Fraudulent Fertilisation

Sighing, the girl answered:

“A schoolmate, father, a boy in my year who asked me over to his house to study one afternoon. Almost without realising, we found ourselves playing at boyfriend and girlfriend. It was the first time for me. I didn’t feel anything, just a bit of pain and quite ashamed. It didn’t last long, he hardly entered me; almost nothing I’d say. But as you can see, I got pregnant all the same. It might be hard to believe, Father, but I swear that’s how it happened!”

“And the boy, what does he say about all this?”

“He doesn’t know anything, Father, I can’t face telling him. He’d be terrified. Besides, after we did it, we both felt uncomfortable, we had a fight. I don’t want to see him again or confide in him.”

“How flippant, my child, how flippant!” the man of the cloth said angrily, “How could you behave so irresponsibly?”

She thought the priest was criticising her for not using contraceptives.

“I never imagined that I could get pregnant, Father,” she said, “I didn’t know what precautions to take; I’ve only recently found out about some of them. I knew a bit about condoms, but I thought it was the man’s business, it never crossed my mind that I could buy one. Besides, when I went to my friend’s house I didn’t even dream of having sex with him. Everything was unexpected, right now I don’t know how it came about... It was like a game. I enjoyed the caresses, Father, I lost my head, I didn’t realise. I didn’t think. It was new to me, I liked it, it made me feel so good... I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, I enjoyed being touched, I don’t know why no one told me what could happen!”

Sobs shook her, she couldn’t go on speaking. The priest stroked her head and said,

“Cry, my child, cry, tears purify the soul and God will forgive you. Don’t feel guilty about the destiny that the Creator has fixed for you. This life that is germinating today in your belly will be a cause for immense happiness tomorrow. Be thankful for feeling this pain, it will be a blessing for the future. Neither should you feel sorry about not having used anything to avoid getting pregnant. God prohibits them, the human being should not use anti-natural procedures to prevent life being generated. It’s necessary to avoid and fight against materialism. Man must understand that life should be communicated and propagated exclusively by means of the family, through the one indissoluble matrimony. You’ll have to start again, it essential that you channel your life by the side of a husband who loves you and will forgive your errors. Contraceptive methods are a plague, an epidemic. Instead of increasing the bread supply, they limit births. It’s absurd and against what God has stipulated. We have no right to alter the Creator’s Plan. We are not allowed to leave the gift of generating life to our arbitration. To allow man to freely regulate procreation means ignoring his weakness, promoting infidelity and moral degradation. Believe me, my girl, thanks to these evil practices, women are often treated as they were things, mere sex objects. Our organism has been magnificently equipped by God. We can’t alter its functions nor cease to respect its integrity.”

Mabel could not understand everything the priest was saying to her with such emphasis; her juvenile mind was not equipped to assimilate so many axioms at once. What little she understood was painful, because it meant a moral condemnation of her condition, her acts and aspirations. She couldn’t help acknowledging that the priest was right when he exalted the inhumanity and cruelty of abortions. She thought that was irrefutable, but she still felt the imperious need to get rid of her innocent burden. This was reality for her, no matter how abhorrent it was, even though it meant her complete degradation. Anything was preferable to giving birth to a child; the mere possibility made her feel sick. However, faced with so much energy from the priest, it became evident to her that contraceptives were prohibited by the Church, and that was something she couldn’t understand. Anxious to find some contradiction in the priest’s arguments, she asked:

“But, Father, I don’t understand, does this mean that I was condemned beforehand? That I had no chance of preventing what was going to happen to me?”

“Young lady, it’s not like that, your suggestion is very simplistic. The trouble is, you’re leaving aside the principles of Catholicism. You took a wrong turning, but you can still get back on the right track. Love can only be fully achieved in matrimony, only between spouses can a couple communicate sexually. Already this shows us the first big mistake on your part. You should have avoided extra-conjugal relations. I’m not saying you’re guilty, because it’s clear that Christ’s teachings haven’t been fully instilled in you. But now you must become aware and redeem yourself. Spouses can reach maximum intimacy and God blesses it. But they have no control over the power to give life which they were granted. Neither is it permitted, even within matrimony, to carry out voluntarily infertile copulations. This is dishonest, because it stands in the way of God’s Plan, you can’t do bad to avoid good. Young people like you, my child, need strength not to commit deviations. God obliges you to follow the straight and narrow. This also applies to governments. Who knows what would happen if a permissive authority authorised limitless contraception!”

Mabel wanted to find some basis for her self-justification; the dialectics of the priest seemed irrefutable, she felt more and more lost, more of a sinner. In spite of everything, the philosophy preached by Tomás seemed to be too strict to her.