In Humanae Vitae, the Pope predicted several negative consequences for individuals and society if contraception use were to become widespread: 1) men would lose respect for women and treat them as mere instruments to help them gain personal pleasure; 2) marital infidelity and promiscuity would become rampant because the disincentive of pregnancy would no longer deter people; 3) human beings would lose respect for the process of begetting new life and attempt to claim for ourselves the right to create it; and 4) coercive governments would force their citizens to contracept, thus violating their human rights and dignity.
I’ll leave to our readers to determine if the Pope’s words were prophetic. […]
There are other consequences to the Pill that not even Paul VI could foresee, however. No one knew back then that those little tablets of synthetic hormones are actually carcinogenic, increasing women’s risk of many cancers. Nor did anyone imagine that these hormones would be excreted in women’s urine and find their way into our environment. For years, a handful of brave scientists have sounded the alarm about the freakish mutations occurring in wildlife near streams and rivers fed by estrogen-rich wastewater.