Debate: Birth control promotes promiscuity. Agree or Disagree

Hiya!!

Pharmacy school's quite fun at the moment. I'm feeling so happy about the coming future. By God's grace everything will be good :)

Today we had a Clinical Pharmacy class on family planning, etc, today and the lecturer decided she wanted us to have a sort of debate in the class. So she threw the topic to the class;

Birth control promotes promiscuity. Agree or disagree.

For some reason I sharply identified with the 'Agree' side. The reason being that I have always been of the opinion that if birth control didn't exist people will be less likely to engage in premarital/extra-marital affairs.
But by the end of the class I left with a different opinion.

Okay lemme give you part of the gist.

Two people spoke on the 'Agree' side. The first person argued that birth control is and should be for the well-being of the family and to help in planning a family, and not for any use outside that. The second person complained that the media didn't help matters. That most advertisements on contraceptives made sex look good and hence promote promiscuity instead of focusing the message on 'Abstinence is best'

After they spoke I knew we 'Agree' people didn't have a strong argument because I was suddenly not convinced again.

Two people on the 'Disagree' side also spoke. The first person said birth control in fact helps us, that it does not promote promiscuity. He said the media is polluted, that there is nothing that is not sold with sex as the underlying message. He jokingly added that he doesn't see any reason why a normal advertisement for a car or something like that should make use of bikini models as props. Everyone laughed and nodded and I remembered my post. So, he argued that if this is what the media does to us, then please let's propagate the use of birth control since we know that a lot of people have sex (sometimes due to a lot of pressure from media, peers etc), and hence prevent unwanted births.

We were still laughing at the thought of selling stuff with sex when the lecturer cited an example of an almost naked girl being used to advertise petrol at a filling station. In her words, "there is nothing sexy about petrol, in fact petrol smells horrible and filling stations are not nice places to hang out, so I don't see why anyone would sell petrol using a half naked woman"

I could not hold my laughter

The second 'Disagree' person made sense. She said, "birth control or no birth control, people will still be promiscuous. In the olden days they didn't have birth control and they were still promiscuous"...lol

A third person supported their motion and made even more sense, warranting an applause from the class.

At the end of the debate I was on both sides

'Agree', because, I still feel in some measure birth control aids promiscuous behaviour in some people. 'Disagree', because, when used in the right setting, it is of value to a family looking to plan their lives and should not be blamed for people being promiscuous.

The only issue for me was the fact that our lecturer kept hammering on the fact that we as Pharmacists have a role to provide birth control information and service to the community. Someone mentioned, "what about our personal beliefs on the topic?" and the lecturer said, "beliefs or no beliefs it is your responsibility to provide the service".

Now that's a tricky one for me especially since I battled with this a lot during my student-work experience in a community pharmacy.
But, the lecturer made it clearer. She said she wasn't saying we shouldn't have our personal beliefs, but that as Pharmacists we shouldn't be judgmental or condemn people (mostly unmarried people) that ask for any sort of birth control, but we should provide birth control tools for people if we find ourselves in a community pharmacy setting, because the whole idea is to help reduce the population and reduce mortality rates due to inability of the healthcare system to cater for increasing population needs. She said it is only when you finally develop a relationship with the person and you guys have a good rapport that you can start trying to make the person see things from your own point of view/ preach, if contrary to their own.

For me it made sense and I was kinda relieved, because that's one issue that bugs me ehn.. Still bugs me.
Just too complicated

Anyways let me throw it to you too;

Birth control promotes promiscuity. Agree or disagree.

Thanks for stopping by :)