Catholics
of a certain age will recognize Foster Friess’s recent “aspirin solution”
comment as a joke from an earlier age.
In
case you hadn’t heard, Rick Santorum’s premier contributor, Foster Friess of
Jackson, joked last week that back in his day, aspirin was the perfect birth
control pill. Women were told (only half-jokingly): “Take an aspirin, and hold
it between your knees.”
LOL.
Although
we didn’t say LOL then. We said hardy-har-har, or something similar.
In
America’s pre-pill era, women, especially Catholic women, were screwed. They
were sexual beings who were told by the men in their lives – boyfriends,
husbands, priests, politicians – that birth control was not an option. It was
their womanly duty to have sex and their bear the consequences – children. It
was God’s will. Barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen was the reality of
this “every sperm is sacred” mentality.
The
guys were in charge.
That
changed with the advent of safe birth control. And the women moved out of the
kitchen and went to work and here we are today, debating this subject all over
again.
But
men, especially older white men, are being threatened as never before by smart
and successful women. Minorities, too -- we have a black president! Technology
and rapidly changing world events are scary. All hell is breaking loose! Women
back to kitchen!
I
grew up Catholic and am still, nominally, a Catholic. My coming-of-age was in
the sixties. My parents were devout Catholics and they practiced the rhythm
method.
LOL.
This
was the only birth control method available to church-going Catholics. Abstinence,
too – can’t forget that. Thus, most Catholic families engendered multiple
offspring. In the case of the Shay family, that was nine children (with two
miscarriages). My mother used to joke, “I was pregnant for 15 years.” That
would have been longer had she not had twins. In the end, she had a
hysterectomy and that was that. She died at the young age of 59, two years younger
than I am now. She lasted only 18 months after an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
My
parents urged their children to be careful and judicious when it came to sex.
My mother, a nurse, urged birth control upon her offspring. In the emergency
room, she regularly saw the depredations of unwanted pregnancy. She cast a jaundiced
eye on church fathers that urged sex-for-procreation-only and then turned their
backs on the results. On the other hand, she was mightily offended whenever people
would look down their noses at her brood. “Nine kids – heavens to Betsy!” It
usually wasn’t elitist secularists and liberals making these remarks. In the
South, it tended to be our Protestant brethren and sistren. They tended to have
smaller families, whether the result of birth control or abstinence or sheer
cussedness I cannot say. As I look back, I remember that we were a large family
even among my Catholic high school friends. Three kids tended to be the norm,
with a few in the five-seven range and some of us with whopping big numbers.
But we were rare.
What
kind of birth control did I practice in high school? Fear and guilt kept me
from toiling in the devil’s workshop. We joked about the rhythm method or the
aspirin-between-the-legs or chastity belts or whatever. Meanwhile, we only had
lust in our hearts. Nothing could be done for it. In our senior year, the blonde-haired,
blue-eyed head cheerleader got in trouble, courtesy of the football star. She
was sent away to live with her aunt in Ohio, and she missed graduation. The
football star did not. Both of these people were my friends. From what I hear,
both have had more than their share of life’s struggles. But their fate could
have easily been ours. Just say no! And that’s what I did until I was 21.
Catholics
of a certain age know the tragedies behind the church’s procreation policies.
There are tragedies repeated today, in a time when science has given us an
array of dependable birth control, a time in which college students can
purchase morning-after pills along with Twinkies in student union vending
machines. Birth control has given us all more freedom. Women, especially. And
they should have all possible means available to them.
What
has happened to my brothers and sisters? Surviving members (we lost a brother
in 2010) all seem to be leading useful and productive lives. Among the nine of
us, we have 19 children. My two kids have plenty of first cousins, although
they live far away in Florida. None of my siblings are devout Catholics,
although some go to church. When my brother Patrick Kevin Shay (my son’s godfather)
died in 2010, he had a secular ceremony in a park. I officiated. Good ol’
secular liberal me. There were remembrances and even a few prayers. We partied
later and remembered the dead. We even argued politics, which we consider a
contact sport.
Even
when I was a practicing adult Catholic, I paid no attention to the church’s
pronouncements of matters that were none of its business. The church cannot
tell me whom I can sleep with, appropriate procreation methods, which candidate
to vote for, what books to read, etc. Church fathers make it their business but
they are regularly ignored, if recent polls can be believed. It’s interesting
to note that most Catholics who have to live in the real world regularly ignore
those who don’t.
Mr.
Friess can joke about the aspirin solution all he wants. We know that it’s not
a joke to most women. Women who vote, women like my wife Chris of 30 years, do
not consider Foster Friess a comedian. They see him as a tired old man living
in an imagined golden age. That’s the way she sees Rick Santorum, too, and all
of his fellow travelers. They are throwbacks to another age. This is their last
hurrah and they are being as loud and as obnoxious as possible. It’s up to us
to ignore them, and then go to the ballot box to vote for people who believe in
a future filled with intelligence and empathy and choice.
