As I continue to seek an explanation for the sharp and sudden rise in the acceptability of out-of-wedlock birth and divorce, I came across a post from talented conservative radio personality Al Mohler. He noted a recent OK! magazine cover about Jamie Lynn Spear’s new baby, which definitely played up the joyful side of teen motherhood.
This is an area where conservatives, in my view, have been consistently better than liberals. (Remember the outrage when Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the TV character Murphy Brown for having a baby even though she wasn’t married?). Liberals who care about the poor need to remember that out of wedlock birth is one of the major causes of poverty.

But Mohler then goes the next step of criticizing Hollywood for glamorizing premarital sex. In other words: want to stop teen pregnancy? Avoid premarital sex.
This to me points up what ought to be a real dilemma for religious conservatives. Ideally, they’d like to have less premarital sex, less use of contraception, less teen pregnancy, less out-of-wedlock birth, and fewer abortions.
But what if they could win on a few of those by giving in on a few others? Specifically, isn’t it likely that if contraception use were higher that teen pregnancy, out of wedlock birth and, most important, abortion would be lower? If that were the case, wouldn’t it be morally incumbent on conservatives to lead the way for greater contraception use? To use the moral language of the pro-life movement, aren’t those who oppose contraception responsible for the deaths of thousands of babies?
I know that the standard response is that through abstinance you can have it all: less sex, out-of-wedlock births, fewer abortions. But if it could be proven that contraception led to even fewer abortions, wouldn’t you have to become aggressive advocates of contraception use?