I.          INTRODUCTION                                                                                        

On my father’s bookshelf there rests a worn and tattered 1967 Course Bulletin from his days at Florida State University.   The dusty pages are dulled and faded with time, and if one were to open the book one might happen upon a particular page, crinkled and torn, full of statistics and predictions projecting the population of the United States of America in the year 2000.

“Competent researchers have estimated that by the year 2000, we will be a nation of 331, 000,000 people with a labor force of 142,000,000.” ³

According to the United States Census Bureau, however, the population of the United States in the year 2000 was 281, 421,706.⁴  Were those who compiled the Florida State University syllabus completely void of understanding?  Were the methods they used to calculate the projected population of the United States grossly inaccurate? Or were they correct based upon the current and past data available to them? Perhaps, during the time directly after the legalization of birth control in 1965 ⁵ and the quickly-following legalization of abortion in 1973, ⁶ there was no reason to think that the projected growth of the United States population would decline so dramatically.  However, the population has indeed declined, and we are missing approximately 49,578,294 fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends as a result.

Currently, approximately nine in 10 women who are sexually active report using birth control on a consistent basis.⁷ These statistics are clear proof of the emphasis our society places on avoiding these “unwanted,” “unplanned” and “inconvenient” persons. 

The statistics on abortion only serve to confirm this fact.  Almost 1.6 million abortions are performed in the United States each year according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood.⁸ Approximately 44 percent of all American women will have an abortion at some point during their lifetime⁹ and less than 10 percent of these cases are rape, incest, or cases where the life of the mother was in danger.¹⁰ Thus, the majority of the other cases are “unplanned pregnancies.”¹¹

According to the Allen Guttmacher Institute, 50 percent of women who chose abortion said they did so because they did not want to be single parents or because they had problems in current relationships; 66 percent said they could not afford a child, and 75 percent said they chose abortion because the child would interfere with their lives.¹²

All of this information would easily lead any objective observer of our society to conclude that we consider children to be a burden and inconvenience. Nuisances to be avoided at all costs, even if we have to go through personal, physical and emotional pain (i.e., abortion) to avoid them.

While Psalm 127 declares that children are a blessing and “the fruit of the womb is [God’s] reward”¹³ to a married couple, much evidence seems to indicate that our society sees children as a curse. In fact, it appears as though we tend to operate in such a way as to make them a curse and a burden.  This is illustrated by the fact that almost every message the media sends us tells us to live for ourselves and make the “choices” in life that we believe will best serve us. In a PBS special last year, Popenoe and Whitehead said, “If you’re to analyze television, music, movies, and the rest, this is the most anti-marriage and, I might say, anti-child barrage of information that one could imagine. . . . It is all focused on freedom and autonomy and spending money and changing products, including personal relationships.”¹⁴

Indeed, as Danielle Crittenden points out in her book, What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us, those who are considered most successful in this society are more individualistic, “career-minded” and in search of personal advancement than they are family-minded. Says Crittenden, “The habit of viewing marriage as a raw deal for women is now so entrenched, even among women who don't call themselves feminists, that I've seen brides who otherwise appear completely happy apologize to their wedding guests for their surrender to convention, as if a part of them still feels there is something embarrassing and weak about an intelligent and ambitious woman consenting to marry.”¹⁵

In discussing how thoroughly the anti-marriage, anti-child mindset has permeated the minds of modern American women, Crittenden speaks of the time she has spent interviewing female college students and goes on to say that, “The students I interviewed had neither adopted nor rejected feminism. Rather, it had seeped into their minds like intravenous saline into the arm of an unconscious patient. They were feminists without knowing it.” Crittenden further points out that, based upon her observations, “Every young woman I interviewed put her job aspirations ahead of any hopes for marriage or children (even if she claimed to want those things eventually). Each one of them worried that too serious an attachment to a man or, worse, to children might compromise her sense of who she was.”¹⁶

In her book, The Way Home,¹⁷ Mary Pride says that, in addition to the influences of feminism as well as the media emphasis on the pleasures of single life and the inconvenience of children, our culture has been influenced to reject children through the perpetuation of certain fears. These fears include financial fears and the fear of “overpopulation.” While the overpopulation myth can be easily debunked¹⁸, Pride points out that there are also many misconceptions which lead potential parents to believe that they cannot afford children. “We are the richest people in history, says Pride, and yet we are the most fearful about the costs of childrearing. Perhaps it’s because we don’t realize how super-fatted our lifestyles are, and how little our children really need in order to grow up happy, healthy and godly.”  Pride then questions, “Does a boy really need a room of his own, summer camp, Montessori preschool, designer jeans, a ten-foot-high stack of records to play on his personal stereo, and all the other goodies the anointed now deem essential for everyone else’s children? In one word, no.”¹⁹  

While Christians may point to many influences in our culture which have led us to reject children and legalize abortion, Pride believes that the subtle and ironic truth is that the Christian Church itself is to blame. She holds that, while the majority of Christians tend to believe the answer to the problem of abortion should be greater political involvement or greater compassion toward unwed mothers, these are not the only answers. “The church’s sin which has caused us to become unsavory salt incapable of uplifting the society around us is selfishness, lack of love, refusing to consider children an unmitigated blessing. In a word, family planning.” ²⁰

Pride’s viewpoint is also expressed by other Christian authors. The writers of Patriarch Magazine, in an article entitled Being Fruitful: A Biblical View of Birth Control²¹, express their belief that birth control and abortion are inextricably intertwined and that the Church’s acceptance of the practices of birth control and an anti-child mentality have caused us to “lose our savor” as Christians.^{22, 23} “It is disturbing to realize, moreover, that the culture which created abortion on demand is the same one that is in love with birth control. In fact, abortion is actually just another form of birth control and arose out of the same mindset. Behind both practices is the attitude that children are an inconvenience and that adults have the right to choose when and if to have any.  Disturbing, too, is the realization that both birth control and abortion have exactly the same effect (though substantially different means), namely, the prevention of another human being. The one kills the product of conception, the other prevents conception; but both aim to prevent the birth of a person.” ²⁴

II.        A BRIEF LEGAL HISTORY OF THE RIGHT TO BIRTH CONTROL

The regulation of abortion and contraception by statute in America began in the nineteenth century.  Most notably, the United States passed the Comstock Law in 1873. Named for young Henry Comstock, who, at twenty-eight, headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and was a supporter of family values, the law made it a criminal offense to import, mail, or transport any article or medicine for the prevention of conception or for causing an abortion.²⁵

Although there was always an undercurrent of illegally-obtained contraceptives and abortions before and even after the passing of the regulations, the laws banning contraceptives cast a very negative light on contraceptive use and prevented contraceptive use in many cases.²⁶ The movement to overturn those laws and create a society where birth control and abortion were widely used and accepted was spearheaded in most part by a woman named Margaret Sanger.²⁷

Margaret Higgins Sanger was born on September 14^th, 1879 in Corning, New York to Michael and Ana Higgins. The Higgins Family was of an Irish-Catholic background, and Margaret was the sixth of eleven children.  Margaret’s father was a socialist and Agnostic who taught her to be a “free thinker.”²⁸

As Margaret grew older, she decided she wanted to escape the poverty-stricken and oppressive environment in which she had been raised. She married William Sanger, a wealthy architect, and lived the life of the highly-privileged. Margaret Sanger gave birth to three children, but she left them alone to be raised by nannies. She decided that she had no inclination for domestic duties whatsoever, and she began to attend the Communist, Socialist and Anarchist meetings in which her husband was involved.²⁹ 

The Socialist movement, with its fight for women’s suffrage, sexual liberation, feminism and birth control, enticed Margaret. She began to pour her energies into writing for various Socialist and Anarchist magazines and made the acquaintance of many friends who supported her in her views. Margaret eventually told her husband William that she had decided to turn from Christianity and would no longer hold the marriage bed as sacred. She decided that free adultery was normal and chastity was abnormal, and she began to travel the world speaking on what she called “the joys of the flesh.”³⁰

In approximately 1914, Ms. Sanger started her own newspaper called The Woman Rebel with the slogan “No Gods! No Masters!” In this newspaper, she wrote many articles denouncing marriage, called sexual purity “obscene prudery,” and said women should have the rights to be lazy, to be unmarried mothers, to enjoy “free love” and use contraception.³¹ It was in this newspaper that she also penned the statement that became the rallying cry for the pro-abortion movement: “A woman’s body belongs to herself alone.”³²

Two years later, in 1916, Margaret opened a birth control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. She was arrested very shortly thereafter by an undercover female officer and imprisoned for thirty days.  Undaunted, Margaret appealed her conviction. It was at this time that Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York State Court of Appeals, although upholding her conviction, ruled that licensed physicians had the right to supply birth control advice to married women for health reasons.³³

In 1921, Ms. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which eventually became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.³⁴ Part of Ms. Sanger’s plan in striving to make birth control widely available and acceptable was to obliterate certain races and “feeble-minded” people. The concepts advocated by Ms. Sanger still influence the philosophy of Planned Parenthood today. ³⁵

In 1965, Estelle Griswold, the director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and her medical director, Charles Lee Buxton, were arrested for giving information to married couples about contraceptive devices. Under Connecticut law it was a crime punishable by sixty days to one year in jail or a fifty-dollar fine to use “any drug… or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.” Griswold and Buxton were arrested as accessories to the crime, and each was fined one hundred dollars. ³⁶

The conviction was upheld by two appeals courts before reaching the United States Supreme Court. In giving the opinion of the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut,³⁷ Justice William Douglas ruled that the right of married couples to use birth control falls within a constitutionally-protected “zone of privacy.” ³⁸ Douglas’ majority opinion did not specify exactly how the Connecticut ban on contraceptives violated this “penumbra” or “zone” of privacy. However, a good portion of the rationale seemed to indicate Douglas was referring to the privacy implications of proof in prosecutions.³⁹

Developments since Griswold make it abundantly clear that the Griswold ruling opened the door for much more than the legalization of contraceptives for married couples.  Subsequent rulings, based upon the Griswold interpretation of the “zone of privacy,” have extended the right to unmarried persons and minors. Much of the expansion of the meaning of Griswold came in the 1972 decision of Eisenstadt v. Baird,⁴⁰ in which the Supreme Court invalidated a statute which permitted contraceptives to be distributed only by registered physicians and pharmacists to married persons. The Supreme Court, in Eisenstadt, held that preventing unmarried persons from access to contraceptives discriminated against the unmarried persons. Later Supreme Court decisions such as Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth⁴¹ in 1976 and Carey v. Population Services International⁴² in 1977 held that the states could not completely ban non-prescription sales of contraceptives to minors. The Justices believed that such a ban was in violation of the right to privacy, but they were split 4-3 as to the appropriate rationale.⁴³

Griswold and its progeny laid the foundation for the landmark case of Jane Roe v. Henry Wade, ⁴⁴ in which the 1973 Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy as construed in Griswold extended to protect a woman’s decision to abort her child. Prior to Roe v. Wade, each state had determined its own abortion laws. The laws of Colorado, Florida and New York had permitted abortion while thirty-three other states had permitted abortion only when necessary to save the life of the mother.⁴⁵  

Norma McCorvey, the “Roe” in Roe v. Wade, was twenty-five-years-old and unmarried in 1969 when she found that she was pregnant and wanted an abortion. McCorvey was a Texas citizen, and Texas law permitted abortion only in cases where it was necessary to save the life of the mother. McCorvey lacked the means to travel to a place where she could obtain an abortion, and although McCorvey could not obtain an abortion for herself, she decided she wanted to challenge the Texas law so that other women could obtain abortions. ⁴⁶

McCorvey’s original story was that she had been gang-raped as she walked home from work late one summer evening in 1969. However, approximately fifteen years after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, McCorvey admitted that she had not been raped after all, but had become pregnant in the more usual way.⁴⁷ Nevertheless, the process begun by the Roe decision had long been set in motion and would continue.

On the same day it announced its Roe v. Wade decision, the 1973 Supreme Court announced its decision in Doe v. Bolton.⁴⁸ In Doe, Sandra Cano, a mother of three who was seeking a divorce, discovered that she was pregnant and desired to obtain an abortion. However, she was unable to obtain an abortion because of the heavy abortion restrictions in the state of Georgia. It was in Doe that the Supreme Court struck down the Georgia abortion laws and removed virtually all barriers to abortion at any time during pregnancy.⁴⁹

A succession of decisions following Roe and Doe has emphasized that the Court construes abortion as very much the woman’s right. Neither the husband nor an unmarried would-be father, nor the parents of a pregnant minor may be required to consent or even be notified, and thus be put in position to prevent the pregnant female from exercising her right to abort.⁵⁰ With respect to minors, the Court limits the ability to obtain an abortion to “mature minors,” but does little to define a mature minor, leaving that to case-by-case evaluation.⁵¹

Although the Court gave states broader powers to impose restrictions on abortions and stated in the non-binding preamble that life “begins at conception” in the 1989 decision of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services,⁵² it stopped short of overruling Roe v. Wade. Currently, abortions may be performed for any reason prior to “viability” (about 24 weeks of pregnancy) and for any reason relating to the mother’s physical or psychological health thereafter. The term “health” has been defined very broadly by the Court to include any matter that might affect a woman’s “sense of well-being.” In effect, this allows abortion for any reason throughout pregnancy.⁵³

III.       SOCIOLOGICAL RAMIFICATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO BIRTH CONTROL: HOW FREELY-AVAILABLE BIRTH CONTROL HAS SHAPED OUR SOCIETY

Combining the rulings of Griswold and its progeny with the “Make love, Not war” philosophies of the 1960s Sexual Revolution, a “free sex” mentality has developed and permeated our culture over the last forty years. ⁵⁴ In fact, by age nineteen, 86% of unmarried males are having sexual intercourse along with 50% of unmarried females. ⁵⁵    

In legalizing birth control and extending the right to privacy to married couples’, single adults’, and even minors’ bedroom activity, some have said that the Supreme Court sent a tacit message that it expected and possibly even supported sex outside of marriage. ⁵⁶ Thus, it appears that knowing birth control is acceptable and freely-available only adds force to the impetus of social pressure and raging hormones which compel America’s singles and young people to become sexually involved. 

However, many believe that the rulings in Griswold and its progeny did more than merely give tacit approval to fornication. Bowers v. Hardwick ⁵⁷ notwithstanding, many constitutional scholars take the Court’s sexual freedom decisions to dictate logically the existence of a constitutional right to engage in sexual activities for purposes other than procreation.⁵⁸ Thus, a number of constitutional scholars have argued that the Supreme Court rulings openly granted Americans a Constitutional right to “free sex.”

Regardless of whether there actually is a Constitutional right to free sex, the impact of the legalization of birth control has resulted in a free-sex mentality which has thoroughly permeated our culture. These facts are evidenced by statistical data, which points out that 40 percent of ninth-graders, 48 percent of tenth-graders, 57 percent of eleventh-graders and 72 percent of twelfth-graders have had sexual intercourse. More than 43 percent of women ages fifteen to twenty-four who gave birth in the early 1990s were not married compared to only fourteen percent in the early 1960s. And out of the twenty-eight hundred teen girls who get pregnant every day, forty percent will have abortions. Furthermore, seventy-four percent of teens say they would live with someone before marriage or instead of getting married.⁵⁹

In an article entitled Sexual Abuse and Contraception, American Life League president Judie Brown discusses the effects that the contraceptive mentality has had on our culture.⁶⁰ Brown points out that when the sex act is separated from procreation, uncontrollable lust and a sex-obsessed culture are inevitable results. Brown believes the focus becomes constant pursuit of personal pleasure apart from responsibility. “The drives of lust,” says Brown, “which can never be satisfied, only lead to further and further perversions.” ⁶¹

Mary Pride, in her book The Way Home, ⁶² points out that the danger in contraceptive use is that it reduces women to mere objects of sexual pleasure in the eyes of men. When men cease to view women as potential mothers and bearers of life, sex becomes solely “recreational” and the drive begins to find “new kicks,” says Pride. ⁶³

Brown’s viewpoint agrees with that of Pride. “Until a universal, individual and social return to the conviction that sexual experiences must be exclusively heterosexual, married and procreative becomes the norm,” writes Brown, “we will not see sanity return to the lives of human beings created by God to love unselfishly, as opposed to lusting uncontrollably.” ⁶⁴

IV.       BIOETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF BIRTH CONTROL

In Luke Chapter 1, God sent the angel Gabriel to a virgin named Mary, who was espoused to Joseph, to tell her that she would miraculously conceive and give birth to the Lord Jesus Christ. At that time, the angel Gabriel also informed Mary of another God-ordained miracle that had recently taken place: Mary’s cousin, Elisabeth, who had been barren her entire life and had reached old age, had conceived John the Baptist and was in her sixth month of pregnancy.

Upon hearing this news, Mary told the angel Gabriel, “Be it unto me according to thy word,” ⁶⁵ and quickly went to visit her cousin Elisabeth. Both the King James Version and the Amplified Version of the Bible seem to indicate that Mary left immediately and wasted no time. ⁶⁶

Given these circumstances, it is very possible that the newly-conceived embryo in Mary, which usually takes a week or so to travel down the fallopian tube and become implanted in the uterine lining, ⁶⁷ had not even had time to become implanted when Mary reached Elisabeth’s house. And yet, as soon as Elisabeth and the pre-born John the Baptist heard Mary’s voice, Elisabeth became filled with the Holy Ghost and said, “And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  Furthermore, John the Baptist leaped in Elisabeth’s womb, paying homage to the incarnate Son of God.⁶⁸ Indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ was God incarnate from the very moment the embryo was formed in Mary; from the moment of conception. ⁶⁹

As can be clearly understood from the scriptures above, God recognizes all of us as the human beings He created us to be from the very moment of conception.  This truth is further illustrated by sections of scripture such as Psalm 139:13-16, where David declares that he is fearfully and wonderfully made. David specifically states in verse 16 that “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” Other scriptures such as Genesis 25:23, Jeremiah 1:4-5, Isaiah 49:1-2,5, Galatians 1:15, and Job 10:8-12 reveal that God is intimately involved in the lives of human beings from the time of conception, deals with human beings as creatures made in His Image and even determines His plans for them before they are born.

A baby is a living human being, genetically complete with forty-six chromosomes even from the moment of conception.⁷⁰ This truth is more widely-acknowledged than one might think. In fact, while many supporters of abortion have argued publicly that a fetus is “merely a blob of tissue” or a “product of conception,” now even ardent abortion activists are willing to admit that a pre-born child is a living human being.⁷¹ For them, the argument turns not on whether the child is a living human being but whether a “high enough” social reason exists to justify taking that life. ⁷²

In further acknowledgment of the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception, our justice system has even gone so far as to give legal rights to frozen pre-embryos. This was illustrated by a recent Louisiana law which governs what happens to the extra pre-embryos that are created and stored when an infertile couple obtains in vitro fertilization and later divorces. Louisiana considers a pre-embryo a juridical person with recognized and enforceable rights, including the right to sue and be sued. It is illegal to intentionally destroy a viable pre-embryo, for such destruction would be considered the equivalent to killing a human being.⁷³

Thus, many are acknowledging the fact that life begins at the moment of conception. However, while many Christians are very happy to learn of this, a shocking and devastating truth lies ironically hidden in the church. That is, many of the Christians who greatly rejoice to see these strides being made are unknowingly killing their own babies. Indeed, while most Christians do not hesitate to agree that a new child is created at the moment an embryo is formed, many are uninformed when it comes to understanding the effects the birth control they use may have on their own newly-formed child.

In their book entitled Open Embrace, ⁷⁴ Sam and Bethany Torode discuss the way The Pill, currently one of America’s most popular forms of birth control, affects the life of a pre-born child. The couple states that if you oppose abortion on the grounds that life begins at conception, then you must also oppose The Pill, which can prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg.⁷⁵ They go on to explain that The Pill comes in two basic types. One is a combination of estrogen and progestin, while the other, commonly known as the “mini-pill,” contains only progestin. Progestin has several effects, one of which is to thin the lining of the uterus (known as the endometrium). This makes the endometrium, which is designed to provide a nurturing environment for the implantation of a newly-fertilized egg, hostile to implantation. It is very difficult for a fertilized egg to survive in this situation, and many times the pre-embryo is flushed out of the uterus and aborted.  Thus, the mechanism of the mini-pill which causes the endometrium to become “hostile” is an abortifacient mechanism.

A Pill which combines estrogen and progestin thickens cervical mucus to impede sperm travel and aims to suppress ovulation, both of which are contraceptive actions. However, the estrogen/progestin Pill also thins the endometrium and, again, makes the uterus a hostile environment to a fertilized egg. Again, this is an abortifacient action. Because it is still very possible for a woman to ovulate while she is on the estrogen/progestin Pill, any fertilized egg has a very high chance of being denied implantation and aborted.⁷⁶

William F. Colliton, Jr., M.D., FACOG, is a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University Medical Center. Dr. Colliton, who was for several years convinced that labeling birth control pills as abortifacient was the work of “an extremist right wing medical conspiracy,” states that he became completely convinced of the error of his ways upon entering into a serious study of the matter.⁷⁷

Dr. Colliton is now firmly convinced that not only The Pill, but all hormonal forms of birth control, such as Depo-Provera and Norplant, are abortifacient in that they cause the endometrium to become a hostile environment to a fertilized egg. And he is not alone.⁷⁸

Because our culture places a great emphasis on birth control and considers those who have more than two or three children to be “irresponsible,” most Christian couples are conditioned to start their married lives on birth control. They are never exposed to material which might make them aware of the full effects that many forms of birth control may have and are never given the opportunity to consider that there may be a better way. Untold numbers of well-meaning Christian couples have spent their entire married lives on and off forms of birth control such as The Pill without any idea of what may have been happening to their very own precious children. While it is impossible to know how many babies have been denied implantation, as the Torodes say, even one would be too many.⁷⁹

V.        UNDERSTANDING GOD’S DESIGN FOR FERTILITY IN MARRIAGE

In Genesis 1:27-28, God created man in His own Image. Upon creating them male and female, he commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. God repeated this command in Genesis 9:7, where He told Noah, “And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.” Thus, scripture makes it obvious that fruitfulness is God’s intent for fertility in marriage.

While there are other purposes for the marriage bond, such as ministry or companionship, scripture is expressly clear on the point that fruitfulness is one of the main purposes for marriage and a purpose which God Himself holds very dear. Malachi 2:15 states that God makes a married couple one because He desires Godly offspring; God-fearing worshippers who will carry out His will on earth in obedience to His command to take dominion.⁸⁰ Psalm 127 declares that children are a heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is His reward, emphasizing that a couple with many children is considered to be greatly blessed by God. Psalm 128 states that a man who fears the Lord will be blessed with a wife who is like a “fruitful vine” by the sides of his house and children “like olive plants” around his table. Thus, Biblically speaking, children are not only the will of God for the marriage relationship, but also the blessing of God upon the marriage relationship.

In fact, God choosing to withhold the blessing of children was considered to be a serious deprivation to those in the Bible. Sometimes it was even an actual curse. Rachel was devastated when God closed her womb,⁸¹ and Jacob stated plainly that it was God who had withheld from Rachel the fruit of the womb.⁸² In I Samuel 1, Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, was afflicted to the point of weeping because she was barren. After she prayed asking the Lord for a son, God heard her prayer and she conceived Samuel.⁸³ There are countless other examples in scripture which demonstrate that the barren woman considered her condition to be highly undesirable and sought relief. ⁸⁴

It is therefore evident in scripture that not only are children God’s blessing, but also that when to grant and when to withhold the blessing of children is God’s prerogative. It is He who ultimately allows a child to be brought forth into the world and He who shuts the womb.⁸⁵ Furthermore, God declares that the children who are brought forth are His children.⁸⁶ In light of these truths, logic dictates that a couple’s decisions regarding birth control and attempts to take the conception and birth of children into their own hands are very serious matters indeed.

As the writers of Patriarch Magazine state in their article Being Fruitful: A Biblical View of Birth Control, “It is part of the arrogant presumption of our age that men and women believe they can control the process of conception and birth. Yet how many have we known who have become pregnant despite efforts to avoid it, or who have decided to have children only to find that they cannot conceive?”  They go on to state that children are not “trifles,” but they are eternal beings who have a purpose and significance in God’s hands that we cannot even imagine. “Who are we,” they say, “to presume that we know when a new human being should be born [or] when and if another should begin his eternal sojourn?” ⁸⁷

Dr. William F. Colliton, Jr., warns that “There is an unarguable logic connecting the contraceptive act and the abortive act.  They are both anti-life.  To fully articulate this proposition, the contraceptive action is anti-the-formation of a new life.  One does not pop a pill, slip on a condom, take a shot in the buttocks, etc. in preparation for a game of Chinese Checkers.  The only logical reason for these actions is to prevent the formation of a new life while positing voluntary coital acts.” ⁸⁸

Both Dr. Colliton and the writers of Patriarch seem to emphasize that, while sex is most certainly a gift from God for the pleasure and emotional bonding of the couple and not solely for the purpose of reproduction, the very God-created design of the male and female bodies demonstrates that God intends for pleasure and fruitfulness to be united in one act. Both would question those who assert that they have the right to separate the aims of pleasure and procreation that God has built into sexual intercourse. ⁸⁹ 

However, while it is clear that hormonal forms of birth control such as The Pill and Depo-Provera, and other forms such as the IUD (intrauterine device) which keeps the uterine lining in a constant state of irritation to avoid implantation of a fertilized egg, ⁹⁰ are abortifacient, many couples have questions as to whether other methods of birth control are “morally safe.” These methods would include the diaphragm, cervical cap, sponge, condom, spermicides and withdrawal. ⁹¹

Although the phrase “birth control” is not specifically found in scripture, there is at least one scriptural example where a man intentionally sought the pleasure of sex and deliberately separated sex from God’s procreative design. In Genesis 38:8-10, Onan was told to “raise up seed” to his deceased brother with his brother’s widow. However, every time Onan had sexual relations with his brother’s widow, he withdrew and spilled his semen onto the ground to avoid providing children for his brother’s household. This displeased God so greatly that God slew Onan.⁹²

As the writers of Patriarch say, while this might not be the undefeatable anti-birth control argument that many authors hold it out to be, it may well indicate God's hatred of such acts, and it is at least consistent with the rest of Scripture which offers absolutely nothing to encourage the practice of birth control. ⁹³

One practice which scripture clearly does allow, however, is that of periods of abstinence within marriage. In Leviticus 12:1-5, a woman and her husband are required to refrain from coming together for forty days in the event that a boy is born and eighty days after the birth of a girl. Also, in Leviticus 18:19, a woman is considered “unclean” during menstruation and sexual relations are prohibited during that time. In 1 Corinthians 7:5, couples are told not to defraud one another by abstaining from sexual relations lest they be tempted; however, if they do abstain, they are to do it with consent for a period of time that they might pray and fast.

Thus, abstinence within marriage is a practice that is accepted by scripture and sometimes even mandated. The question which arises, then, is whether a period of abstinence within marriage with the intent to avoid conception is an acceptable form of “birth control” or whether it could be used acceptably for child spacing.

A number of Christian authors have addressed this issue. Notably, Sam and Bethany Torode give a detailed discussion of their viewpoint in their book, Open Embrace. ⁹⁴ The Torodes practice what is called Natural Family Planning or NFP. Making a point of distinguishing that NFP is very different from the unreliable and outdated “Rhythm Method,” the Torodes say that NFP is a scientific, reliable and natural form of child spacing.

With NFP, couples can identify the days per cycle (generally three to seven) that a wife might become pregnant by monitoring up to three different fertility signs: her body’s cervical fluid, her oral temperature upon waking, and the position of her cervix. These signs are recorded daily and tracked on a chart. The couple then decides whether to engage in sexual relations during the fertile days or whether to abstain until they have passed. It is also important to note that couples who desire to become pregnant have successfully used this method in order to achieve pregnancy.⁹⁵

The Torodes state that many Protestants have never heard of NFP, or that they dismiss it because of its Catholic connotations. However, even non-Christians are beginning to appreciate the value of NFP for both for the purpose of avoiding and of achieving pregnancy.⁹⁶

 Elisabeth Elliot also advocates NFP and discussed it many times on her former radio program, Gateway to Joy. Elliot shares that she is aware of a twenty-four month study in which less than 1 percent of all the couples using NFP who were tested had an unplanned pregnancy over the two years of the study. According to standard statistical measures used in pregnancy calculations, this translates to an effectiveness rate of 99.2 percent - for a natural, not artificial, method of family planning.⁹⁷

Other Christian authors, such as Mary Pride, while not seeming to completely reject NFP, do not outwardly advocate it, either. Mary Pride points out that actively trying to avoid conception is, in a way, a form of rejecting children and perpetuating the anti-child mentality of our culture.⁹⁸

However, the writers of Patriarch seem to hold a view that falls somewhere between that of the Torodes and Mary Pride. They say that an attempt to pronounce practicing abstinence in an effort to avoid conception to be sin would appear to be a Pharisaic extreme. Yet, at the same time, they believe that it is important for a couple to examine their hearts, saying that regular abstinence on a long-term basis to avoid pregnancy would be wrongfully avoiding fruitfulness in their marriage. “They must be ready to accept a child as God's gift if he overrules their attempt at timing; they must acknowledge their limited perspective and willingly yield to whatever God does in their lives.”⁹⁹

VI.       CONCLUSION

While it is true that the large part of fighting and winning the battle over abortion rights has to do with fighting the most heinous and recently-granted abortion rights and working our way down to birth control, there are many ways in which the abortion battle needs to be fought at the birth control level. As can be seen in the medical effects of both birth control and abortion as well as in the chain of legal events which led to the legalization of abortion, there is an inextricable connection between abortion and birth control.

Christians have the God-given responsibility to be “salt and light.”¹⁰⁰ If we desire to see the end of the evil atrocity of abortion, we are going to have to reject the anti-child mindset of our lost and dying culture and pave the way by demonstrating that we love, value and want children. 

End Notes

1. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973).

2. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965).

3. Florida State University General Catalog, Issue 1967, at 200.