They lived the ‘Feminist dream’, leaving them bitter and unfulfilled!

On Thursday night Christo showed me an article on Health24. According to this article "the contraceptive pill gave women the freedom to choose when to have children and how many to have, and those simple choices profoundly changed their lives. Women could now follow a career, have advanced degrees, have equalities in the workplace, in the family, in education, in the sexual relationship itself and women have the legal right to choose to be a mom!”

But if it was true that the contraceptive pill gave women so much more freedom, why are these women so bitter and depressed and 'unhappy'!  I have yet to meet a mother of six or more children who is bitter, depressed and 'unhappy'.  These mothers flourish! They go through even more hardships than their sisters with one or two children. They work 24 hours a day, taking care of and nourishing their many little children, at night they fall exhausted into bed next to their beloved. Still, there is something else when you look into their eyes.  There is life! These mothers are living life, experiencing life, enjoying life!

Reminding me of 1 Tim 2:15

“Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”

According to the article “Beyond women dying in childbirth, the physical health of a woman who has two, three, four children as opposed to eight, nine, 10 kids - her physical health throughout her entire life is going to be much better as a result of being able to control her fertility," I would like to see the scientific proof for such a grossly, inaccurate assumption!  Except for God’s Word that says we will be preserved through embracing motherhood and the bearing of children, a woman’s body is created for this task and her womanly functions undergoes atrophy when they are no longer used, thus our physical health decrease tremendously when we ‘control our fertility’!

I like to quote some ideas from Nancy Campbell’s article in Above Rubies #77 - Preserved through Motherhood:

Preserved Physically:

“Ovarian cancer is on the increase today.  One of the reasons is that women are cutting off childbearing.  Pregnancy and breastfeeding provide a crucial resting period for the ovaries.  Because of limiting their families, most women today are ovulating about 450 times during their life time instead of only about 150 times.”  Since I, Linnie, have given my fertility to the Lord in June 2004, I’ve only ovulated 6 times!  That is 6 times in comparison with more or less 75 times if I haven’t had babies over the past 6 years. An article called, Timing of Pregnancy and the Risk of Epithelial Ovarian Cancer, states: “The accumulated evidence from epidemiological studies suggests that the risk of epithelial cancer of the ovary is strongly related to the number of ovulations throughout a woman’s reproductive life.”  Read more in Above Rubies #77 on the case studies on ovarian cancer and childbearing.

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women.  With every menstrual cycle, cells in the breast grow and divide and therefore have the possibility of accumulating mutations which could lead to breast cancer.  Therefore, the longer a mother breastfeeds, the less likelihood of breast cancer.   

The level of Estriol, a protective estrogen hormone, is 1,000 times higher during pregnancy to protect the mother and developing baby.  This wonderful pregnancy hormone not only decrease the incidence of breast cancer with 58%, but also has anti-aging properties - just another proof of God’s way is always the best way - we are preserved through motherhood.

Oxytocin and Prolactin are hormones produced in the pregnant and nursing mother.  Oxytocin is a ‘calming’ hormone.  When the mother puts the baby to the breast and the milk lets down, she experiences a calming feeling that comes over her.  Often she will fall to sleep on the job!  I know of very few other jobs in the market place that have that effect on women - quite the contrary!  Prolactin also has a calming and sedating affect upon the mother.  This hormone binds the mother to the baby and cases her to be very motherly and protective.  I, Linnie, experience being a ‘better’, more loving mother with every new baby!

Here are just a few more plusses you receive from progesterone which jumps up 100 times when you are pregnant.  Not only does it guard you from breast cancer, but it protects you from cardiac-related health problems and also promotes the function and maintenance of the brain.  Progesterone helps alleviate anxiety and depression by increasing your production of GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid), the neurotransmitter that causes you to feel calm and relaxed.  GABA is often called the ‘sleep inducer’!  I, Linnie, can testify for this too. I never mind for being awake so often with a new baby, I fall asleep very easily again, because of this hormone! 

If all this is not enough, progesterone also improves the immune system, builds bones, improves hearing, protect from seizures and decreases allergies, irritable bowel syndrome, interstitial cystitis and water retention.

Preserved Emotionally:

As we have already learned, God gives calming hormones to nursing mothers that help her stress levels - no need for Prozac and all its terrible side-effects!

Having children delivers us from a self-centered life!  Before we have children, we have time to dote on ourselves.  We are prone to self-pity and selfishness but children take our mind off of ourselves as we minister to their needs.  We are much better, emotionally, when we care for others and especially for babies and little ones!

We can rejoice that motherhood deliver us from emotional weakness.  For the sake of children we must not give into emotional stress.  We have to be strong and take courage, exercising self-control and a disciplined life.  Again I, Linnie, can testify to this truth!  I don’t have time to indulge in emotional weakness and depression.  Looking into the innocent face of my baby or hearing my toddlers play and laugh together is the best medicine for feeling down!

We come back again to the eternal law that Jesus gave, “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” (Luke 17:33)

Preserved Spiritually:

Due to the contraceptive pill, thousands of women have been lured from the home to “follow a career, have advanced degrees, have equalities in the workplace”.  Women have been deceived to think that childbearing is an inferior task when all along it is the greatest mission given to them. Women came to believe they can only find status in doing what a man does, whereas a woman doesn’t have to do what a man does to find her worth.  She finds her worth in who God created her to be - a Woman!  She has been given the wondrous gift to conceive life, to nurture it in her womb and to nourish, mother and train this life!  

How deceived has our generation become, to believe that we can celebrate motherhood and the pill, together! To believe woman have the legal right to choose to be a mom?

May the Lord have mercy on us and bring us back to His will for Mothers.  May we come to our senses and acknowledge Him as the Life-giver, giving back to Him the right to choose for us whether we are a mother and of how many!