Hilgers, T. W. (2004). "Chapter 1: Disturbing Trends in the Health Care of Women, Children and Families". In The Medical and Surgical Practice of NaProTECHNOLOGY (pp. 47-64).
Hilgers TW. "Chapter 1: Disturbing Trends in the Health Care of Women, Children and Families". In: The Medical and Surgical Practice of NaProTECHNOLOGY. 2004. p. 47-64.
Hilgers, T. W. ""Chapter 1: Disturbing Trends in the Health Care of Women, Children and Families"." The Medical and Surgical Practice of NaProTECHNOLOGY, 2004, pp. 47-64.
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Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, Omaha, Nebraska.027jqx654
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RRM Academy Synopsis
NaProTECHNOLOGY chapter argues contraception is linked to divorce
The chapter argues contraceptive spread is linked, at least in part, to rising divorce. This 2004 textbook chapter reviews United States national trend charts from about 1960 to 2000. Topics include divorce, abortion, unmarried births, infections, and premature and multiple births. The chapter presents no original study.
Key Findings
The chapter cites a 1988 economic analysis of United States divorce that found contraceptive technologies the major variable, tabled at more than 50 percent. The table notes overlap among variables.
The number of unmarried women giving birth rose six- to sevenfold since the early 1960s. Pregnancy rates among teenagers aged 15 to 19 also rose.
Births before 37 weeks nearly doubled in the United States since 1967. Triplet and other high-order multiple births rose more than four-fold over about 20 years.
Infant mortality for triplets of all gestational ages was 10.9 times the rate for singleton live births, using 1995 to 1997 national data.
In a survey of 1537 students aged 15 to 17, sexual activity was 7.8 percent among those strongly agreeing sex is against their values, and 72.4 percent among those strongly disagreeing.
Interpretation
This textbook chapter lines up national health trend data next to the rise of contraception and argues the two moved together. The author reads the divorce, birth, and infection trends as signs that widespread contraceptive use reshaped family life and reproductive health over four decades. The findings support closer study of how these trends track each other over time.
RRM Context
The author names NaProTECHNOLOGY, which he calls a new women's health science, as his answer to the trends he lists. Restorative reproductive medicine holds to one idea here: care that works with the body's own reproductive function, evaluating and treating root causes instead of suppressing them. The chapter's social and ethical arguments beyond that idea are the author's own.
Our editorial summary of this paper, not the article's abstract.
Abstract
In this chapter, Hilgers presents United States data on what he describes as disturbing trends in the health care of women, children and families over the previous 40 or more years, including divorce, abortion, births to unmarried women, child abuse and neglect, teenage suicide, prematurity, multiple pregnancy, infertility and sexually transmitted diseases. Hilgers reports an analysis by Michael that identified the widespread introduction of contraceptive technologies, mostly the oral contraceptive and intrauterine device and then female and male sterilization, as the major variable in the increase in divorce, and he argues that a parallel rise in contraceptive use preceded the rise in induced abortion. The chapter relates the more than four-fold increase in triplet and other high-order multiple births to the number of artificial reproductive technology cycles started for the treatment of infertility. Hilgers concludes that these trends call for another response and introduces NaProTECHNOLOGY (Natural Procreative Technology) as the new women's health science that the textbook proposes.
The diagnostic and treatment philosophy behind RRM. How cause-based care differs from suppressive medicine, and what to expect from an RRM-trained clinician.
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