The Cost of Sexual Immorality

"We can find a good example of such further penalties [for violating the natural law] in the consequences of breaking the precept that confines sex to marriage. An immediate consequence of their violation is injury to the procreative good: one might get pregnant but have nobody to help raise the child. Another immediate consequences is injury to the unitive good: one misses the chance for that total self-giving which can develop only in a secure and exclusive relationship. And there are long-term consequences too, among them poverty, because single women must provide for their children by themselves; adolescent violence, because male children grow up without a father's influence; venereal disease, because formerly rare infections spread rapidly through sexual contact; child-abuse, because live-in boyfriends tend to resent their girlfriends' babies and girlfriends may resent babies that their boyfriends did not father; and abortion, because children are increasingly regarded as a burden rather than a joy. The longer people persist in violating the natural law, the heavier the penalties for violation. Provided they do not refuse the lesson, eventually even the dullest among us may put the clues together and solve the puzzle. Over the course of its history a culture may have to relearn the timeless truths many times over. It may of course refuse to learn them and be destroyed."

--J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know