Culture of Contraception Wiping Out Tanzanian Village, Catholic Pro-life Advocate Bemoans

On her fact-finding mission, Ms. Maumba encountered Charles Udongo, a “young man who looked thin, worn out, and depressed,” seemingly suffering from the side effects of Norplant contraceptive.

According to Mr. Hagamu who doubles as HLI’s Regional Director of English-speaking Africa, women have been victims of Norplant’s side effects for decades, “but now they are pushing Norplant on men and boys too.”

Mr. Udongo’s predicament is not an isolated case, as Ms. Maumba says in the report entitled, “Reproductive Health Is Killing Iragua” and recalls hearing similar narratives from other residents of Irauga village.

The people of Irauga village are victims of “Coercive Population Control” whereby people are enticed into using artificial contraceptive methods without being told about their side effects, the HLI Tanzania Director says.

He continues, “Village clinics all over Tanzania have orders not to talk about the side-effects of contraceptives. Meanwhile, value-free sex-ed programs promote sexual ‘freedom’ while treating pregnancy like a disease.”

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“In some villages, contraception is mandatory for all residents,” Mr. Hagamu says in reference to Tanzania.

The HLI official who founded Journalists for Life Organization whose members promote pro-life agenda in the media houses explains that coercive contraception “is not about freedom or human rights” but rather its “designed to decrease the population of Tanzania as quickly as possible and at any cost.”

To protect residents of Irauga village and others elsewhere, Mr. Hagamu recommends natural family planning methods.

“Natural family planning teaches spouses the dignity of the conjugal act and its openness to life. They learn to respect its inseparable unitive and procreative meanings,” the HLI Tanzania Director who founded the Parliamentarians Pro-life Coalition, a group of 25 lawmakers committed to ensuring no anti-life laws are passed in the Tanzanian parliament, explains.

In the process of using natural family planning, he says, spouses “find out how contraception damages bodies, marriages, and souls.”

Added to HLI Tanzania a year and a half ago, the natural family planning program is “spreading like wildfire in Africa” with 18 trainers already educated in the country, Mr. Hagamu who has published six books and booklets on pro-life says in the February 17 report.

“They have taught natural family planning to thousands of spouses who then spread the word to their friends,” he says in reference to the 18 trainers and adds, “Countless people have rejected the contraceptive culture.”

Founded in 1981 by “the father of the international pro-life movement,” the late Fr. Paul Marx, an American member of the Order of St. Benedict (OSB), HLI envisions “a world where the incalculable value of every human life is respected, protected, loved, and served, and the family is ordered in accordance with God’s design.”

In its mission of defending life and family around the world, the US-based organization with presence in some 100 countries focuses on issues related to contraception, abortion, marriage, reproductive technologies, and euthanasia.

The 32-year-old organization is under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Unborn.

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