The pro-contraception guest column is biased and misleading (“Are candidates asked the right question,” The Daily Astorian, Aug. 14).

“Access to contraception is the only proven way to reduce unwanted pregnancy rates.” False. The only thing “provable” about contraception is that it made legalized abortion necessary.

In 1965, the Supreme Court legalized contraception by married couples in Griswold v. Connecticut, creating a “right to privacy” in the process. In 1972, the Eisenstadt v. Baird decision made contraception legal for unmarried people across the nation. The following year, Roe v. Wade removed all significant protection from unborn human babies, and abortion became a growth industry.

Human nature being what it is, sex outside marriage became commonplace. Now one out of four Americans has an incurable sexually transmitted disease. Single parent families have become our fastest growing poverty group.

According to Crisis Magazine (March 2001), in 1960, the breast cancer rate was one in 25 women; by 2001, it was one in eight. Divorce rates have crept up steadily, and the new trend seems to be not to bother with marriage at all. The traditional family with mom and dad and their own set of kids is now in the minority.

In 1992, the Supreme Court said in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that “… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices … in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.” And in order not to upset those people too much, the court refused to overturn Roe v. Wade. It is the height of hypocrisy to claim that contraception has alleviated the problem that it actually caused.

“That the standard birth control pill is an abortion method (a widely held, but scientifically unfounded, belief within the anti-abortion establishment.” Wrong again. The modern low-dose combination pill works in three ways to prevent the arrival of a baby: By inhibiting ovulation (temporary sterilization); by interfering with cervical mucous, preventing sperm from reaching an ovum (contraception); and by altering the lining of the womb so that it won’t accept the tiny developing human embryo (abortifacient). An abortifacient is something that causes an abortion.

The standard birth control pill does not stop ovulation more than 50 percent of the time. No one knows how often the third mechanism kicks in, but we know it does. Call it abortion roulette.

Now it is true that the medical community about three decades ago changed the definition of conception from “union of egg and sperm” to “implantation of blastocyst,” which occurs about a week after fertilization. But that did not stop the new living human being from growing and developing at a fantastic rate on his or her merry way down the fallopian tube to what was once the safest place in the world.

Jean Herman

Astoria