Birth control

"How a gentleman ... could make a practice, in the very moment of unutterable ecstasy, of withdrawing from the arena, is more than I can conceive."

"Do what you will, and give me delight, but on your life have a care to let no drop reach me."

"The two great sources of the opposition to Birth Control are found in the purely selfish motives of the religionist who wishes his people kept in ignorance of Birth Control and its methods so that they will beget children and yet more children for the glory of God and the Church, and the capitalistic exploiter of labor who is afraid of a diminution in the cheap labor supply."

"The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control."

"This New Machine as a sure Defence shall prove, And guard the Sex against the Harms of Love."

"I fucked her once, but I minded my pullbacks. I sware I did not get it."

"The command 'Be fruitful and multiply' was promulgated according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people."

"The difference between human beings and other species is that only human beings practise birth control."

"Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion."

"Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation."

"Yes, yes — I know, Doctor," said the patient with a trembling voice, "but," and she hesitated as if it took all of her courage to say it, "what can I do to prevent getting that way again?" "Oh, ho!" laughed the doctor good naturedly. "You want your cake while you eat it too, do you? Well, it can't be done... I'll tell you the only sure thing to do. Tell Jake to sleep on the roof!"

"There are three classes of people who have always been objectors to any form of birth control, and who have always opposed any measures which would enable parents to have children by choice rather than by chance. These are, first, the war leaders; second, the church leaders; and, third, the leaders in the commercial world who have wanted cheap labor."

"“Well, birth control’s easy. The first thing you have to know is that it doesn’t work.” “What?” “Not consistently. No matter how careful you are, every time you play hide-the-salami with the boys, you’re running the risk of ending up with a belly full of consequences.” “But—” “Contraceptive spells are never entirely reliable. That’s because their power comes from the Mother, and the Mother wants children. Each cantrip has its loophole, every fetish its flaw. Ultimately, contraception is just a way of luring you into playing her game.” “You mean that sooner or later it’s going to fail me?” “That’s not what I said. It works well enough for enough of us that the rest will take their chances. But the odds are never going to be as good as you’d like them to be. There are no guarantees.”"

"Some emergency care facilities, invoking religious objections, refuse to provide EC because it may interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg. Such objections cannot be allowed to stand against the urgent needs of a woman who has been raped. Emergency care facilities — whether religiously affiliated or not — are ethically and morally obligated to offer the best care possible to everyone who comes through their doors in need of care. EC is basic health care for women who have been raped."

"On the surface, Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists might seem unlikely bedfellows in opposing mandated coverage of contraceptives under Obamacare, but observers say it points to ongoing reconsideration of the morality of birth control among the Southern Baptist Convention’s leading thinkers. “Evangelical leaders are tripping over themselves in the rush to stand with Roman Catholic bishops against this perceived governmental overreach,” Jacob Lupfer, a doctoral candidate in political science at Georgetown University, said in a Religion News Service commentary in December. “At the same time, a growing number of white evangelical leaders are attempting to sow seeds of doubt about the morality of birth control itself.” Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., responded that on that point, Lupfer “understates his own case.” “A good many evangelicals hope to do far more than sow seeds of doubt about the morality of birth control,” Mohler replied. “Our concern is to raise an alarm about the entire edifice of modern sexual morality and to acknowledge that millions of evangelicals have unwittingly aided and abetted that moral revolution by an unreflective and unfaithful embrace of the contraceptive revolution.” In a 2012 column for the Christian Post, Mohler said most evangelical Protestants welcomed the development of artificial birth control as a medical advance just as they celebrated the discovery of penicillin. A shift occurred in the 1980s, with the rise of the Religious Right and opposition to abortion on demand."

"The commission on Research and Social Action has authorized official use of a statement which reads in part: “4. To enable them the more thankfully to receive God’s blessing and reward, a married couple may so plan and govern their sexual relations that any child born to their union will be desired both for itself and in relation to the time of its birth. “5. In God’s providence, and as a result of the power He gave men to subdue the earth and have dominion over it (Gen. 1:28), man has developed various means by which a married couple may control the number and the spacing of the births of their children. The means which the married pair uses to determine the number and the spacing of the births of their children are a matter for them to decide with their own consciences, on the basis of competent medical advice, and in a sense of accountability to God. “6. So long as it causes no harm to those involved, either immediately or over an extended period, none of the methods for controlling the number and spacing of the births of children has any special moral merit or demerit. It is the spirit in which the means is used, rather than whether it is ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’, which defines its ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’. ‘What ever you do, do all to the glory of God’ (1 Cor 10:31) is a principle pertinent to the use of the God-given reproductive power."

"We assure you that we remain close to you, above all in these recent days when you have taken the good step of publishing the encyclical Humanae Vitae. We are in total agreement with you, and wish you all God's help to continue your mission in the world."

"Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the off-spring is prevented. Onan, the son of Judah, did this and the Lord killed him for it."

"You [Manicheans] make your auditors adulterers of their wives when they take care lest the women with whom they copulate conceive. They take wives according to the laws of matrimony by tablets announcing that the marriage is contracted to procreate children; and then, fearing because of your [religious] law [against childbearing] . . . they copulate in a shameful union only to satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that you are not those prohibiting marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long ago [1 Tim. 4:1-4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps."

"For thus the eternal law, that is, the will of God creator of all creatures, taking counsel for the conservation of natural order, not to serve lust, but to see to the preservation of the race, permits the delight of mortal flesh to be released from the control of reason in copulation only to propagate progeny."

"For necessary sexual intercourse for begetting [children] is alone worthy of marriage. But that which goes beyond this necessity no longer follows reason but lust. And yet it pertains to the character of marriage . . . to yield it to the partner lest by fornication the other sin damnably [through adultery].... [T]hey [must] not turn away from them the mercy of God . . . by changing the natural use into that which is against nature, which is more damnable when it is done in the case of husband or wife. For, whereas that natural use, when it pass beyond the compact of marriage, that is, beyond the necessity of begetting [children], is pardonable in the case of a wife, damnable in the case of a harlot; that which is against nature is execrable when done in the case of a harlot, but more execrable in the case of a wife. Of so great power is the ordinance of the Creator, and the order of creation, that . . . when the man shall wish to use a body part of the wife not allowed for this purpose [orally or anally consummated sex], the wife is more shameful, if she suffer it to take place in her own case, than if in the case of another woman."

"This proves that you [Manicheans] approve of having a wife, not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification of passion. In marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children. Therefore, whoever makes the procreation of children a greater sin than copulation, forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife but a mistress, who for some gifts presented to her is joined to the man to gratify his passion."

"I am supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility [oral contraceptives] . . . Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning they come together not joined in matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer with his own wife."

"Moreover, he [Moses] has rightly detested the weasel [Lev. 11 :29]. For he means, 'Thou shalt not be like to those whom we hear of as committing wickedness with the mouth with the body through uncleanness [orally consummated sex]; nor shalt thou be joined to those impure women who commit iniquity with the mouth with the body through uncleanness"'"

"Adding to their passionate opposition to the rule that employees of religiously affiliated institutions must receive insurance coverage for birth control, Roman Catholic bishops and some evangelical groups have asserted that it also requires coverage of some forms of abortion. They contend that methods of contraception including morning-after pills and IUDs can be considered “abortifacients” because, these advocates say, they can act to prevent pregnancy after a man’s sperm has fertilized a woman’s egg. “We object to the use of drugs and procedures used to take the lives of unborn children,” the Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, said Thursday at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Their reasoning is that life begins the moment an egg is fertilized, and that if a contraceptive has the potential to prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, it is aborting a life. “They can and do prevent implantation or can cause ejection even after implantation,” said Richard Land, the head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, referring to morning-after pills and citing medical advisers to his group. “IUDs emphatically do allow conception and do not allow implantation,” he added. Several scientists and doctors said in interviews that this view did not reflect the way the birth control methods actually work. “There’s so much evidence for how these things work prior to fertilization,” said Diana L. Blithe, director of contraceptive development for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “And there’s no evidence that they work beyond fertilization.”"

"Christian ideas about contraception come from church teachings rather than scripture, as the Bible has little to say about the subject. As a result, their teachings on birth control are often based on different Christian interpretations of the meaning of marriage, sex and the family. Christian acceptance of contraception is relatively new; all churches disapproved of artificial contraception until the start of the 20th century. In modern times different Christian churches hold different views about the rightness and wrongness of using birth control."

"For most of the last 2000 years all Christian churches have been against artificial birth control. In the first centuries of Christianity, contraception (and abortion) were regarded as wrong because they were associated with paganism or with heretics such as the Gnostics, the Manichees and, in the middle ages, the Cathars. Protestant attitudes to birth control began to change in the 19th century as theologians became more willing to accept that morality should come from the conscience of each individual rather than from outside teachings."

"[A]s late as 1908 the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church stated that birth control "cannot be spoken of without repugnance," and denounced it as "demoralising to character and hostile to national welfare." But the Anglicans were the first church to issue a statement in favour of contraception, which they did at the Lambeth Conference in 1930 by a majority of 193 to 67. A group of American Protestants followed in 1931."

"Pope John Paul II has been fighting passionately against contraception and abortion since he was elected 25 years ago this week. A campaign to uphold an ideal of love, motherhood and the value of life, yet his opponents say these same teachings have cause distress and suffering. In countries where Catholic belief counts, the Vatican's teaching can still be a matter of life and death."

"The Church’s teaching on contraception can only be rightly understood in the context of its wider teaching on the nature and goods of marriage. But the norm itself against contraceptive acts, taught and defended since the early Church, binds universally — in the language of moral theology, ‘’semper et pro semper’’, without exception. It singles out a particular type of freely chosen behavior, namely, deliberate acts intended to render sexual intercourse infertile. Sexual intercourse, the tradition holds, is legitimate and good (and, for Christians, grace-imparting) when and only when it is marital. Marriage is a one-flesh communion of persons with two defining goods: the unity and perfection of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. Intercourse that is marital will always respect the full one-flesh significance of the marital relationship by retaining a unitive and procreative character."

"[W]henever a man or woman, married or unmarried, engaging in sexual intercourse, believe they will or might bring into existence a new human life, and consequently adopt any action — before, during, or after intercourse — specifically intended as an end or means to prevent procreation, they violate the procreative significance of sexual intercourse. They contracept. And contraceptive acts in Catholic tradition have always been judged to be intrinsically evil. (The method adopted to render sex sterile is incidental to the application of the norm.) If contraceptive acts were wrong for married persons, but legitimate for unmarried persons, they would not be wrong per se, would not be intrinsically evil, but circumstantially evil. Although some Catholics hold this, the view seems clearly to be inconsistent with both the Church’s theological and doctrinal traditions."

"[W]hen John Paul II teaches in Familiaris Consortio (FC) that the “language” of contraceptive acts between married persons objectively contradicts the language of marital self-giving, he intends to single out the objective harm that these acts do within marriage and to spouses. But since he taught later in Veritatis Splendor that contraceptive acts are intrinsically evil, semper et pro semper, we know he did not intend his teaching in FC to specifically settle the wider question of whether contraceptive acts are legitimate for non-married persons. If however doubt still lingers as to the scope of the authoritative Catholic teaching on contraception, an appeal to older formulations should dispel it. A penitential manual in the 10th century written by the Benedictine monk, Regino of Prüm, includes all persons, married and unmarried, within the scope of the negative norm: “If anyone (si aliquis) for the sake of satisfying sexual desire or in deliberate hatred does something to a man or to a woman so that no children may be born of him or her, or gives something to drink so that he cannot generate or she conceive, let it be held as homicide” [1]. This text was incorporated into canon law in the 13th century in the form of the decretal ‘’Si aliquis’’. The collection of moral norms in which this is found remained part of Western Catholic canon law up to the twentieth century (nearly 700 years!)."

"When Thomas Aquinas formulates his argument against contraceptive-type acts, he singles out every deliberate attempt to render a male ejaculatory act (“emission of semen”) incapable of generating. In fact, his discussion of contraceptive acts is in the context of a discussion of why intercourse be-tween non-married persons is wrong [2]. For Aquinas, this type of act is contra naturam (against nature). Aquinas’ contra naturam argument against contraceptive acts dominates Catholic theological literature on the question up until the middle of the 20th century. Since texts of canon law going back 700 years, papal encyclicals in the 20th century and the most influential theological arguments in Catholic history formulate the norm against contraceptive-type acts as universal, applied to every act by every person intended to render sexual acts sterile, the view that the Church’s condemnation only applies within marriage — and therefore does not apply to (i.e., the acts can be legitimate and even obligatory for) fornicators, adulterers and prostitutes — ought to be set aside as inconstant with Catholic traditional teaching."

"Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion [an oral contraceptive or an abortifacient] so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have con-ceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in hell. If a woman does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman."

"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted."

"To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature."

"[W]hen the area of public controversy widens and the problems raised become more acute because of new chemical and biological discoveries, it will be useful to outline the history of the Christian Churches’ teachings on contraception. For centuries the Christian doctrine regarding deliberate family limitation was clear-cut and unambiguous. The primary (some Fathers of the Church claimed the ‘’only’’) aim of sexual intercourse in marriage was the procreation of children. Secondary aims such as mutual help between husband and wife or the alleviation of concupiscence were much less important in the marriage relationship. Any artificial interference with the natural processes of coitus and conception was contrary to the laws of god, and must be condemned as gravely sinful. St. Augustine of Hippo wrote: “Sexual intercourse even with a lawful wife is unlawful and shameful, if the offspring of children is prevented. This is what Onan, the son of Juda, did, and on that account God put him to death”. For priests of laymen to query these eternal and immutable laws as laid down by St. Augustine in the fourth, and elaborated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, was not merely presumptuous but possibly heretical. Even the coming of the Reformation and all it represented in the way of challenge to the dogmas of the medieval Catholic Church had no apparent influence on Christian doctrine concerning birth control. Protestant divines were as much in agreement on this point as they were in disagreement about others."

"Of recent years many have entertained doubts about the validity of arguments proposed to forbid any positive intervention which would prevent the transmission of human life. As a result there have arisen opinions and practices contrary to traditional moral theology. Because of this many had been expecting official confirmation of their views. This helps to explain the negative reaction the encyclical received in many quarters. Many Catholics face a grave problem of conscience."

"Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil: Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality."

"Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law."

"POPE PAUL VI DECLARED THE USE OF MODERN CONTRACEPTIVE METHODS DOCTRINALLY IMPERMISSIBLE WITH THE 1968 ENCYCLICAL HUMANA EVITAE. HOWEVER, THE ISSUE IS FAR FROM RESOLVED—CHURCH OFFICIALS, NOTED THEOLOGIANS AND CATHOLIC LAY PEOPLE DISSENT FROM THE TEACHING IN WORD AND IN DEED.CATHOLICS USE CONTRACEPTION, CATHOLIC LEGISLATORS SUPPORT FAMILY PLANNING AND 72% OF CATHOLICS BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN BEA GOOD CATHOLIC WITHOUT OBEYING THE CHURCH HIERARCHY’S TEACHING ON BIRTH CONTROL (NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER POLL, 1999)."

"A murder before birth."

"[I]n truth, all men know that they who are under the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of their father's old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live sterilization""

"[T]he man who has mutilated sterilized himself, in fact, is subject even to a curse, as Paul says, 'I would that they who trouble you would cut the whole thing off' [Gal. 5 :12]. And very reasonably, for such a person is venturing on the deeds of murderers, and giving occasion to them that slander God's creation, and opens the mouths of the Manicheans, and is guilty of the same unlawful acts as they that mutilate themselves among the Greeks. For to cut off our members has been from the beginning a work of demonical agency, and satanic device, that they may bring up a bad report upon the works of God, that they may mar this living creature, that imputing all not to the choice, but to the nature of our members, the more part of them may sin in security as being irresponsible, and doubly harm this living creature, both by mutilating the members and be impeding the forwardness of the free choice in behalf of good deeds."

"Observe how bitterly he [Paul] speaks against their deceivers . . . 'I would that they which trouble you would cut the whole thing off' [Gal. 5:12] .... On this account he curses them, and his meaning is as follows: 'For them I have no concern, "A man that is heretical after the first and second admonition." If they will, let them not only be circumcised but mutilated' [Titus 3:10]. Where then are those who dare to mutilate sterilize themselves, seeing that they drawn down the apostolic curse, and accuse the workmanship of God, and take part with the Manichees?"

"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well.... Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws? . . . Yet such turpitude . . . the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks."

"Men who are avaricious and desirous to avoid children as a burden "mutilate nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live."

"The Church of England does not regard contraception as a sin or a contravention of God's purpose. It is interesting to see how the thinking of the Church on this subject developed through the 20th century. In 1908 the Bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting at the Lambeth Conference declared that:- 'the Conference records with alarm the growing practice of the artificial restriction of the family and earnestly calls upon all Christian people to discountenance the use of all artificial means of restriction as demoralising to character and hostile to national welfare.' Some of the Church oppo-sition at this time reflected a national concern about falling birth rates. By the 1920s, certain sections of the Church were beginning to develop a richer understanding of sexuality. Sexual love can be seen as good not just because it enabled the human race to reproduce itself. Sexual love was good in itself, and it provided an essential way for a husband and wife to express and strengthen their love for each other. In the Garden of Eden God had said, 'It is not good that the man (Adam) should be alone' (Genesis 2:18). It was also argued that people were limiting their families in order to give children a better chance of success. The debate makes fascinating reading and went on through the 1920s until the Lambeth Conference (meeting of all Bishops of the Anglican Communion - the Anglican Church worldwide - which takes place every ten years) of 1930. The 1930 resolution was greeted with mixed reactions and reads as follows: 'Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, complete abstinence is the primary and obvious method.' but if there was morally sound reasoning for avoiding abstinence 'the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of Christian principles.' By the 1958 Lambeth Conference, contraception was a way of life among most Anglicans, and a resolution was passed to the effect that the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children was laid by God upon the consciences of parents 'in such ways as are acceptable to husband and wife'. In 1968, the Lambeth Conference considered the Papal Encyclical Humanae Vitae and while recording their appreciation of the Pope's deep concern for the institution of marriage and family life, the Bishops disagreed with his idea that methods of contraception other than abstinence and the rhythm method are contrary to the will of God."

"The fact that man in his freedom stands above nature and is therefore at liberty to interpret sex in terms of personality and relation and to use it for personal and relational ends, leads to the conclusion that contraception is morally right in certain circumstances."

"I have always felt that it was only after the child was born and had life separate from its mother that it became an individual person."

"Ninety percent of [the theologians on the papal birth control commission] concluded that birth control was not intrinsically evil and that the teaching against contraception could be changed."

"The Hebrew Scriptures contain no law condemning contraception, but the emphasis on Israel as god’s people, the descendants of Arbaham and Sarah, emphasized the need for procreation and fertility. Thus Israel was generally negative toward contraception. Onan merited God’s punishment by spilling his seed and by failing to provide his brother’s widow with offspring (Gn 3810). Onan’s wrongdoing did not involve contraception as such but the refusal of family responsibilities, although some later Jewish writing used Onan’s punishment to vindicate the wrongness of coitus interruptus. The later Jewish authorities recognized some limit on procreation and in certain cases even approved a woman’s using root potions as a contraceptive. The Christian approach to contraception developed in this milieu and also in the context in which contraception was associated with prostitution and extramarital sexuality, which Christians strongly opposed. In addition, the potions used for contraception could not clearly be differentiated from [w:Abortifacient|[abortifacients]]. The Christian condemnation of contraception followed from its understanding of human sexuality. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215?) and following him the Christian tradition, adopted the Stoic rule that marriage and sexuality exist for the purpose of procreation-proposed as a middle position between the Gnostic right, opposing all use of sex in imitation of Jesus, and the Gnostic left, celebrating the freedom to use sexuality in any manner. The influential St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), in opposition to his earlier acceptance of Manicheanism that excluded procreation but accepted sexual intercourse and contraception, strongly asserted the procreative rule condemning contraception. Augustine’s negative view of sexuality (common to many in the early church and perhaps even stronger in others such as Jerome) strengthened his support of the Stoic procreative rule. According to Augustine, sexual intercourse transmits original sin since concupiscence as the disordered inclination to sexual pleasure always accompanies sexual relations. Medieval theologians (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) and their successors maintained that procreation did not constitute the exclusive lawful purpose for marital sexuality. The church, for example, accepted the marital sexuality of the sterile and those no longer able to procreate. The procreation of offspring also included the well-being and education of the children. However, the condemnation of contraception remained, with emphasis on its violation of the order of nature calling for the depositing of male seed in the vagina of the female. This rationale based on nature also served as the basis for the condemnation of sodomy, oral and anal intercourse, and masturbation. The split between Eastern and Western Christianity in the eleventh century and the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century did not change the universal Christian condemnation of contraception within marriage. This teaching continued well into the twentieth century."

"As a destroyer of life, Satan is definitely not into encouraging childbearing. Every child that is born has the potential to thwart his purposes by receiving God’s grace and becoming a subject of the kingdom of God. So anything that hinders or discourages women from fulfilling their God-given calling to be bearers and nurturers of life furthers Satan’s efforts."

"For some evangelicals, furthermore, birth control is synonymous not just with the sexual revolution but with feminism more generally. In 2001’s Lies Women Believe, a popular evangelical book by Christian radio host Nancy Leigh DeMoss, treats contraception as indicative of a much more insidious feminist mindset, coding it as a diabolical celebration of female selfishness that leads "to the legitimization and promotion of such practices as contraception, sterilization, and family planning. As a result, unwittingly, millions of Christian women and couples have helped further Satan’s attempts to limit human reproduction and thereby destroy life.”"

"Pope Benedict XVI has said that condom use can be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS, the Vatican’s first exception to a long-held policy banning contraceptives. The pope made the statement in interviews on a host of contentious issues with a German journalist, part of an unusual effort to address some of the harshest criticisms of his turbulent papacy. The pope’s statement on condoms was extremely lim-ited: he did not approve their use or suggest that the Roman Catholic Church was beginning to back away from its prohibition of birth control. In fact, the one example he cited as a possibly appropriate use was by male prostitutes. Still, the statement was something of a milestone for the church and a significant change for Benedict, who faced intense criticism last year when, en route to AIDS-plagued Africa, he said condom use did not help prevent the spread of AIDS, only abstinence and fidelity did."

"Contraception is not intrinsically evil."

"There is no mention of contraception in the Bible, Old Testament or New, nor did the term enter the vocabulary of Catholic moral theology until the second half of the twentieth century. Before then, the most relevant term used by theologians was onanisma, from the biblical story of Onan (Genesis 38:4–10), which was described as masturbation or sexual intercourse performed without the intention of reproduction. Sex was only for procreation, the Christian church declared, which made onanisma a sin. The human reproductive system was poorly understood even in the early years of the twentieth century. Many people thought women were merely the vessels, and that the man’s seed sprung on its own into a baby. That’s why spilling seed, or losing semen, whether in sex or masturbation, was labeled a sin. Still, the Catholic Church had no official position on birth control until 1930, when Pope Pius XI issued a papal encyclical called “Casti Connubii” (Latin for “Of Chaste Wedlock”). The pope acknowledged that birth control was widely used “even amongst the faithful,” although he wasn’t happy about it, and called this trend “a new and utterly perverse morality.” He added that it amounted to a “shameful and intrinsically vicious” attempt to get around the natural “power and purpose” of the conjugal act. The pope did, however, offer the faithful an important loophole: A married couple would not be sinning, he said, if the husband and wife knew that natural reasons prevented them from having children."

"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption."

"In fact, although the majority of oral contraception brands include inactive pills in their packages, there's no actual medical justification for this—gynecologists have deemed withdrawal bleeding medically unnecessary for years now. For many women on hormonal birth control, this raises a very valid question: Why the hell am I bleeding every three weeks if I don't have to be? The answer, weirdly, lies within the Catholic Church. The church views birth control as a sin, with one important exception: "A married couple would not be sinning… if the husband and wife knew that natural reasons prevented them from having children," according to Jonathan Eig, a journalist who has written an extensive history of the development of the pill. Under prevailing church dogma, the "rhythm method"—in which married couples track their ovulation cycle and engage in non-procreative sex during the "safe periods" where the woman isn't ovulating—is natural in this way. This byzantine and slightly confusing belief matters because one of the scientists who helped develop the birth control pill, John Rock, was a devout Catholic. He was convinced, however naively, that the church would accept the pill as a form of "natural" contraception if it were presented in the right light."

"In 1960, the pill was approved by the FDA; eight years later, the Pope publicly rejected Rock's argument, declaring all forms of "artificial" contraception to be against church doctrine. By that point, however, it didn't really matter what the church thought: The withdrawal period had already become an integral part of the birth control regimen. And to this day, the pill is fundamentally "a drug shaped by the dictates of the Catholic Church—by John Rock's desire to make this new method of birth control seem as natural as possible," as Gladwell puts it."

"The public has the right to expect guidance from the Church on the moral aspects of birth control. As to the necessity for some form of effective control of the size of the family and spacing of children, and consequently of control of conception, there can be no question. It is recognized by all churches and physicians. There is general agreement that sex union between husbands and wives as an expression of mutual affection without relation to procreation is right. This is recognized by the Scriptures, by all branches of the Christian Church, by social and medical science, and by the good sense and idealism of mankind."

"John Riddle has established his reputation as a leading expert on ancient Greek pharmacology. In an earlier study, “Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance’’, he argued that a much more reliable knowledge of oral contraceptives existed in the ancient and medieval worlds than had previously been thought. In this book, Riddle attempts a broader but partly overlapping study, a history of abortion and contraception in the Western tradition (Europe and the United States, with a glance at the Islamic World). More specifically, he challenges the common view that oral contraception was little practiced and largely ineffective until the 18th century…"

"“Be fruitful and multiply.” If sex were not enjoyable our species probably would not have fruitfully multiplied. Sex is a powerful drive, and for most of human history it was firmly linked to marriage and childbearing. Only relatively recently has the act of sex commonly been divorced from marriage and procreation. Modern contraceptive inventions have given many an exaggerated sense of safety and prompted more people than ever before to move sexual expression outside the marriage boundary. When adhered to strictly, marital fidelity has always protected individuals and society. This site is dedicated to calling society back to the sure and safe boundary of abstinence until and faithfulness within marriage."

"In the Roman Catholic Church, we don’t allow birth control, we don’t allow condoms, we don’t allow anything. It is impossible to [have] reproductive health if you don’t allow these means."

"Recently leaked Vatican papers suggest that Humanae Vitae had little to do with the morality of the pill itself, and everything to do with the Church’s own claims to authority. A clandestine report, drafted by two commission members and slipped to the Pope in the days after the commission closed, was based purely on the idea that the Church could not admit to having been wrong in the past: If the Church could err in such a way [change its teaching], the authority of the ordinary magisterium in moral matters would be thrown into question. The faithful could not put their trust in the magisterium’s presentation of moral teaching, especially in sexual matters."

"Humane Vitae came as a surprise to many Vatican observers. Though an encyclical issued in 1930 already prohibited birth control, a papal commission had been assembled to revisit that ban, and a majority of the commission members suggested that it be dropped. Moreover, a Vatican II document stipulated the right of man "to follow his conscience." Indeed, Catholics were already using contraception. The birth control pill had been legalized by a Supreme Court decision, and a 1965 survey of Catholic women found that more than half were using some forbidden contraceptive method. By 1973, that proportion had grown, with two of three [married]] Catholic women reported to be relying on birth control to avoid pregnancy. The Humanae Vitae encyclical apparently had had little effect."

"I think in the minds of a lot of Catholics, [the reaction was], 'We're not going to pay any attention to this,'" says Mark Massa, a Jesuit priest the dean of theology at Boston College. "[They thought,] 'the church doesn't know what it's talking about on bedroom issues.'" For Massa, author of ‘’The American Catholic Revolution: How the '60s Changed the Church Forever’’, the 1968 birth control encyclical had the effect of weakening church authority among the Catholic laity. "When people see what they regard as a bad law, it breeds contempt for good law," Massa says, "and I think that's exactly what happened with Humanae Vitae. People started to say, 'Well, maybe the church's position on a whole realm of other things was equally mistaken. What else did the church get wrong?'"

"[A]cceptance of the importance of children does not in itself necessitate a rejection of birth control, nor does it imply a total ban on the use of all forms. What it does demand is an openness on the part of married couples to the coming of children into their relationship."

"[T]his argument could be (and has been) used to reject human action in nearly every area of life. Death, for example, also belongs to the divine prerogative, and therefore by extension of this argument all attempts to heal sickness or forestall death would constitute meddling in matters which belong to God."

"The argument against the pill on the basis of interference with normal body functioning is not to be lightly discounted. Nevertheless, this assertion would by extension eliminate many procedures of medical science… procedures that seek to regulate or alter body functioning for medical reasons ought not be eliminated categorically."

"The Pope is not the Church...and American Catholics are not going to stop practicing birth control or having abortions. Increasingly, what he says does not affect the way Catholics live their lives."

"[Fr. Richard McCormick maintains that] there are many Jesuits who do not accept the thesis that every contraceptive act is morally wrong. I can vouch for the fact that very many bishops share the same conviction."

"I asked Kimberly what she had found out that was so interesting about contraception. She shared that before 1930 there had been a unified witness of all Christian churches: contraception was wrong in all circumstances."

"Kippley’s argument was that every covenant has an act whereby the cove-nant is enacted and renewed; and that the marital act is a covenant act. When the marriage covenant is renewed, God uses it to give new life. To renew the marital covenant and use birth control to destory the potential for new life is tantamount to receiving the Eucharist and spitting it on the ground. Kippley showed that the marital act demonstrates the powerful life-giving love of the covenant in a unique way. All the other covenants show God’s love and transmit God’s love, but it is only in the marital covenant that the love is so real and powerful that it communicates life."

"It is the privilege of married couples who are able to bear children to provide mortal bodies for the spirit children of God, whom they are then responsible to nurture and rear. The decision as to how many children to have and when to have them is extremely intimate and private and should be left between the couple and the Lord. Church members should not judge one another in this matter. Married couples should also understand that sexual relations within marriage are divinely approved not only for the purpose of procreation, but also as a way of expressing love and strengthening emotional and spiritual bonds between husband and wife."

"In the period before 1950, two continuing concerns among Orthodox writers were abortion and conception control. The latter issue was raised and promoted by Serapheim Papakostas in Greece. In 1933 he published a book on the subject, in which he used theological, philosophical, medical, and demographic arguments to condemn all forms of birth control. Papakostas subsequently authored the text of an Encyclical by the Holy Synod of Greece on the topic, issued in 1937, which condemned birth control practices. It was supported in subsequent works by Meletios Galanopoulos and Gabriel Dionysiatou in the mid-1950s. Almost four decades were to pass before Papakostas' book was to be seriously challenged in Orthodox circles."

"One very interesting finding is that the attitudes of Catholics are generally very similar to those of all adults and, on some issues, very unlike the official position of the Pope and the Church. For example, overwhelming majorities of Catholics favor contraception (90%), condom use to prevent HIV and STD infections (93%), the funding of international birth control programs (66%), embryonic stem cell research (70%) and the withdrawal of life support for those in a vegetative state (68%). A majority (56%) also supports abortion rights. On the other hand, born-again Christians, adults who think of themselves as "very religious" and Evangelicals are much less supportive of all of these programs and policies, with Evangelicals being the least likely to support them. For example, only 28 percent of Evangelicals support abortion rights (compared to 63% of all adults) and only 38 percent of Evangelicals support embryonic stem cell research (compared to 70% of all adults)."

"In Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, John M. Riddle showed, through extraordinary scholarly sleuthing, that women from ancient Egyptian times to the fifteenth century had relied on an extensive pharmacopoeia of herbal abortifacients and contracep-tives to regulate fertility. In Eve’s Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times? Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed “secret knowledge” to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception. Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as “witchcraft” in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by “Eve’s herbs” has been practiced by Western women since ancient times."

"So, do the majority of Catholic women follow the teachings of Humanae Vitae on contraceptive use? Available data show they do not. Their choice to disregard this teaching started well before the letter was released. Among American Catholic women, for example, as of 1955, 30 percent used artificial contraception. Ten years later, that number had reached 51 percent, all before the ban was reiterated in 1968. By 1970 the number of Catholic women in the U.S. using birth control hit 68 percent, and today there is almost no difference between the birth control practices of Catholics and non-Catholics in the United States. Globally, as of 2015, there is little difference between Catholic and non-Catholic regions. For example, the percentage of contraceptive use in heavily Catholic Latin America and the Caribbean was 72.7 percent, – a 36.9 percent increase since 1970 – compared to 74.8 percent in North America."

"If there are any [evangelical] moral objections to subsidizing contraception, they're generally not based on the notion that birth control ... is evil, but rather on the more ideological question of what the government should or should not be paying for. Is birth control a legitimate form of health care, and is it the role of government to pay for it? ... Here is where evangelicals who do not have a problem with contraception are now broadly sympathetic with Roman Catholics who oppose it. ... We don't want to see anyone being forced by the government to compromise their religious views, even when we disagree with their religious views."

"Much has been said ... about birth control. I like to think of the positive side of the equation, of the meaning and sanctity of life, of the purpose of this estate in our eternal journey, of the need for the experiences of mortal life under the great plan of God our Father, of the joy that is to be found only where there are children in the home, of the blessings that come of good posterity. When I think of these values and see them taught and observed, then I am willing to leave the question of numbers to the man and the woman and the Lord."

"Christian women with male concubines, on account of their prominent ancestry and great property, the so-called faithful want no children from slaves or lowborn commoners, they use drugs of sterility [oral contraceptives] or bind themselves tightly in order to expel a fetus which has already been engendered [abortion]."

""But I wonder why he [the heretic Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?"

"You may see a number of women who are widows before they are wives. Others, indeed, will drink sterility [oral contraceptives] and murder a man not yet born, [and some commit abortion]."

"In 2006, the Pontifical Council for the Health Care Pastoral, led by Cardinal Javier Lozano Bar-ragán, was asked by Benedict to report on the use of condoms as a way of combating HIV. "The pope is saying that if you can prevent disease, the use of condoms could be permissible," said John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. "But this has been in the mix for a while," he argued. "I think Benedict has been thinking this way since 2006, which is why he asked for the commission to look into it. "The problem was not Benedict, it was others in the Vatican who argued that if you said using condoms was OK in certain situations, it would send out the message that they were approved. This was a PR problem.""

"Sodomy is also contraception, a notion based on texts like Gen. 1:28 and Gen. 38:6-10. The whole rabbinical commentary tradition certainly did. See Jeremy Cohen, "Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text" (1989). In any event, they are all forms of contraception, which is defined as the "use of any means of preventing sexual intercourse from resulting in conception."--The Oxford Companion to Law, ed. D.M. Walker (1980), s.v. "Contraception.""

"There are canons and penitentials in the West that condemn contraception, beginning with St. Martin of Braga's Chapters from the Synods of the Eastern Fathers, 77 (A.D. 572). Masturbation in the sense of solitary sin, self-abuse, was generally not be considered contraceptive. Masturbation in the sense of coitus interruptus undoubtedly is contraceptive, and was so considered. And indeed, e.g., the Penitential of St. Hubert (c. A.D. 850) prescribes exactly the same penance (10 years of fasting) for intentional homicide, contraception by potion, and coitus interruptus!!!"

"[Some] complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . or God did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from relations with his wife."

"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ['generating'] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring."

"[T]he Conference records with alarm the growing practice of the artificial restriction of the family and earnestly calls upon all Christian people to discountenance the use of all artificial means of restriction as demoralizing to character and hostile to national welfare."

"The Conference, while declining to lay down rules which will meet the needs of every abnormal case, regards with grave concern the spread in modern society of theories and practices hostile to the family. We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grace dangers-physical, moral and religious- thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. In opposition to the teaching which, under the name of science and religion encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists, namely the continuance of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control."

"[T]he Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of Christian principles."

"The Conference believes that the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children has been laid by God upon the consciences of parents everywhere: that this plan-ning, in such ways as are mutually acceptable to husband and wife in Christian conscience is a right and important factor in Christian family life and should be the result of positive choice before God. Such responsible parenthood, built on obedience to all the duties of marriage, requires a wise stewardship of the resources and abilities of the family as well as a thoughtful consideration of the varying population needs and problems of society and the claims of future generations."

"To suggest that birth control is evil or perverse because it undermines God's sovereignty is to underestimate God's sovereignty and reject our responsibility to serve him wisely."

"Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men – especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point – have needed of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of an anticonceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of the selfish enjoyment, and longer as his respected and beloved companion. Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who would blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy. Consequently, if the mission of generating life is not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of men, one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man’s domination over his own body and its functions; limits which no man, whether a private individual or one invested with authority, may licitly surpass. And such limits cannot be determined otherwise than the respect due to the integrity of human organism and functions, according to the principles recalled earlier, and also according to the correct understanding of the “principle of totality” illustrated by our predecessor Pope Pius XII."

"Because only the birth of a child justified sexual intercourse between husband and wife, any attempt to prevent conception was regarded as evil. From the medieval Slavic perspective, contraception, abortion, and infanticide were similar offenses; provisions against birth control did not always distinguish among them. All three represented the same thing: an attempt to forestall the introduction into the world of a new soul. For that reason, all three offenses were sometimes called dusegube, literally, 'the destruction of a soul.'"

"Conservative Protestants have adopted Catholic positions on other sex-related issues. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until evangelical elites began pushing back against birth control. If they think they can convince the rank and file, they should take a good, hard look at the Catholic hierarchy’s absolute failure on that score."

"Lutheran Church in America Adopted by its Second Biennial Convention in 1964 as part of its statement on marriage and family: “1. Marriage is that order of relation given by God in love which binds one man and one woman in a lifelong union of the most initiate fellowship of body and life. This one-flesh relation, when properly based on fidelity and love, serves as a witness to God’s grace and leads husband and wife into service one of the other. In their marriage, husband and wife are responsible to God for keeping their vows and must depend upon his love and mercy to fulfill them. “2. God has established the sexual relation for the purpose of bringing husband and wife into full unity so that they may enrich and be a blessing to each other. Such oneness, depending upon lifelong fidelity between the marriage partners and loving service one of the other, is the essential characteristic of marriage. Marriage should be consummated in love with the intention of maintaining a permanent and responsible relation. Continence outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage are binging on all. “3. Procreation is a gift inherent in the sex relation. In children the one flesh idea finds embodiment. Children bring great joy to marriage and reveal how God permits men to share in his continuing creation. Married couples should seek to fulfill their responsibilities in marriage by conceiving and nurturing their children in the light of Christian faith. 4. Husband and wife are called to exercise the power of procreation responsibly before God. This implies planning their parenthood in accordance with their ability to provide for their children and carefully nurture them in fullness of Christian faith and life. The health and welfare of the mother-wife should be a major concern in such decisions. Irresponsible conception of children up to the limit of biological capacity and selfish limitation of the number of children are equally detrimental. Choice as to means of conception control should be made upon professional medical advice.”"

"The LCMS does not have an official position on "voluntary contraception" or voluntary childlessness. However, in its 1981 report on Human Sexuality: A Theological Perspective (which has been "commended to the Synod for study and guidance"--1983 Res. 3-15), the Synod's Commission on Theology and Church Relations makes the following statement: In view of the Biblical command and the blessing to "be fruitful and multiply," it is to be expected that marriage will not ordinarily be voluntarily childless. But, in the absence of Scriptural prohibition, there need be no objection to contraception within a marital union which is, as a whole, fruitful. Moreover, once we grant the appropriateness of contraception, we will also recognize that sterilization may under some circumstances be an acceptable form of contraception. Because of its relatively permanent nature, sterilization is perhaps less desirable than less-far reaching forms of contraception. However, there should be no moral objection to it, especially for couples who already have children and who now seek to devote themselves to the rearing of those children, for those who have been advised by a physician that the birth of another child would be hazardous to the health of the mother, or for those who for reasons of age, physical disability, or illness are not able to care for additional children. Indeed, there may be special circumstances which would persuade a Christian husband and wife that it would be more responsible and helpful to all concerned, under God, not to have children. Whatever the particular circumstances, Christians dare not take lightly decisions in this area of their life together. They should examine their motives thoroughly and honestly and take care lest their decisions be informed by a desire merely to satisfy selfish interests. With respect to voluntary childlessness in general, we should say that while there may be special reasons which would persuade a Christian husband and wife to limit the size of their family, they should remember at all times how easy it is for them simply to permit their union to turn inward and refuse to take up the task of sharing in God's creative activity. Certainly Christians will not give as a reason for childlessness the sorry state of the world and the fear of bringing a child into such a world. We are not to forget the natural promise embedded in the fruitfulness of marriage. To bear and rear children can be done, finally, as an act of faith and hope in God who has promised to supply us with all that we "need to support this body and life.""

"The methods of conception control are not governed by moral law. The advice of a medical doctor is helpful in reaching decisions. The ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ of preventing conception depends on decisions made as Christians acting in response to God’s new life in Christ. Parents are responsible to plan their vocation of marriage and parenthood. As intelligent human beings, they will want to acquaint themselves with the best information available. The parish pastor is a helpful counselor to searching couples. In prayerful response to God who has reclaimed us as His own by the Spirit through the work of Christ Jesus, responsible decisions can be made. “This is God’s plan for parenthood. When the selfish desire of man dominates, God’s plan can be denied. Knowledge of conception control is abused and becomes sinful when employed for promiscuous relationships outside marriage. Conception control may also be misused within marriage, for selfish reason or to avoid the responsibilities of parenthood. But the possibilities of miscue do not make conception control itself improper."

"Benedict XVI made his first comments as pope regarding condom use at a June 2005 papal audience. His listeners included bishops from South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Lesotho. After reviewing the importance of catechesis and recruiting African men to the priesthood, the pope turned his attention to AIDS: “It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking, and a contraception mentality.” He emphasized that contraception leads to a “breakdown in sexual morality.” In the speech, the pope made a diagnosis: condoms increase sexual immorality, and sexual immorality increases the spread of AIDS."

"If men did not stray, if women had rights, if AIDS did not kill, perhaps the church’s strict ban on condom use would be morally defensible. But none of these conditions applies in Africa to-day. As a consequence, the cost of the church’s inflexibility may mean not only untold human suffering, but the loss of millions of innocent lives."

"[[w:Contraceptive|[C]ontraceptive]] intercourse is, in short, an instrumentalist or pragmatic devaluing of the great human good of fertility and of openness to the goodness of human life in its transmission. It is thus an anti-life sort of act, one incompatible with a love for all that is good and with a love for human life itself."

"[I]t is contrary to the teachings of the Church artificially to curtail or prevent the [birth]] of children. We believe that those who practice birth control will reap disappointment by and by."

"The prevention of pregnancy when feasible by birth control with pre-fertilization methods is acceptable."

"Though opposition to contraception is now widely thought to be a “Catholic thing,” the great Reformers rejected it as strongly as any modern Catholic. For earlier Christians, children were such a great gift from God and sterility such a curse that the evil of willed sterility was self-evident. As Martin Luther wrote in his Lectures on Genesis, in Genesis “fertility was regarded as an extraordinary blessing and a special gift of God,” but we do not regard this so highly today."

"It is clear that there is a major rethinking going on among Evangelicals on this issue, especially among young people. There is a real push back against the contraceptive culture now."

"Although every organized patriarchal religion works overtime to contribute its own brand of misogyny to the myth of woman-hate, woman-fear, and woman-evil, the Roman Catholic Church also carries the immense power of very directly affecting women's lives everywhere by its stand against birth control and abortion, and by its use of skillful and wealthy lobbies to prevent legislative change. It is an obscenity -- an all-male hierarchy, celibate or not, that presumes to rule on the lives and bodies of millions of women."

"The prohibition of birth control assumes that the sexual function in human life must be limited to its function in nature, that of procreation. But it is the very character of human life that all animal functions are touched by freedom and released into more complex relationships. This freedom is the basis of both creativity and sin."

"[I]f anyone in sound health has castrated sterilized himself, it behooves that such a one, if enrolled among the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who willfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found worthy, such men this canon admits to the clergy."

"The world is stricken with reform madness. To the reformers of our time nothing is so sacred that it must not be tampered with. Institutions that have grown old with the world and are of divine origin must needs submit to the activity of the “reformer”; nor can God expect anything else: where He Himself has been “reformed” out of existence. His institutions can hardly expect to be spared. One of the reformers of today makes the following statement: “It now seems to many people that the time has come to take childbirth out of the realm of chance, that the birth of human beings is too important to be left to irresponsible nature.” How wide-spread the reform movement referred to have become may be understood when the reformers assert: “Today men of high standing scientists of international reputation, physicians, [[psychologists]], political economists, sociologists, and literati advocate birth control as a counter-move against poverty and disease.” Every Christian will readily perceive that this “reform” is a curse to the individual and the state. Dwelling on this point, a Roman Catholic writer says: “Duty and conscientiousness are to throw their mantle of protection over practices that tamper with the very fountains of life and defy the will of the Creator to the destruction of individual, family, and State as exemplified in the fall of pagan Rome.” Church people are, however, not the only ones who are becoming alarmed at the activity of those reformers. The subject was discussed before a gathering of club-women at Chicago recently, and, addressing the club, Mr. Leonora ZZ. Meder said the following: Birth control is making us a retrogressive people returning to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.” “Birth control is immoral, degrading, and stupid. It is a perversion of a natural faculty: it logically and inevitably leads to deliberate childless marriages; it does not attain its purpose of human welfare, and leads to luxurious vice, compared to which the suffering involved in rearing children is a blessing, indeed. “It is better to improve the economic conditions of the poor than to attempt to remedy matters by decreasing the numbers. “Statistics compiled in Chicago show that in almost every case where divorces were sought the applicants were either childless or had only one child. “Theodore Roosevelt complied these facts, showing that fertility and genius are compatible: Horace Walpole, one of nineteen children; Benjamin Franklin, one of seventeen; Peter the Great, one of fourteen; Napoleon Bonaparte, one of thirteen; Walter Scott, one of twelve; Cooper, one of twelve; Tennyson, one of twelve; Washington, one of ten; Webster, one of ten; Cleveland, one of nine; Dickens, one of eight; Longfellow, one of eight; Milton and Emmerson, one of six. “Genius is rarely found where there is one child. You have only to visit the asylums at Elgin, Kankakee, and Dunning to see the appalling ruins of mind and body brought on by the heinous practice of birth control. Eighty-five percent, of the women in Chicago hospitals are ill as a direct or indirect result of the same practice."

"The voluntary control of birth in marriage is only permissible, according to the essence of a spiritual life, when the birth of a child will bring danger and hardship. Those who are living the spiritual life will come to the decision not to bear children only with sorrow, and will do so before God, with prayers for guidance and mercy. It will not be a decision taken lightly or for self-indulgent reasons. According to the common teaching in the Orthodox Church, when such a decision is taken before God, the means of its implementation are arbitrary. There are, in the Orthodox opinion, no means of controlling birth in marriage which are better or more acceptable than others. All means are equally sad and distressing for those who truly love. For the Christian marriage is the one that abounds with as many new children as possible."

"Pope Francis, in a recent interview, pointed out that Pope w:Paul VI, in a difficult situation in Africa, “permitted nuns to use contraceptives in cases of rape. ”This use of contraceptives by a group of nuns occurred during an exceptional wartime situation in the Belgian Congo. Although no document has ever been found in the Vatican indicating that permission was actually given by the Pope, these women were given the Pill by their physicians because they appeared to be in imminent danger of sexual assault during the uprisings of 1960."

"[[w:Contraception|[C]ontraception]] deliberately deprives the conjugal act of its openness to procreation and in this way brings about a voluntary dissociation of the ends of marriage."

"With regard to intrinsically evil acts, and in reference to contraceptive practices whereby the conjugal act is intentionally rendered infertile, Pope Paul VI teaches: "Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (cf. Rom 3:8) — in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general"."

"The Church's teaching about "responsible parenthood" is based on this essential anthropological and ethical foundation. Unfortunately, Catholic thought is often misunderstoo’ on this point, as if the Church supported an ideology of fertility at all costs, urging married couples to procreate indiscriminately and without thought for the future. But one need only study the pronouncements of the magisterium to know that this is not so. Truly, in begetting life the spouses fulfills one of the highest dimensions of their calling: they are God's co-workers."

"Ever more clearly there emerges the strict connection which, at the level of mentality, exists between the practice of contraception and that of abortion. This is demonstrated in an alarming way also by the development of chemical preparations, intrauterine devices and injections which, distributed with the same ease as contraceptives, in reality act as abortifacients in the initial stages of development of the new human being""

"…[F]rom the moral point of view contraception and abortion are specifically different evils the former Paul contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violated the divine commandment ‘You shall not kill.’"

"The work of educating in the service of life involves the training of married couples in responsible procreation. In its true meaning, responsible procreation requires couples to be obedient to the Lord's call and to act as faithful interpreters of his plan. This happens when the family is generously open to new lives, and when couples maintain an attitude of openness and service to life, even if, for serious reasons and in respect for the moral law, they choose to avoid a new birth for the time being or indefinitely. The moral law obliges them in every case to control the impulse of instinct and passion, and to respect the biological laws inscribed in their person. It is precisely this respect which makes legitimate, at the service of responsible procreation, the use of natural methods of regulating fertility""

"By any measure the presence of sexual concerns in the penitentials is prominent. The variety of sexual behavior touched on in the more ample handbooks is striking, running the gamut from heterosexual delicts through homosexual infractions, bestiality to autoerotic acts. The number of canons dealing with sex as a percentage of the total is disproportionately large in comparison to those dealing with other types of offence. Finally, there is a clear continuity of such concern for sexual behavior during the centuries that the penitentials flourished. That much is undeniable. So penitentials would appear to be excellent sources for the study of sex in early medieval Europe. Indeed, they have been so recognized and used in accounts of contraception, the regulation of marital sexual relations, and the variety of sexual offences. These accounts are usually presented as pieces of serial history in which penitentials are listed in what is thought to be chronological order, accompanied by their sexual contents."

"Until the 1930s, the Catholic Church was not alone in its opposition to contraceptives. In the Christian tradition, birth control had long been associated with promiscuity and adultery, and resolutely condemned. However, after the Anglican Church passed a resolution in favor of birth control at its 1930 Lambeth Conference, other Protestant denominations began to relax their prohibitions as well. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church held fast to its opposition. The Vatican's stand against contraception was centuries old. For much of that time, however, birth control had remained a dormant issue. Since most birth control consisted of folk remedies and homemade cervical caps, there was little cause for the Church to respond. It was the mass production and availability of rubber condoms and diaphragms in the 1920s and 1930s, made possible by the 1839 invention of vulcanized rubber, which eventually forced the Church to take a public position on specific contraceptives. On New Year's Eve 1930, the Roman Catholic Church officially banned any "artificial" means of birth control. Condoms, diaphragms and cervical caps were defined as artificial, since they blocked the natural journey of sperm during intercourse. Douche, suppositories and spermicides all killed or impeded sperm, and were banned as well. According to Church doctrine, tampering with the "male seed" was tantamount to murder. A common admonition on the subject at the time was "so many conceptions prevented, so many homicides.""

"[N]o reason, however grave, may be put forward by anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose, sin against nature, and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious. Small wonder, therefore, if Holy Writ bears witness that the Divine Majesty regards with greatest detestation this horrible crime, and at times has punished it with death."

"Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin."

"Every attempt of either husband or wife in the performance of the conjugal act or in the development of its natural consequences which aims at depriving it of its inherent force and hinders the procreation of new life is immoral."

"Regular access to effective contraception, as in the developed world, is the best way to reduce unplanned pregnancies and the need for abortion. Unfortunately, current U.S. policies restrict family planning assistance to foreign non-governmental clinics and agencies that per-form or even discuss abortion or advocate liberalizing abortion laws. The result has been a loss of family planning services and less access to condoms in many developing countries — services that would help reduce the need for abortion."

"Family Planning is the mother of abortion. A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion could become popular."

"[T]he efforts now being made to secure for licensed physicians, hospitals and medical clinics, freedom to convey such infor-mation [on birth control] as is in accord with the highest principles of eugenics and a more wholesome family life wherein parenthood may be undertaken with due respect for the health of the mother and the welfare of the child."

"(The following statement was adopted by the Lutheran Churches of the Reformation) God is the Creator of all human life (Gen. 30:2; 1 Sam. 2:5f; 2 Kgs. 5:7; Acts 17:25,28) and desires to create spiritual life in all sinful human beings, that everyone come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). Married couples should reproduce in observance of the following Biblical principles: 1. The command of God to be "fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28; 9:1,17; 35:11; 1 Tim. 5:10,14; AC XXIII, #5 & 8, Triglot p. 612; AP XXIII, #7-8, Trigl. p. 365-73; LC 6th Comm., # 207, Trigl., p. 6394). 2. Children are a blessing from the Lord (Gen. 1:28; 15:2-5; 17:5f.; 24:60; 33:5; 48:9; 49:25; Lev. 26:9; Deut. 28:4; Josh. 24:3; Ruth 4:11f.; Psalm 107:38; 127:3-5; 128:3-6; 147:13; Prov. 5:18; 17:6; LC 4th Comm., # 105, Trigl. p. 6115). 3. It is God who opens or closes the womb (Gen 16:1-2; 17:15-19; 20:18; 21:1-2; 25:21; 29:31; 30:2-6, 23f; Deut. 32:18; Lev. 20:20f; Judg. 13:3; Ruth 4:13; 1 Sam. l:19f; 2:21; Job 10:8-12; Psalm 22:9-10; 113:9; 139:13-16; Eccles. 11:5; Isa. 8:18; 43:1,7; 44:2,24; 49:1,5; 66:9; Jer. 1:5; Lk. 1:36f, 57f; Heb. 11:11). 4. Having children is a good work for Christians (1 Tim. 2:15; AP XXIII, #32, Trigl. p. 3736). 5. Christians are to be mindful that they are not only to be fruitful and populate the earth, but they are to bring up their children as Christians and thus populate heaven (Prov. 3:21f.; 4:3f., 20-22; Mk. 10:13-16; Acts 2:38f.; Eph. 6:1,4; Heb. 2:10). 6. In Scripture barrenness is regarded as an affliction (Gen. 11:30; 15:2; 16:2; 18:11f.; 25:21; 30:1,22f.; 1 Sam. 1:2,5-7, l0f.; Prov. 30:15f; Luke 1:7,24f.,58). 7. There are many examples in Scripture of fruitful parents among the godly (Gen. 3:20; 4:1,25; 5:4; 24:60; 30:1-24; Judg. 13:2f; Job 1:2; 42:13-16). 8. The Word of God prohibits us to "put asunder" marriage (Matt. 19:4-6), including its purposes (1 Cor. 7:2,5; Gen. 2:24). 9. The Bible exhibits the wrath of God upon those who defy His will (Gen. 38:8-10; Exod. 21:22; Rom. 1:18). 10. God desires that we put our trust in Him in all matters, also in His will and ability to provide for the children that He gives us (Exod. 23:20,26; Psalm 30:7; 37:25f.; Phil 4:13; 1 Pet. 5:7). Pastors should counsel families both publicly and privately to observe these principles. The churches and ministers should not take it upon themselves to investigate the private practices of their members (Eighth Commandment). Refusal to reproduce should be treated first by patient instruction and counsel. Nevertheless, when a situation becomes a public scandal then evangelical discipline is in order (Matt. 18:17). While we allow for exegetical differences and exceptional cases (casuistry), we must also maintain and teach the principles relating to this issue (Matt. 28:20; Acts 20:27). Such was the united teaching of Dr. Martin Luther and the "Old Missouri" fathers (C.F.W. Walther, F. Pieper, A.L. Graebner, C.M. Zorn, W.H.T. Dau, J.T. Mueller, W. Dallman, F. Bente, E.W.A. Koehler, L. Fuerbringer, T. Engelder, Th. Laetsch, G. Luecke, W.A. Maier, M.J. Naumann, et al.) and LCR leaders such as P.E. Kretzmann and W.H. McLaughlin. The reasons given to justify the prevention of conception are often based upon myths, selfishness, materialism, hedonism (love of pleasure), convenience, usurpation of God's prerogative, or humanistic reasoning and generally indicate a distrust of the Almighty God and His Word."

"Across the country, a disturbing trend is emerging that, if unchecked, will deny women access to legal, doctor-prescribed birth control. Women are being confronted with “pro-life pharmacists” who say they will not dispense birth control and/or emergency contraception because it violates their religious beliefs. Some even refuse to transfer prescriptions to another pharmacy or ask a pharmacist in their own store to serve the customer. Several women have reported that the pharmacist would not return the written prescription, forcing them to return to their doctor for another prescription. The refusing pharmacists claim they are acting because of their convictions that birth control pills are tantamount to abortion, a notion that is disputed by every major w:Medical association medical association and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These unethical refusals jeopardize women’s health and safety by placing them at risk for unintended pregnancy."

"Father Francis J. Connell, who wrote "Birth Control: The Case for the Catholic," doesn't neces-sarily discount the public health argument. Rather, he basically ignores it, appealing only to religious reasoning. He begins his argument with a disclosure: "The discussion of this subject as I intend to present it will be fully appreciated only by those who admit that there is a Supreme Being, whom men are obliged to serve and to obey." His argument: Each organ has its proper purpose, each faculty its proper function... A human being can direct his faculties of soul and of body to the purposes intended by the Creator, or he can distort them to other ends. And on the way he chooses to employ them depends the morality of his actions... When husband and wife perform their marital functions in the natural manner, they are concurring in the designs of God toward the preservation and the propagation of the human race...To them parenthood means, not merely the procreation of another member of society, but primarily coöperation with the Almighty in the creation of an immortal soul that is destined to be happy with God forever. Father Connell's argument suffers from racial bias as well. He claims that "birth control as it is now practised in the United States is bound to bring about a notable decline in our white population in the near future." He then goes on to cite "a prominent member of the American Eugenics Society." As for a solution to unrestrained childbirth, Connell believes couples can, through the church, learn restraint if they cannot afford a child. But as Wharton points out, that restraint may not be realistic. As he cites one woman as saying, "'I'm for any way that will keep me from having another child,' the mother pleaded. 'Any way so long as I can keep from losing that man I got.'" This is the dichotomy that split us in the 1930s. And they are essentially the same issues that divide us now, despite legal and cultural acceptance of birth control. In the eyes of many religious Americans, contraception still appears to promote sin and interfere with the divine plan. To those who want contraception to be widely available, the religious opposition seems entirely irrelevant, especially in light of practical concerns about disease and poverty. The two positions remain entirely irreconcilable. Hence, 73 years later, we're still having this conversation."

"Most of clergymen condemn birth control None of them condemns the brutality of a husband who causes his wife to die of too frequent pregnancies. I knew a fashionable clergyman whose wife had nine children in nine years. The doctors told him that if she had another she would die. Next year she had another and died. No one condemned; he retained his benefice and married again."

"Historically, Christians always have condemned contraceptive sex. The two forms mentioned in the Bible, <coitus interruptus> and sterilization, are condemned without exception (Gen. 38:9-10, Deut. 23:1). The Fathers of the Church recognized that in natural law the purpose of sexual intercourse is procreation; contraceptive sex, which deliberately blocks that natural purpose, is therefore a violation of natural law. Every church in Christendom condemned contraception until 1930, when, at its decennial Lambeth Conference, Anglicanism gave permission for the use of contraception in a few extraordinary cases. Soon all Protestant denominations had adopted the secularist position on contraception. Today no one stands with the Catholic Church to maintain the ancient Christian faith on this issue. How badly things have decayed may be seen by comparing the current state of non-Catholic churches, where most pastors counsel young couples to decide before they are married what form of contraception they use, with these quotations from the Fathers, who condemned contraception in general as well as in particular forms of it (sterilization, oral contraceptives, <coitus interruptus>, and orally-consummated sex). Many Protestants, perhaps beginning to see the inevitable connection between contraception and divorce and between contraception and abortion, are now returning to the historic Christian position and are rejecting contraceptive sexual practices."

"Among the problems which need a religious and moral assessment is that of contracep-tion. Some contraceptives have an abortive effect, interrupting artificially the life of the embryo on the very first stages of his life. Therefore, the same judgments are applicable to the use of them as to abortion. But other means, which do not involve interrupting an already conceived life, cannot be equated with abortion in the least. In defining their attitude to the non-abortive contraceptives, Christian spouses should remember that human reproduction is one of the principal purposes of the divinely established marital union (see, X. 4). The deliberate refusal of childbirth on egoistic grounds devalues marriage and is a definite sin. At the same time, spouses are responsible before God for the comprehensive upbringing of their children. One of the ways to be responsible for their birth is to restrain themselves from sexual relations for a time. However, Christian spouses should remember the words of St. Paul addressed to them: «Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency» (1 Cor. 7:5). Clearly, spouses should make such decisions mutually on the counsel of their spiritual father. The latter should take into account, with pastoral prudence, the concrete living conditions of the couple, their age, health, degree of spiritual maturity and many other circumstances. In doing so, he should distinguish those who can hold the high demands of continence from those to whom it is not given (Mt. 19:11), taking care above all of the preservation and consolidation of the family. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in its Decision of December 28, 1998, instructed the clergy serving as spiritual guides that «it is inadmissible to coerce or induce the flock to… refuse conjugal relations in marriage». It also reminded the pastors of the need «to show special chastity and special pastoral prudence in discussing with the flock the questions involved in particular aspects of their family life»."

"The contention that it is sin to have dominion over nature is simple nonsense. The Pope frustrates nature by getting shaved and having his hair cut, as well as by practicing continence. Whenever we catch a fish or shoot a wolf or a lamb, whenever we pull a weed or prune a tree, we frustrate nature. Disease germs are perfectly natural little fellows which must be frustrated before we can get well. Nature frustrates her own processes by the most astounding wastage, as we have already seen in the case of the sperms and ova, which she produces for the man and the woman by the million only to let them perish. When the Pope speaks about nature he seems to forget that the human mind is also part of nature. The thoughts we think and the emotions we feel are the work of nature. He does not seem to realize that the enjoyment in sexual intercourse is largely psychical. It is a mental and spiritual as well as a physical enjoyment. The stronger the love and the finer the characters of the married pair, the greater is this psychical enjoyment during intercourse. To impose continence is to prevent the finest union of love, to frustrate mental and spiritual nature in its urge toward perfection. Contraception in no way interferes with the oneness which is most necessary--even though the Pope calls it a secondary end--to the preservation of married happiness."

"Assuming that God does not want an increasing number of worshipers of the Catholic faith, does he also want an increasing number of feeble-minded, insane, criminal, and diseased worshipers? That is unavoidable if the Pope is obeyed, because, as we shall see, he forbids every single method of birth control except continence, a method which the feeble-minded, insane, and criminal will not use."

"It is also important to note that natural birth control methods which the Catholic Church promotes, and which seem to be the root of this ridiculous claim, were not developed for the Roman Catholic Church but for use in Third World countries. The reason is simple: A condom costs the equivalent of a day's pay for the average Indian rural workman and two days' pay for a working woman. Interestingly, a study of 19,843 Indian women in the British Medical Journal in September 1993 showed conclusively that for these women in their culture and circumstances, natural birth control methods are more effective than are artificial methods in the west."

"Of course, Obama has also said he wants to find middle ground on abortion-related issues. So far, two Protestant groups, one liberal and the other evangelical, agreed to work to reduce the number of abortions through policies such as comprehensive sex education that includes abstinence and improved access to contraception. The two groups, Third Way and Faith in Public Life, met last week in Washington to propose shared policy solutions. Access to contraception is a sticking issue for the Catholic Church, which opposes the practice. Catholics would welcome measures that encourage adoption, Burbidge said."

"The Church teaches that acts of contraception are always against the plan of God for human sexuality, since God intended that each and every act of spousal intercourse express both the intention to make a complete, unitive gift of one’s self to one’s spouse and the willingness to be a parent with one’s spouse. These meanings of the spousal act are, as Humanae Vitae stated, inseparable."

"It appears to be true that a significant strand of thought in the early Christian Church did not primarily address abortion in terms of the language of personhood, and the killing of persons. Indeed, in the early Church, there is sometimes no sharp distinction between contraception and sterilization, on the one hand, and abortion on the other. This was neither because the Church wished to downgrade the evil of abortion, nor necessarily to elide the distinction between contraception and murder in the sense in which the fifth commandment prohibits it. Rather, both contraception and early abortion were looked upon as grave contra-life sins. Practically speaking, however, there could have been little profit, as the work of Aristotle and Aquinas inadvertently reveals, in speculation about the nature of the early embryo or even fetus, given the paltry biology at hand."

"A time will come when humankind will be ashamed of how it introduced a false lifestyle, just as today we are ashamed of apartheid, of racial discrimination and of other forms of discrimination. In future times we will be ashamed of something we managed to defend as if it were a truth, a political truth, a truth imposed in Parliament regarding the family, regarding human life, sex, where everything is permitted, where everything is possible."

"[A]rtificial contraception appears to alter the language of the body."

"We affirm the principle of responsible parenthood. The family, in its varying forms, consti-tutes the primary focus of love, acceptance, and nurture, bringing fulfillment to parents and child. Healthful and whole personhood develops as one is loved, responds to love, and in that relationship comes to wholeness as a child of God. Each couple has the right and the duty prayerfully and responsibly to control conception according to their circumstances. They are, in our view, free to use those means of birth control considered medically safe. As developing technologies have moved conception and reproduction more and more out of the category of a chance happening and more closely to the realm of responsible choice, the decision whether or not to give birth to children must include acceptance of the responsibility to provide for their mental, physical, and spiritual growth, as well as consideration of the possible effect on quality of life for family and society."

"[T]here is a difference between birth control and contraception. "Birth control" can be applied to several different practices. It can indicate anything from the observance of continence, to conjugal acts during a woman's infertile period, to the use of contraceptive devices such as condoms or the pill. In certain circumstances the Church permits the regulation of births, yet in every circumstance the Church forbids contraception."

"It is true that we should depend on God's providence; it is also true that married couples are called to be generous in raising their children without arbitrarily limit-ing their family size to one or two children because of a desire to maintain a certain ‘standard of living.' Yet, the Church teaches that the gift of self in conjugal union is a human act, which means that it involves the use of our reason. Paul VI teaches that "the Church is the first to praise and recommend the intervention of intelligence in a function which so closely associates the rational creature with His Creator; but she affirms that this must be done with respect for the order established by God."

"If, then, there are serious motives to space out births, which derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the Church teaches that it is then licit to take into account the natural rhythms im-manent in the generative functions, for the use of marriage in the infecund periods only, and in this way to regulate birth without offending the moral principles which have been recalled earlier."

"Artificial methods of birth control are forbidden in the Orthodox Church."

"The use of contraceptives and other devices for birth control is on the whole strongly discour-aged in the Orthodox Church. Some bishops and theologians altogether condemn the employment of such methods. Others, however, have recently begun to adopt a less strict position, and urge that the question is best left to the discretion of each individual couple, in consultation with the spiritual father."

"Concerning contraceptives and other forms of birth control, differing opinions exist within the Orthodox Church. In the past birth control was in general strongly condemned, but today a less strict view is coming to prevail, not only in the west but in traditional Orthodox countries. Many Orthodox theologians and spiritual fathers consider that the responsible use of contraception within marriage is not in itself sinful. In their view, the question of how many children a couple should have, and at what intervals, is best decided by the partners themselves, according to the guidance of their own consciences."

"In general it is morally legitimate to use a material agent in order to forward the well-being of a man in his personal relations in society, e.g. wearing glasses or deaf aid. If on moral grounds the unitive object of an act of coitus must be achieved without involving the procreative end, then there is nothing in principle wrong in using a material agent, for that agent is forwarding the personal relational factor essential for marriage, and good marriages are essential for society and the welfare of children."

"As Roman Catholic theologians, conscious of our duty and our limitations, we conclude that spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible and indeed necessary to preserve and foster the values and the sacredness of marriage."

"The Pill manufacturers and many in organized medicine are mainly con-cerned about the Pill's medical side effects and its effectiveness in preventing pregnancies and are less concerned about how the drug achieves its effectiveness. Unfortunately, many "otherwise" pro-life physicians and pharmacists find it hard to admit that these abortifacient properties exist because they would have to discontinue prescribing and dispensing the Pill if they were to remain consistent in their respect for life at all its stages of development. Pro-abortion organizations and their lawyers readily admit the early abortion potential of the Pill. In February 1992, writing in opposition to a Louisiana law banning abortion, Ruth Colker, a Tulane Law School professor, wrote, "Because nearly all birth control devices, except the diaphragm and condom, operate between the time of conception...and implantation.., the statute would appear to ban most contraceptives." In 1989, attorney Frank Sussman argued before the U. S. Supreme Court that ". . . IUDs (and) low dose birth control pills. . . act as abortifacients.""

"In our teaching we emphasize that children are a blessing from God and couples should beware of false materialistic standards of measuring the quality of their lives. Forms of birth control that are really methods of inducing a very early abortion must not be used. WELS, however, does not maintain that there is a clear scriptural prohibition against all forms of contraception. Such factors as the mother's health may be a valid concern of couples, which may lead them to consider limiting the number of their children."

"[A]mong evangelical Protestants, at least, birth control — and who has access to it — has only recently become a major political issue. Unlike Catholics, whose catechism denounces use of most forms of contraception as a sin, evangelical Protestants by and large do not. (Because of the disparate nature of evangelical Protestantism, which includes hundreds if not thousands of separate denominations, it’s difficult to speak of a “formal stance” in the way we can of Catholics.) But alongside Catholic organizations like [w:Little Sisters of the Poor| Little Sisters of the Poor]], it’s evangelical-led companies like Hobby Lobby that have been on the forefront of opposition to the ACA birth control mandate."

"In contrast to the Catholic stance, the current set of evangelical objections to the ACA birth control mandate have less to do with any formal doctrine about birth control per se than they do about wider cultural issues, including the abortion debate, the aftermath of the sexual revolution, and precedents for religious exemptions more generally."

"When Hobby Lobby filed its 2012 lawsuit objecting to the mandate on religious grounds — with the Supreme Court ultimately ruling in its favor — it didn’t do so because of a general objection to birth control. Rather, it did so because certain forms of birth control, including Plan B, also known as the "morning after pill,” could be considered an abortifacient because it prevents implantation of an already fertilized egg. Hobby Lobby founder David Green wrote in a 2012 op-ed for USA Today: “Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions. Which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs.” The extent to which this line of reasoning applies to other forms of contraception has been a subject of debate among evangelicals, particularly in regard to the pill, which critics have argued — often in the absence of conclusive scientific evidence — may prevent the implantation of an already-fertilized egg. But these are often academic arguments — confined to scholars or pastors at conferences — rather than ones that apply to the average evangelical Christian’s lived experience."

"Talcott noted that objection to birth control among evangelicals had been more prevalent prior to the developments of the 20th century. Christians disenchanted by the outcomes of the sexual revolution, he said, might find themselves “attracted to the older view, the historic forms of marriage and Christianity and trying to see what resources are maybe there for trying to help us figure out what to do today in this sort of Wild West of Christianity. ... The marriage debate, transgender issues, are [all] forcing on the conservative wing evangelicals to think about what marriage is, and how birth control can fit into that.” For those evangelicals, birth control — particularly the Pill — represents the worst excesses of the sexual revolution: a change in mentality from one that venerated reproduction and family life to one that focused on the individual’s (and, particularly, the individual woman’s) right to transcend their personal biology in pursuit of personal or sexual fulfillment. As Agnieszka Tennant, writing about her disillusionment with the Pill in Christianity Today, puts it: "Could Mircette have changed not just the hormonal makeup of my cells, but also what cannot be seen under a microscope? Could it have served as one more safety lock on the door not just to my womb, but also to my figure, my marriage, my home, my career, my gym routine?”"

"[[w:Evangelical|[E]vangelical]] couples like Sam and Bethany Torode published books like 2002’s Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception, which argued that taking medical steps to delay childbearing went against God’s plan for creation and contributed to an ethos of selfishness (the two ultimately divorced after nine years and four children, retracting their position on contraception and leaving the evangelical church). A 2015 article in Al Jazeera profiled a number of evangelical Christians who took this stance, including Andrew Walker, director of policy studies at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who said, “The idea of talking about children as a ‘scare’ and viewing them as an obstacle to the American dream, that’s not a Christian way of looking at family. ... That’s what I like to tell young couples: The family is actually a pretty adaptable institution. It doesn’t necessarily have to put a brake on your life.”"

"It is a reckless analyst who risks reopening sixteenth-century disputes between Roman Catholics and the Protestant Reformers. I do so in the interest of a greater good, but my purpose is not to say who was right or who was wrong. I would simply like to explore why the Protestant churches maintained unity with the Catholic Church on the contraception question for four centuries, only to abandon this unity during the first half of the twentieth century."

"For most contemporary Americans, contentious questions about birth control are considered a peculiar “Catholic” problem. With the use of contraceptives at some point being nearly universal among fertile adults (and quite common among teenagers, as well) and with birth control enjoying the blessing of state and federal governments as the alternative to both “unwanted” births and abortion, only a minority of especially devout Catholics seem to be left to puzzle occasionally over the issue. Even their interest is commonly understood to be a consequence of medieval thinking codified in Pope Paul VI’s reactionary 1968 Encyclical, Humanae vitae. Mostly forgotten is the fact that, as recently as one hundred years ago, it was American Evangelical Protestants who waged the most aggressive and effective campaigns against the practice of birth control within the United States; Roman Catholics quietly applauded on the sidelines It was evangelicals who-starting in 1873-successfully built a web of federal and state laws that equated contraception with abortion, suppressed the spread of birth control information and devices, and even criminalized the use of contraceptives. And it was Evangelicals who attempted to jail early twentieth-century birth control crusaders such as Margaret Sanger. All the same, by 1973-the year the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the abortion laws of all fifty states-American Evangelical leaders had not only given a blessing to birth control; many would also welcome the court’s decision in ‘’Roe v Wade’’ as a blow for religious liberty. This book traces the transformation of American Evangelical leadership from fervent foes to quiet friends of the birth control cause. It examines, in particular, the shift in motives for this change over time: from a sweeping culture war against all forms of vice; to a desperate effort to salvage dreams of Protestant world empire; to swelling anti-Catholicism; to fear of “population explosion,” and surrender to a newly dominant culture."

"The key figure in elaborating the Protestant family ethic was the former Augustinian monk and priest Martin Luther. In theological terms, however, Luther’s opposition to contraception was actually amplified by his rejection of clerical celibacy. Luther’s critics have seen him as a failed celibate, a man unable to control his lusts. Luther blamed the doctrine of celibacy itself."

"How might we judge the success of the Protestant family ethic? For nearly four centuries it worked reasonably well, as judged by its understanding of the divine ordinance to be fruitful and replenish the earth. Accordingly, the Protestant opposition to contraception remained firm. Writing in the late eighteenth century, for example, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, also condemned the sin of Onan, adding, “The thing which he did displeased the Lord.” The nineteenth-century Reformed Pastor Johann Peter Lange, in his Christian Dogmatics, described contraception as “a most unnatural wickedness, and a grievous wrong. This sin . . . is [as] destructive as a pestilence that walketh in darkness, destroying directly the body and the soul of the young.” At their 1908 Lambeth Conference, the world’s Anglican bishops recorded “with alarm the growing practice of artificial restriction of the family.” They “earnestly call[ed] upon all Christian people to discountenance the use of all artificial means of restriction as demoralizing to character and hostile to national welfare.” As late as 1923, the Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod’s official magazine The Witness accused the Birth Control Federation of America of spattering “this country with slime” and labeled birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger a “she devil.” Pastor Walter Maier, founding preacher of the long-running Lutheran Hour radio program, called contraceptives “the most repugnant of modern aberrations, representing a twentieth-century renewal of pagan [bankruptcy]].” On doctrine, then, Protestant leaders held firm well into the twentieth century."

"As late as 1874, the average Anglican clergyman in England still had 5.2 living children. In 1911, however, just three years after the bishops had condemned contraception, the new census of England showed that the average family size of Anglican clergy had fallen to only 2.3 children, a stunning decline of 55 percent. The British Malthusian League—a strong advocate of contraception—had a field day exposing what it called the hypocrisy of the priests. As the league explained, the Church of England continued to view contraception as a sin, and yet its clerics and bishops were obviously engaging in the practice. Apparently only the poor and the ignorant had to obey the church. There was not much that Anglican leaders could say in response. This propaganda continued for another two decades, and soon some Anglican theologians were arguing that Britain’s poverty required the birth of fewer children."

"Pressures culminated at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, where bish-ops heard an address by birth-control advocate Helena Wrighton on the advantages of contracep-tion for the poor. On a vote of 193 to 67, the bishops (representing not only Eng-land but also America, Canada, and the other former colonies) approved a resolution stating that: In those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete absti-nence, other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. This was the first official statement by a major church body in favor of contra-ception. Thus was Christian unity on the question broken. The decision was condemned by many religious and secular bodies, including the editors of the Washington Post. Pope Pius XI responded to it in his encyclical Casti Connubii four months later. The same stress line emerged in America. For example, in the very conservative Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod, the average pastor in 1890 had 6.5 children. The number fell to 3.7 children in 1920, 42 percent below the 1890 number. Other churches saw a similar decline. Here, too, the Protestant clergy had ceased to be models of a fruitful home for their congregations and the broader culture. During the 1930s, the Missouri Synod quietly dropped its campaign against the Birth Control League of America. In the 1940s, one of the church’s leading theologians, Albert Rehwinkel, concluded that Luther had simply been wrong. God’s words in Genesis 1:28—“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”—were not a command; they were merely a blessing, and an optional one at that."

"In 1931, the Committee on Home and Marriage of the old Federal Council of Churches issued a statement defending family limitation and arguing for the repeal of laws prohibiting contraceptive education and sales. Some member churches—notably the Southern Methodists and the Northern Baptists—protested the action, and the Southern Presbyterians even withdrew their membership from the Federal Council for a decade, but they were the minority and even their protests did not last. In only three decades, the Lambeth Conference’s qualified approval would turn into full celebration. At the astonishing and deeply disturbing‘’ 1961 North American Conference on Church and Family’’, sponsored by the National Council of Churches (successor to the Federal Council), population-control advocate Lester Kirkendall argued that America had “entered a sexual economy of abundance” where contraception would allow unrestrained sexual experimentation."

"Rejecting both lifelong celibacy and contraception, classic Protestant theology required family-centered and child-rich pastors. When those clerical leaders, in the privacy of their bedrooms, broke faith with their tradition, when pastors and their wives consciously limited their families, the Protestant opposition to contraception faced a crisis. Typical of a less radical development was the 1981 decision of the Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations, which argued that although “Be fruitful” is “both a command and a mandate,” “in the absence of Scriptural prohibition” contraception was acceptable “within a marital union which is, as a whole, fruitful.” And if contraception is acceptable, “we will also recognize that sterilization may under some circumstances be an acceptable form of contraception.”"

"The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) itself had in 1971 urged its members to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother. However, reflecting the movement of Evangelicalism as a whole (though not mainline Protestantism), in 2003, the SBC declared that this and the 1974 resolution “accepted unbiblical premises of the abortion rights movement, forfeiting the opportunity to advocate the protection of defenseless women and children” and that “we lament and renounce statements and actions by previous Conventions and previous denominational leadership that offered support to the abortion culture.”"

"Among the most important of man's faculties is the sexual power. Its chief purpose is the generation of new life. This purpose pertains to the social order; it concerns the common good rather than the individual good. When husband and wife perform their marital functions in the natural manner, they are concurring in the designs of God toward the preservation and the propagation of the human race. The full import of this objective is perceived only by those who admit the eternal destiny of mankind. To them parenthood means, not merely the procreation of another member of society, but primarily coöperation with the Almighty in the creation of an immortal soul that is destined to be happy with God forever. However, when husband and wife deliberately and positively frustrate the procreative purpose of sexual intercourse, they pervert the order of nature and thus directly oppose the designs of nature's Creator. And since the reproductive function is so vital to the upkeep of the race, and since any exception to this law would be multiplied indefinitely, every act of contraceptive frustration is a gravely immoral act, or, in Catholic terminology, a mortal sin."

"It does not follow from Catholic principles that conjugal inter-course is forbidden whenever conception is naturally impossible, as when a woman is already pregnant or advanced in years. Nature itself includes such conditions in its plan, and so in these circumstances a married pair do nothing against nature, nothing immoral, if they make use of their marital rights, provided they have the power of complete coition. They are not positively frustrating the chief purpose of the sexual act, they are not opposing the designs of nature and of nature's Author. It is important to note that the argument which is being urged against contraception is not based on any such principle as 'It is always sinful to oppose or to check any force of nature.' The misunderstanding of this point has occasioned innumerable objections of the species known as reductio ad absurdum against the Church's denunciation of contraceptive practices. For example: 'The Catholic teaching on birth control would lead to the conclusion that a person commits a sinful act whenever he cuts his hair or trims his nails, since in performing these actions one frustrates nature.' The flaw in this manner of reasoning is the failure to distinguish between the restricting of a natural power and the preventing of the purpose of a natural power. The former by no means necessarily includes the latter. It is within the designs of nature itself that there should be opposition and conflict among the multitudinous forces and agents that operate in the universe, that one creature should restrain and control the tendencies and activities of another and utilize them to its own advantage. The animal violently interrupts the vital functioning of the plant by using it as food, and man does the same to the animal; but there is no frustration of any divinely ordained purpose in this process. On the contrary, there is the fulfillment of the Creator's design that the lower in the scale of perfection should contribute to the sustenance of the higher. Similarly -- to answer the specific objection -- when a person cuts his hair or trims his nails he does indeed curtail the growth of these bodily appendages, but their chief purpose, the utility of the individual himself, is promoted rather than frustrated. Certainly nature does not call for an unchecked augmentation of hair and nails; they must be clipped if they would be beneficial to the whole person, to whom they are subservient as the lesser good to the greater. But it is an utterly different case with contraception, which prevents the very primary purpose of sexual activity and inverts the due order of things by making the social benefit of conjugal intercourse subservient to the benefit of the individuals concerned. This can be illustrated by a development of the parallelism which exists between the faculty of nutrition and that of sex. The primary purpose of the former is to preserve the life of the individual; the primary purpose of the latter is to preserve the life of the human race. To attract human beings to the due use of these faculties, the Creator has annexed to the functioning of each a feeling of pleasure. Sexual gratification is particularly vehement, and in this is manifest the sagacity of divine providence, inducing men and women to undertake the arduous duties of parenthood for the benefit of the human race. But, to continue the analogy, it is possible for a person to enjoy the pleasure accompanying the use of either of these faculties, and at the same time to distort his action in such wise that its chief purpose is rendered unattainable. This is what takes place relative to the sexual faculty when contraception is employed. And the analogous case in the use of the nutritive faculty is the revolting practice of some ancient Roman gourmands, who ate to satiety and then induced regurgitation. In each case the sensual gratification intended by the Creator as an incentive to the use of the respective faculty is sought and enjoyed, while the divinely established main purpose is deliberately and positively obstructed. Is it not strange that many persons who shudder at the very thought of the disgusting custom of the ancient voluptuaries do not hesitate to defend and to practise the equally perverse operation of contraception?"

"If the human race is in existence ten thousand years hence, no matter what changes may have taken place in the social and economic and scientific spheres, the Catholic Church will still be preaching the same doctrine on birth control that it is teaching today."

"[T]he public media tend to identify opposition to unnatural forms of birth regulation with Catholicism. However, as will become clear, Catholic teaching on this matter was formerly held by all Protestant Churches, and some of them still retain it. Secondly, because of the controversy over birth control, the Catholic Church has issued a number of statements to which there is easy access and reference."

"Does the Church teach that the unnatural or artificial means of birth control are immoral and blameworthy? Yes. In Humanae Vitae, the first-named form of illicit or unnatural method of birth control is abortion (n. 14). Then, "equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary whether of the man or woman" (Humanae Vitae, 14). This condemns tubal ligations, vasectomies, and the Pill. "Similarly excluded is every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (Humanae Vitae, 14). Such unnatural forms include the Pill, the intrauterine device, foams, diaphragms, condoms, withdrawal, mutual or solitary masturbation and sodomistic practices."

"Are some forms of unnatural birth control worse than others? Yes. Those forms that act after conception has occurred to prevent the continuation of the pregnancy participate in the additional evil of abortion. "From the moment of its conception life must be guarded with greatest care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes" (Gaudium et Spes, 51). Surgical abortion is the most obvious but not the only form. The intrauterine device (IUD) acts primarily as an early abortion agent by preventing implantation of the week-old human life. The birth control Pill makes the inner lining of the uterus very hostile to implantation. It is not known how often the Pill acts in this way, but it cannot be denied that the Pill may be acting as an early abortion agent in any given cycle in any given woman."

"In the natural act of completed marital sexual intercourse, there is a symbolic bodily unity of man and wife. However, in every form of unnatural birth control, there is a positive effort to destroy the [w:Procreative|procreative]] potential of an act that God has given us as a unique sign of married love. Looked at in another way, the sex act is meant by God to be a symbolic way in which a couple are called to renew, at least implicitly, their marriage covenant. In this bodily union, they are called to affirm anew their original promises of married love, to take each other for better or for worse, to be as one until death. Unnatural birth control contradicts the symbolic renewal of the marriage covenant. Instead, it says, "I take you for better but not for the imagined worse of parenthood.""

"In the New Testament, it is possible that the Greek "pharmakeia" refers to the birth con-trol issue. "Pharmakeia" in general was the mixing of various potions for secret purposes, and it is known that potions were mixed in the first century A.D. to prevent or stop a pregnancy. The typical translation as "sorcery" may not reveal all of the specific practices condemned by the New Testament. In all three of the passages in which it appears, it is in a context condemning sexual immorality; two of the three passages also condemn murder. (Gal. 5:19-26; Rev. 9:21, 21:8). Thus it is very possible that there are three New Testament passages condemning the use of the products of "pharmakeia" for birth control purposes."

"The growing use of unnatural birth control since 1913 has been accompanied by an almost 500% rise in the divorce rate. Among Catholics, the divorce rate formerly was much lower than the national average, but the divorce rate has risen sharply since the mid-1960s when Catholics began using unnatural birth control at about the same rate as the rest of a culture that is no longer Christian. Even if other factors have contributed to the breakdown of family stability, there are ample indicators that the use of unnatural birth control has been a significant factor."

"Many couples who have left unnatural methods of birth control have reported an improved marriage relationship with NFP. This has been confirmed by scientific social studies and by informal surveys showing an extremely low divorce rate among couples practicing NFP. Improved communication, ab-sence of feelings of being used, development of non-genital courtship, peace of conscience, and no fear of the dangerous effects of some unnatural methods have all been mentioned as contributing to the improved relationship. In addition, the practice of NFP helps to develop the same character strengths that are necessary for marital fidelity and life-long marriage."

"The question of birth control has been raised many times for 19 centuries of Christian life, and the Church has always responded with a firm and universal negative to abortion, sterilization and all forms of unnatural birth control. The encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 simply reaffirmed this universal Tradition."

"Before 1930, no Protestant Christian church accepted contraception, sterilization or abortion. However, in 1930 the Church of England accepted contraception. Many churches followed that path, but there are still some Protestant churches that reject all forms of unnatural birth control. The Eastern Orthodox churches likewise retain the authentic Christian Tradition against contraception."

"The demographer Pierre Chaunu wrote: Since 1964--the take-off point for most European countries--we have arrived at a process of reproductive collapse never seen before in [history]]...From a gradual death we are moving to an instantaneous death: Germany is dead; its situation is non- reversible (1.2 children per German woman, while an average of 2.1 children per woman is necessary to replace a generation). How is this implosion, this destruction, explained? The most blame apparently can be assigned to the contraceptive revolution which started in 1960. This demographic trend carries with it dire consequences for European populations. Without an influx of immigrants, many European nations will lose almost half of their recruitment pool of active military personnel in the next three generations (about 75 years), and their social fabric will increasingly unravel. Evelyn Sullerot, a dyed-in-the-wool humanist who has worked long and zealously for a change of morals, puts it this way: In ten years time, since 1972, one can see the fabric of civil society quickly falling apart: more and more free forms of "living together," more and more divorces, more and more children born out of wedlock, more and more singles. This change is without precedent in its nature, its extent, and the speed with which it is advancing."

"So-called painless childbirth, contraception, abortion, the new ways of research - all this has not only altered the stature of women and restored honour to their human sexuality; these innovations have also changed the people themselves and the nature of their relationships; they have been joined with a total change of cultural and societal values." In order to reach this goal, the Groupe Littre would zealously promote the idea that people should have free determination over their own bodies. Pierre Simon admits that "this does violence to the Christian ethic, which considers the body a gift from God. In order to promote this "freedom," it was necessary to introduce contraception in the various countries. Indeed, thanks to "the new view of the meaning of life introduced through contraception, society will be completely changed."

"On the political and legal level, the change agents had to make short work, at least in France, of the 1920 law that sought to prevent the lowering of birth rates by for-bidding the sale and advertising of birth control devices. Dr. Simon wrote: "To attack the law in its totality meant to liberalize abortion. {Public} opinion, however, was not yet ready for that. Therefore we had as our first goal to take apart this amalgam. Once contraception was common and accepted by law, then abortion would be accepted. The future proved us right."

"The struggle for contraception was to last longer and be more difficult than the struggle for abortion. To change a famous saying: We had won the war, the only thing left was to fight the last battle. "The relation between contraception and abortion is clear. It is the same as that between a war and the ultimate battle: The final goal, as already seen, is to exercise freedom over one's own body as a piece of material "in the ecological meaning of the word." In other words: Once contraception is common in society, it brings about a new way of thinking; the body is seen as biological material with which one can do as one pleases. As this mentality spreads, abortion is increasingly accepted. History has proven Simon to be right. In December 1967, nine months before the encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued, the Neuwirth Law was passed in France allowing the sale and advertising of contraceptives. In 1975, the Weil Law followed, which legalized abortion. By 1983 this "unspeakable crime" (Gaudium et spes, No. 51) was paid for by national health insurance - that is, by all taxpayers. The Weil Law's "conscience clause" (allowing for refusal to participate in abortion) is no more than an empty formality, since all French citizens, whatever their convictions, pay for health insurance and so participate in the funding of abortion. By refusing to acknowledge the inviolable right to life, the government has become, in effect, a totalitarian State."

"The widespread use of contraception unavoidably and inexorably results in a number of cata-strophic social consequences. Marital oneness, propagation and the very meaning of love are divorced from the marital act when contraceptives are injected into a relationship. The underlying roles of man and society are thereby jeopardized. We therefore can see the great wisdom of the Catholic Church in upholding the moral law from which no human activity is excluded - not even science. Science is not neutral. Properly used, it must serve the welfare of the people and respect their dignity. Contraception is not a private matter without moral repercussions for society at large. As we have seen, widespread contraceptive use thoroughly impacts the very foundations of the culture that embraces it. Enlightened by the teaching of the Church, we believe that man can come again to a practice of birth regulation that respects human dignity and the sacred character of marriage and of life."

"We often hear that the church accepts natural methods of birth control while she rejects artificial means. This is not true. The Church accepts periodic sexual abstinence, based on the virtue of chastity, but she condemns every form of contraception. Contraception is "an act which has as its goal the prevention of propagation" (Humane Vitae, No. 14). This is not the case with periodic abstinence. With periodic abstinence, the person is honoured in the sexual relationship-the wife through her own biological rhythm, the husband through the sperm that he gives. No separation disturbs the oneness of the marriage act, the oneness of spirit and body. There is no contradiction between the (good) goal and the means. The Church considers contraception a moral disorder, not for biological, ecological or naturalistic reasons, nor out of fear for science and technique, but for spiritual, anthropological and metaphysical reasons. Contraception casts man himself in the role as lord of life, allowing him to use his body as a piece of material that is subject to his desire; as an object he can manipulate as he wishes. His desire then becomes the only criteria of his actions. His morality is based on situation ethics; on subjective standards. By periodic abstinence, however, man accepts himself as a creature of God, sublimating his will to that of his Creator. He sees his body as a sign of his dependence, and at the same time as a symbol of his transcendence. His desire - which is always obscure and confused - submits itself in freedom to the law that is written in his nature, and which therefore becomes a reasonable, true human desire."

"By separating what God has joined, by detaching love from fruitfulness, contraception has given birth to a deformed way of thinking - one which, when followed, results in tragic consequences[. The first consequence - the most miserable, but one that at first escapes attention - is practical atheism. Whenever a man raises himself to the status of lord and master over life, to the role of "boss" over his own body, he ceases to recognize and acknowledge his dependence on God. Such a man fantasizes that he is creator, thereby mentally placing himself of God's throne. The person who does this becomes an atheist without even recognizing it. Such a person does not need to expressly deny God; he merely needs to accept a premise that is intrinsically sinful and materialistic rather than spiritual and holy. This is not to say that the practice of contraception automatically produces atheists. But justification of the practice brings a man imperceptibly nearer to the way of thinking which results in atheism. Dr. Simon clearly understood this when he wrote that contraception introduces a revision of the meaning of life and that "it changes the people as well as the nature of their relationship.""

"A second miserable social consequence of the contraceptive mentality is that is makes it impossible to receive a child as an unexpected and undeserved gift from God. Rather, the child, is perceived merely as the object of parental desire ("I want a child" or "I really wanted that child"). Because the child is not seen as a gift, but as "wanted" (an acquisition), it is increasingly viewed as an objects. The value of the child then depends entirely on the will of the parents. The child is no longer known for what he or she is: someone who, simply by being, requires absolute respect. Once this fallacious reasoning is embraced, it is but a short step to abortion, especially when the child is not "wanted." Tragically, this step is made without much difficulty. Dr. Raymond Pearl of the United States established in 1937 that couples who use contraception have three or four times more abortions than couples who do not use contraception. A 1952 Japanese study of 3,500 families showed that couples who used contraception aborted their children six times more often couples who did not use contraception."

"A third consequence: Sterilization is no longer seen as a mutilating encroach-ment on human dignity and divine providence, but as a radical and definitive contracep-tive method. According to research by the Family Planning Service in England, the number of sterilized couples rose from 4 percent in 1970 to 24 percent in 1983. It is anticipated this percentage will rise to 33 in 1995. Pope Paul VI pointed out that contraception is a dangerous weapon in the hands of government. How many governments in the Third World promote contraceptives or advance sterilization to solve their demographic problems? The rich countries encourage them, driven by thinly disguised imperialism. Who could blame a government for applying, as a solution to the problems of the community, those means acknowledged to be permissible for married couples in solving a family problem (Humane Vitae No. 17)?"

"A fourth consequence of the contraceptive mentality is that the field of medicine is evolving into a bio-technology and the medical corps is becoming a health bureaucracy responsible for the regulation of a health policy formulated and enforced by political might. This is even clearer in the case of abortion. Here there is no talk of a medical act, but of a crime which is covered with a medical garment so that it is performed in a hospital or clinic by a little angel maker with a medical diploma. The same can be said of the implements of torture discovered by the pharmacists of the Soviet Gulags, or of electrical shocks administered under medical supervision in some Latin American countries. Thus the medical profession is increasingly reduced to an instrument of political and social policies."

"The fifth social consequence of contraception we will deal with here involves the separation of the marital act from marriage and propagating, thereby depriving it of its designation as "a private matter." As the social meaning of marriage disappears, will the community no longer have anything to do with it? Why make a distinction between marriage and non-marital living arrangements? Why speak about rights and obligations for one person and not for another?"

"In 1958, Pope Pius XII approved The Pill for Catholics, so long as its contraceptive effects were “indirect”—that is, so long as it was intended only as a remedy for conditions like painful menses or “a disease of the uterus.” That ruling emboldened Rock still further. Short-term use of The Pill, he knew, could regulate the cycle of women whose periods had previously been unpredictable. Since a regular menstrual cycle was necessary for the successful use of the rhythm method—and since the rhythm method was sanctioned by the Church—shouldn’t it be permissible for women with an irregular menstrual cycle to use the Pill in order to facilitate the use of rhythm? And if that was true why not take the logic one step further? As the federal judge John T. Noonan writes in “Contraception,” his history of the Catholic position on birth control: If it was lawful to suppress ovulation to achieve a regularity necessary for successfully sterile intercourse, why was it not lawful to suppress ovulation without appeal to rhythm? If pregnancy could be prevented by pill plus rhythm, why not by pill alone? In each case suppression of ovulation was used as a means. How was a moral difference made by the addition of rhythm? These arguments, as arcane as they may seem, were central to the development of oral contraception. It was John Rock and Gregory Pincus who decided that the Pill ought to be taken over a four-week cycle—a woman would spend three weeks on the Pill and the fourth week off the drug (or on a placebo), to allow for menstruation. There was and is no medical reason for this."

"John Rock’s long battle on behalf of his birth-control pill forced the Church to take notice. In the spring of 1963, just after Rock’s book was published, a meeting was held at the Vatican between high officials of the Catholic Church and Donald B. Straus, the chairman of Planned Parenthood. That summit was followed by another, on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. In the summer of 1964, on the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist, Pope Paul VI announced that he would ask a committee of church officials to reëxamine the Vatican’s position on contraception. The group met first at the Collegio San Jose, in Rome, and it was clear that a majority of the committee were in favor of approving the Pill. Committee reports leaked to the National Catholic Register confirmed that Rock’s case appeared to be winning. Rock was elated. Newsweek put him on its cover, and ran a picture of the Pope inside. “Not since the Copernicans suggested in the sixteenth century that the sun was the center of the planetary system has the Roman Catholic Church found itself on such a perilous collision course with a new body of knowledge,” the article concluded. Paul VI, however, was unmoved. He stalled, delaying a verdict for months, and then years. Some said he fell under the sway of conservative elements with-in the Vatican. In the interim, theologians began exposing the holes in Rock’s arguments. The rhythm method “‘prevents’ conception by abstinence, that is, by the non-performance of the conjugal act during the fertile period,” the Catholic journal America concluded in a 1964 editorial. “The pill prevents conception by suppressing ovulation and by thus abolishing the fertile period. No amount of word juggling can make abstinence from sex and the suppression of ovulation one and the same thing.”"

"In hindsight, it is possible to see the opportunity that Rock missed. If he had known what we know now and had talked about the Pill not as a contraceptive but as a cancer drug—not as a drug to prevent life but as one that would save life—the church might well have said yes. Hadn’t Pius XII already approved the Pill for therapeutic purposes?"

"In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 2 closely held for-profit corporations asserted claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) 3 to ex-"

"The claimants in Hobby Lobby challenged a law requiring employers to provide their employees health insurance that covered contraceptives the claimants deemed “abortifacients.” The law, they argued, forced them to “provid[e] insurance coverage for items that risk killing an embryo [and thereby] makes them complicit in abortion.” The concept of complicity has a richly elaborated theological basis in Catholicism. But evangelical Christians, such as the Greens, who own Hobby Lobby, also assert that their beliefs preclude them from engaging in conduct that would make them complicit in sin. As Justice Alito explained in Hobby Lobby, the claimants believe “it is immoral and sinful for [them] to intentionally participate in, pay for, facilitate, or otherwise support these drugs.”"

"Religious conservatives opposed to practices that separate sex from procreation may object not only to same-sex marriage and abortion, but also to contraception. While Hobby Lobby featured an objection to contraceptives the claimants viewed as “abortifacients,” many religious claimants object to contraception generally. There are Catholics and evangelical Protestants who object to a “contraceptive mentality” that separates sex from procreation. The plaintiffs in Hobby Lobby were supported by amici who opposed contraception and advised the Court that contraception harms women. And in other litigation over the ACA, claimants have expressed objections to coverage of any FDA-approved contraceptives."

"I have described the contraceptive means known to different eras, and what can be inferred as to their diffusion and employment. The data here set forth, gathered from the canon law, the manuals for confessors, the commentaries of theologians and canonists, and medieval medical books and herbals, substantially alter the picture formerly drawn of contraceptive practice. In particular, the period between 400 and 1600 will be seen to be marked by a possession and use of contraceptive means which previous accounts have not suggested. It was in the face of this contraceptive practice that the doctrine upon it was promulgated in western Europe."

"To relate in detail the circumstances, for example, that led St. Albert the Great to describe three methods of contraception belongs to the biographer of St. Albert; all the forces that made Pope Sixtus V decree the penalties of murder for contraception are the domain of the social historian of sixteenth-century Rome. No historian describes all the factors, for he does not know them all; of necessity there is choice and emphasis. Here I have tried to catch the most significant pressures and events that affected the doctrine on contraception. There is an advantage to looking at a single set of concepts over two thousand years."

"There is a consensus in the Catholic Church. The Orthodox churches not in communion with Rome are outside of this consensus: The propositions constituting a condemnation of contraception are, it will be seen, recurrent. Since the first clear mention of contraception by a Christian theologian, when a harsh third-century moralist accused a pope of encouraging it, the articulated judgment has been the same. In the world of the late Empire known to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, in the Ostrogothic Arles of Bishop Caesarius and the Suevian Braga of Bishop Martin, in the Paris of St. Albert and St. Thomas, in the Renaissance Rome of Sixtus V and the Renaissance Milan of St. Charles Borromeo, in the Naples of St. Alphonsus Liguori and Liege of Charles Billuart, in the Philadelphia of Bishop Kenrick, and in the Bombay of Cardinal Gracias, the teachers of the Church have taught without hestitation or variation that certain acts preventing procreation are gravely sinful. No Catholic theologian has ever taught, 'Contraception is a good act.' The teaching on contraception is clear and apparently fixed forever."

"The judgments made by Christians on contraception in the first four centuries can be understood only if the existence, effect, and use of contraceptive technique in the Roman Empire are appraised. The existence of contraceptive technique in the pre-Christian Mediterranean world is well established. The oldest surviving documents are from Egypt."

"Contraceptives were discriminated from abortifacients in theory. In practice it was difficult to distinguish between abortive and contraceptive effects of some potions, and according to the most authoritative writer, Soranos, this difficulty attended every potion he would recommend. Use off the sterile period, precoital pessaries, postcoital exercise, and gum for the male genitals were all intended to work only contraceptively. All of the latter methods, however, did involve an attack on the sperm; even the sterile period was supposed to be sterile because the menstrual flow would affect the seed. It is also germane to the Christian judgment that almost all the methods used were intended to achieve only temporary sterility. Only a few potions were apparently intended to sterilize permanently. The other potions and all the other means proposed were ways by which pregnancy might be postponed or a given time."

"The existence of contraceptive methods in the world from which the Christians[[ came is established: by the [[Old Testament, by the Talmud, by Aristotle, by Pliny, by the physicians, and by imperial law. Coitus interruptus, potions, pessaries, spermicide, genital salves, postcoital exercises, the sterile period- a very wide range of possible techniques was known. The extent to which contraception was practiced is far more conjectural. From the prevalence of more brutal forms of population control, from the fragmentary indications of population decline, from the presumed psychology of slaves, from the great interest of imperial law in encouraging members of the more successful classes to raise at least three children-from these circumstantial and comparatively slight data, the inference may be drawn that contraception was a social phenomenon in the Roman empire of which the Christians could not have been ignorant. What judgment did the Christians give upon it?"

"In the more interesting area of contraception practiced by a willing person or couple, economic motivation is as old as the ‘’paupercula’’ of the penitentials. But not much is said on this motivation by the thirteenth-century canonists and theologians. The decretal ‘’Si aliquis’’ is taken from Burchard, but Burchard’s reference to “the poor little woman” is not picked up-possibly for no better reason than that it occurred in the portion of Burchard devoted to [[confessional] interrogation rather than in the collection of canons where ‘’Si aliquis’’ was embedded. Of the thirteenth-centurywriters I have examined, only Hostiensis makes reference to an economic impulse in contraceptive practice, and he only obliquely touches the subject. Commenting on marriage, he warns against contraception and then adds, “Let the offspring be gratefully received whether it be a boy or a girl; give thanks to the Creator and do not murmur even in the face of exceeding poverty” (‘’The Golden Summa’’ 4, “Marriage,” 19). In the first quarter of the fourteenth century there is the first reference to economic motive by an important theologian. Peter de Palude, a Dominican moralist of standing, notes that the husband’s motive in coitus interruptus may be to avoid having “more children than he can feed” (‘’On the Sentences’’ 4.31.3). His statement is repeated in the fifteenth century by St. Antoninus of Florence, the German Dominican John Nider, and the Franciscan Trovamala. This verbatim repetition is, or course, only evidence that Palude did not seem so farfetched that a later writer had to excise or explain his observation. Independently of Palude, Panormitanus also supposes that “some do this because of poverty” (Commentary 5.12.5). With such authorities making or repeating the assertion that poverty may lead to contraception, it may be concluded that the case was familiar to the theologians; how often it was encountered in fact is a matter for speculation."

"It may, however, be helpful to make two points on the language used by the church writers to describe contraceptive behavior, as these points bear on the frequency with which such behavior is encountered, and to add to these points two medieval estimates of the incidence of contraceptive behavior. The common practice of the scholastic writers was to identify artificial contraceptives by the comprehensive but blind phrase “poisons of sterility.” The repetition of this circumlocution of Augustine is not evidence that the theologians using it were not familiar with particular forms of such poisons. The phrase was an easy way of designating contraceptives without imparting detailed information about them and without becoming involved in an appraisal of their efficacy."

"Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life, but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality."

"Contraception falsifies the inner truth of conjugal love."

"When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings that God the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as 'arbiters' of the divine plan and they 'manipulate' and degrade human sexuality—and with it themselves and their married partner—by altering its value of 'total' self-giving. Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life, but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality."

"When, instead, by means of recourse to periods of infertility, the couple respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of human sexuality, they are acting as 'ministers' of God's plan and they 'benefit from' their sexuality according to the original dynamism of 'total' self-giving, without manipulation or alteration" ."

"With regard to the question of lawful birth regulation, the ecclesial community at the pre-sent time must take on the task of instilling conviction and offering practical help to those who wish to live out their parenthood in a truly responsible way. "In this matter, while the Church notes with satisfaction the results achieved by scientific research aimed at more precise knowledge of the rhythms of women's fertility, and while it encourages a more decisive and wide-ranging extension of that research, it cannot fail to call with renewed vigor on the responsibility of all—doctors, experts, marriage counselors, teachers and married couples—who can actually help married people to live their love with respect for the structure and finalities of the conjugal act which expresses that love. This implies a broader, more decisive and more systematic effort to make the natural methods of regulating fertility known, respected and applied. A very valuable witness can and should be given by those husbands and wives who, through their joint exercise of periodic continence, have reached a more mature personal responsibility with regard to love and life. As Paul VI wrote: 'To them the Lord entrusts the task of making visible to people the holiness and sweetness of the law which unites the mutual love of husband and wife with their cooperation with the love of God the author of human life."

"This new state of things gives rise to new questions. Granted the conditions of life today and taking into account the relevance of married love to the harmony and mutual fidelity of husband and wife, would it not be right to review the moral norms in force till now, especially when it is felt that these can be observed only with the gravest difficulty, sometimes only by heroic effort? Moreover, if one were to apply here the so called principle of totality, could it not be accepted that the intention to have a less prolific but more rationally planned family might transform an action which renders natural processes infertile into a licit and provident control of birth? Could it not be admitted, in other words, that procreative finality applies to the totality of married life rather than to each single act? A further question is whether, because people are more conscious today of their responsibilities, the time has not come when the transmission of life should be regulated by their intelligence and will rather than through the specific rhythms of their own bodies."

"In relation to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised, either by the deliberate and generous decision to raise a numerous family, or by the decision, made for grave motives and with due respect for the moral law, to avoid for the time being, or even for an indeterminate period, a new birth. Responsible parenthood also and above all implies a more profound relationship to the objective moral order established by God, of which a right conscience is the faithful interpreter. The responsible exercise of parenthood implies, therefore, that husband and wife recognize fully their own duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a correct hierarchy of values. In the task of transmitting life, therefore, they are not free to proceed completely at will, as if they could determine in a wholly autonomous way the honest path to follow; but they must conform their activity to the creative intention of God, expressed in the very nature of marriage and of its acts, and manifested by the constant teaching of the Church."

"Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one's partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source."

"We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when. We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it —in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong. On the other hand, the Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there from—provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever."

"Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the later they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love."

"Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection. Finally, careful [consideration]] should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authority who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife. Consequently, unless we are willing that the responsibility of procreating life should be left to the arbitrary decision of men, we must accept that there are certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go, to the power of man over his own body and its natural functions—limits, let it be said, which no one, whether as a private individual or as a public authority, can lawfully exceed. These limits are expressly imposed because of the reverence due to the whole human organism and its natural functions, in the light of the principles We stated earlier, and in accordance with a correct understanding of the "principle of totality" enunciated by Our predecessor Pope Pius XII."

"The teaching of the Church regarding the proper regulation of birth is a promulgation of the law of God Himself. And yet there is no doubt that to many it will appear not merely difficult but even impossible to observe. Now it is true that like all good things which are outstanding for their nobility and for the benefits which they confer on men, so this law demands from individual men and women, from families and from human society, a resolute purpose and great endurance. Indeed it cannot be observed unless God comes to their help with the grace by which the goodwill of men is sustained and strengthened. But to those who consider this matter diligently it will indeed be evident that this endurance enhances man's dignity and confers benefits on human society."

"Our next appeal is to men of science. These can "considerably advance the welfare of marriage and the family and also peace of conscience, if by pooling their efforts they strive to elucidate more thoroughly the conditions favorable to a proper regulation of births." It is supremely desirable, and this was also the mind of Pius XII, that medical science should by the study of natural rhythms succeed in determining a sufficiently secure basis for the chaste limitation of offspring. In this way scientists, especially those who are Catholics, will by their research establish the truth of the Church's claim that "there can be no contradiction between two divine laws—that which governs the transmitting of life and that which governs the fostering of married love.""

"The historically sharp dividing line between birth control and abortion has well and truly been obliterated by the New Abortionists: The pharmaceutical companies"

"[I]t is obvious that the Pill has contributed greatly to our country's exploding divorce rate, which was about 18 percent in 1965 and now stands at about 50 percent."

"After the Pill was introduced in the mid-1960s, fornication and 'shacking up' both almost doubled in a period of only five years. This behavior also increased steeply when abor-tion was legalized in 1973. People of all ages (but especially teenagers) are fornicating more than ever before. Wife-swapping clubs, sex addiction treatment organizations, hard-core pornography, and 'fantasy [[w:Sex tour|[sex] tours]]' to Far East nations have increased tremendously. Even the original developers of the birth control pill now acknowledge that their invention has led to widespread promiscuity. Dr. Robert Kirstner of Harvard Medical School said that "For years I thought the pill would not lead to promiscuity, but I've changed my mind. I think it probably has." And Dr. [w:Min-Chueh Chang| Min-Chueh Chang]], one of the co-developers of the birth control pill, has acknowledged that "[Young people] indulge in too much sexual activity ... I personally feel the pill has rather spoiled young people. It's made them more permissive." Dr. Alan Guttmacher, former director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, also drew a clear picture of the connection between abortion and contraception within the context of increased promiscuity; "When an abortion is easily obtainable, contraception is neither actively nor diligently used. If we had abortion on demand, there would be no reward for the woman who practiced effective contraception. Abortion on demand relieves the husband of all possible responsibility; he simply becomes a coital animal." Finally, psychologists Eugene Sandburg and Ralph Jacobs noted the obvious connection between contraception and abortion as birth control; "As legal abortion has become increasingly available, it has become evident that some women are now intentionally using abortion as a substitute for contraception." Dr. Min-Chueh's quote, above, showed that he was certainly correct in his assessment of the situation. In 1970, only 4.6 percent of all girls aged 15 had fornicated before marriage. In 1990, this rate had increased more than sevenfold to 33.1 percent. Of all unmarried girls in the 15 to 19 age bracket, 28.6 percent had fornicated in 1970. This rate had more than doubled to 61.4 percent by 1990."

"The evolution of the birth control pill from pure contraceptive to frequent abortifacient poses important questions to pro-life activists. Many women (including pro-lifers) who would never even consider a surgical abortion now use low-dose birth control pills that cause them to abort on an average of once or twice every year. A large number of pro-life women use these pills, and these are usually the women who cannot seem to make the connection between contraception and abortion in their minds. These women and their husbands are employing a self-defense mechanism known as denial, and this eventually causes their entire pro-life philosophy to unravel. Ironically, the average pro-abortion woman has at most two or three surgical abortions during her childbearing years, while the average 'pro-life' woman on the Pill for ten years aborts at least ten times. Some researchers (using very conservative figures) have calculated that the birth control pill directly causes between 1.53 and 4.15 million chemical abortions per year between one and two and a half times the total number of surgical abortions committed in this country every year!"

"The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services allows the use of an emergency contraceptive for a woman who has been raped, as a defense against her attacker's sperm, provided the drug prevents fertilization and does not act against a conceived human life. Catholic emergency rooms around the country have been pressured to provide Plan B (LNG-EC) to patients seeking help after a sexual assault. Catholic bioethicists have supported the use of this drug based on their interpretation of the scientific literature regarding its mechanism of action."

"The Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care Services in directive 36 shows the care that Catholic hospitals should take in protecting the victim of rape from possible consequences of the assault, including pregnancy, as long as the agent used is contraceptive: Compassionate and understanding care should be given to a person who is the victim of sexual assault. Healthcare provider should cooperate with law enforcement officials and offer the person psychological and spiritual support as well as accurate medical information. A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization, all of which would be contraceptive actions. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum. (USCCB 2009, emphasis added) The standard emergency contraceptive used for this purpose is levonorgestrel (LNG-EC) 0.75 mg given within 120 hours of the sexual assault and then repeated 12 hours later, or 1.5 mg given in a single dose. The medical literature claims that the drug works primarily by preventing ovulation. Despite concerns that this drug might work after fertilization, the use of this drug in Catholic emergency rooms in cases of rape was mandated in some states (Davis 2007)."

"Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois, developed a rape protocol for Catholic hospitals to assure “that the effect of the intervention would be truly contraceptive, and not abortifacient” (McShane 2009, 131). The emergency room rape protocol allows the administration of LNG-EC if the woman's menstrual history indicates she is preovulatory, her physical exam is compatible with being in the preovulatory phase, she has a negative urinary lutenizing hormone (LH) test, and has a serum progesterone level less than 1.5 ng/ml, which is compatible with being preovulatory. If the LH surge is positive, indicating the woman will ovulate in the next 24–36 hours, or the serum progesterone level is between 1.5 and 5.9 ng/ml, then she is near ovulation and LNG-EC should not be given. If she is postovulatory with a serum progesterone level of 6 ng/ml or greater, the drug can be given because she is already postovulatory and there is no harm in giving the drug. In this case the patient is beyond her fertile window and possible conception, anyway. The w:Saint Francis Peoria ProtocolSaint Francis Peoria Protocol is based on the moral argument that treatment provided under this protocol is intended to prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. Excluded from this protocol are treatments that would have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum. (McShane 2009, 133)"

"The [immoral]] conditions of giving EC after a rape are discussed in ‘’Dignitas personae which states: Alongside methods of preventing pregnancy which are, properly speaking, contraceptive, that is, which prevent conception following from a sexual act, there are other technical means which act after fertilization, when the [embryo]] is already constituted, either before or after implantation in the uterine wall. Such methods are interceptive if they interfere with the embryo before implantation and contragestative if they cause the elimination of the embryo once implanted. In order to promote wider use of the interceptive methods (emphasis added), it is sometimes stated that the way in which they function is not sufficiently understood. It is true there is not always complete knowledge of the way that different pharmaceuticals operate, but scientific studies indicate that the effect of inhibiting implantation is certainly present, even if this does not mean that such interceptives cause an abortion every time they are used, also because conception does not occur after every act of sexual intercourse. It must be noted, however, that anyone who seeks to prevent the implantation of an embryo which may possibly have been conceived and who therefore either requests or prescribes such a pharmaceutical, generally intends an abortion (emphasis added). (CDF 2008, n. 23, original emphasis except where indicated otherwise)"

"Some fifty years ago contraceptives were debated in terms of marital ethics. Their advocates insisted on the right of each married couple to live their sexual life as they choose, without any pressure from outside (except from those who harped on the population bomb). The context has significantly changed today. The use of contraceptives is no longer presented as a personal right of married people but, we are told, as almost a universal social duty for everyone. For if marriage is on the wane, sex is on the increase. The sexual revolution of the 1960s has been totally successful. We have achieved sexual liberation on a universal scale: "sex for everyone". Sex, of any type and with anyone, has indeed become a main commodity of our consumer society - so absorbing and yet so handily casual without any ties attached. Nevertheless, not everything is perfect in this new Garden of Eden. Unfortunately it turns out that sex is not quite "safe"; it is accompanied by dangers (pregnancy, disease). So, our liberated culture has to become a "safe-sex culture"; and in this context contraceptives are presented as more required than ever."

"The practice of contraception is by its very nature a major impediment to growth in married love and married happiness."

"Until quite recently, the argument presented by Christian [moralists]] against artificial birth-control has mainly been that the sexual act is naturally designed for procreation, and it is wrong to frustrate this design because it is wrong to interfere with man's natural functions. Many persons are not quite convinced by this argument, which does seem open to rather elementary objections. After all, we do interfere with other natural functions, for instance when we use ear-plugs or hold our nose, etc., and no one has ever argued that to do so is morally wrong. Why then should it be wrong to interfere for good reasons with the procreational aspect of marital intercourse?"

"The argument for conjugal contraception could be summarized as follows. The marriage act has two functions: a biological or procreative function, and a [spiritual]]-unitive function. However, while it is only potentially a procreative act, it is actually and in itself a love act: it truly expresses conjugal love and unites husband and wife. Now, while contraception frustrates the biological or procreative potential of the marital act, it fully respects its spiritual and unitive function; in fact it facilitates it by removing tensions or fears capable of impairing the expression of love in married intercourse. In other words - this position claims - while contraception nullifies the procreative aspect of marital intercourse, it leaves its unitive aspect intact."

"Contraceptive intercourse is an exercise in meaninglessness. It could perhaps be compared to going through the actions of singing without letting any sound of mu-sic pass one's lips. Love-duets used to be more popular on the movies than they are nowadays. Two lovers who, together and in opera-style, express their mutual love in song. How absurd if they were to sing silent duets: going through the motions of singing, but not allowing their vocal chords to produce an intelligible sound: just meaningless reverberations...; a hurry or a flurry of movement signifying nothing. Contraceptive intercourse is very much like that. Contraceptive spouses involve each other in bodily movements, but their "body language" is not truly human. They refuse to let their bodies communicate sexually and intelligibly with one another. They go through the motions of a love-song; but there is no song."

"Contraception is in fact not just an action without meaning; it is an action that contradicts the essential meaning which true conjugal intercourse should have as signifying total and unconditional self-donation. Instead of accepting each other totally, contraceptive spouses reject each other in part, because fertility is part of each one of them. They reject part of their mutual love - its power to be fruitful."

"In [true]] marital union, husband and wife are meant to experience the vibration of human vitality in its very source. In the case of contraceptive "union", the spouses experience sensation, but it is drained of real vitality. The anti-life effect of contraception does not stop at the "No" which it addresses to the possible fruit of love. It tends to take the very life out of love itself. Within the hard logic of contraception, anti-life becomes anti-love. Its devitalizing effect devastates love, threatening it with early ageing and premature death."

"It is logical that their love-making be troubled by a sense of falseness or hollowness, for they are attempting to found the uniqueness of the spousal relationship on an act of pleasure that tends ultimately to close each one of them sterilely in on himself or herself, and they are refusing to found that relationship on the truly unique conjugal dimension of loving co-creativity which is capable, in its vitality, of opening each of them out not merely to one another but to the whole of life and creation."

"In the body language of intercourse, each spouse utters a word of love that is both a "self-expression" - an image of each one's self - as well as an expression of his or her longing for the other. These two words of love meet, and are fused in one. And, if this new unified word of love takes on flesh, God shapes it into a person - the child: the incarnation of the husband's and wife's sexual knowledge of one another and sexual love for one another. In contraception, the spouses will not let the word - which their sexuality longs to utter - take flesh. They will not even truly speak the word to each other. They remain humanly impotent in the face of love; sexually dumb and carnally speechless before one another. Sexual love is a love of the whole male or female person, body and spirit. Love is falsified if body and spirit do not say the same thing. This is what happens in contraception. The bodily act speaks of a presence of love or of a degree of love that is denied by the spirit. The body says, "I love you totally", whereas the spirit says, "I love you reservedly". The body says, "I seek you"; the spirit says, "I will not accept you, not all of you". Contraceptive intercourse falls below mere pantomime. It is disfigured body-language; it expresses a rejection of the other. By it, each says: "I do not want to know you as my husband or my wife; I am not prepared to recognize you as my spouse. I want something from you, but not your sexuality; and if I have something to give to you, something I will let you take, it is not my sexuality". This reflection enables us to develop a point we touched on earlier. The negation that a contraceptive couple are involved in is not directed only toward children, or only toward life, or only toward the world. They address a negation directly toward one another. "I prefer a sterile you", is equivalent to saying, "I don't want all you offer me. I have calculated the measure of my love, and it is not big enough for that; it is not able to take all of you. I want a 'you' cut down to the size of my love..." The fact that both spouses may concur in accepting a cut-rate version of each other does not save their love or their lives - or their possibilities of happiness - from the effects of such radical human and sexual devaluation."

"Normal conjugal intercourse fully asserts masculinity and femininity. The man asserts himself as man and husband, and the woman equally asserts herself as woman and wife. In contraceptive intercourse, only a maimed sexuality is asserted. In the truest sense sexuality is not asserted at all. Contraception represents such a refusal to let oneself be [known]] that it simply is not real carnal knowledge. A deep human truth underlies the theological and juridic principle that contraceptive sex does not consummate marriage. Contraceptive intercourse, then, is not real sexual intercourse at all. By it the spouses simply do not become "one flesh" (Gen 2: 24). That is why the disjunctives offered by this whole matter are insufficiently expressed by saying that if intercourse is contraceptive, then it is merely hedonistic. This may or may not be true. What is true - at a much deeper level - is that if intercourse is contraceptive, then it is not sexual. In contraception there is an "intercourse" of sensation, but no real sexual knowledge or sexual love, no true sexual revelation of self or sexual communication of self or sexual gift of self. The choice of contraception is in fact the rejection of sexuality. The warping of the sexual instinct from which modern society seems to suffer is not so much an excess of sex, as a lack of true human sexuality."

"True conjugal intercourse unites. Contraception separates, and the separation works right along the line. It not only separates sex from procreation, it also separates sex from love. It separates pleasure from meaning, and body from mind. Ultimately and surely, it separates wife from husband and husband from wife. Contraceptive couples who stop to reflect can sense that their marriage is troubled by some deep malaise. The alienations they are experiencing are a sign as well as a consequence of the grave violation of the moral order involved in contraception. Only a resolute effort to break with contraceptive practices can heal the sickness affecting their married life. This is why the teaching of Humanae vitae, as well as subsequent magisterium on the matter, far from being a blind adherence to an outdated posture, represent a totally clear-sighted defence of the innate dignity and true meaning of human and spousal sexuality."

"Our argument so far is that contraceptive marital sex does not achieve any true per-sonalist end. It does not bring about self-fulfillment in marriage, but rather pre-vents and frustrates it. But - one may still ask - does it follow that open-to-life marital sex alone leads to the self-fulfillment of the spouses? I think it does; and the reason lies in the very nature of love. Love is creative. God's love (if we may put it this way) "drove" Him to create. Man's love, made in the image of God's, is also meant to create. If it deliberately does not do so, it frustrates itself."

"[[w:Procreation|[P]rocreative]] intercourse fulfills because it expresses the human person's desire for self-perpetuation. It expresses it and does not contradict it, as contraception does. It is only on life-wishes, not on death-wishes, that love can thrive. When a normal married couple have a child, they pass their child joyfully to each other. If their child dies, there is no joy, there are tears, as they pass its dead body to one another. Spouses should weep over a contraceptive act: a barren, desolate act which rejects the life that is meant to keep love alive, and would kill the life their love naturally seeks to give origin to. There may be physical satisfaction, but there can be no joy in passing dead seed; or in passing living seed only to kill it."

"If continuous and growing sexual frustration is a main consequence of marital contraception, this is also because the contraceptive mentality deprives the very strength of the sexual urge of its real meaning and purpose, and then tries to find full sexual experience and satisfaction in what is basically little more than a physical release."

"Until the end of the nineteenth century, contraception was condemned by all Christian denominations as immoral or unnatural and contrary to divine law. Today the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches are practically alone in adhering to this position."

"The changes in the Church of England attitude to contraception are interesting to trace. The first Anglican position was a clearcut condemnation of contraception as a threat to both Church and State. The Lambeth Conference of 1920 issued a solemn warning against “the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception”, and stressed that the primary purpose of marriage was the procreation of children. This judgment was echoed by the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, meeting at Portland, Oregon, on September 15, 1922. The Lambeth Conference of 1930 again declared that the primary purpose of marriage was the procreation of children, but conceded that in certain limited circumstances, contraception might be morally legitimate. In a resolution, passed by 193 votes to 67, the Conference declared: “Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, in those cases where there is such a clearly-felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception-control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.”"

"The change in attitude from 1920 to 1958 was brought about partly by social changes. In 1920 there was widespread fear of under population, while in 1958 prospects of over population aroused anxiety, especially in India, Africa and the West Indies, all strongly represented at the Conference. A second factor affecting the decision was the modern development of knowledge of the safe period, showing that nature provided her own method of birth control. A third influence was the theological development of the doctrine of Christian marriage which had taken place since 1920. The Conference of that year had been unequivocal in stressing procreation as the primary purpose of marriage, and this had been repeated in 1930. The 1958 Conference, on the other hand, did not stress the reproductive end of marriage in this way. Biblical revelation, it was agreed, did not limit the function of sexuality and the family to the reproductive process, but stressed equally the companionate purpose of marriage. These two ends are not separable in importance, “are not subordinated one to the other; they are not directly related to one another; their relationship, in the developing experience of Israel, is to be found in yet a third area-that of the place of the family in giving responsible security to the children born of the love of husband and wife.” A parallel development in Anglican theology has been the increasing stress on “henosis”, the union of man and wife in one flesh, that takes place within the marriage relationship. Christ himself stressed this aspect of marriage, and St Paul developed the doctrine. The act of ‘’coitus’’, far from being a merely physiological device to perpetuate the race, has a quasi-sacramental character, of the highest importance in developing the personal and spiritual life of the married couple. Traditional theology is inadequate in stressing the procreative purpose of marriage and understanding the intrinsic importance of the sexual act. Some writers have gone so far as to suggest it is ‘’henosis’’ that is primary in marriage and not procreation."

"[T]he anonymous contributor of the first of three articles on contraception in the authoritative Angli-can publication, The Family in Contemporary Society, concludes that the Church should not give its approval to contraception as a positive good. “it is, to say the least, suspicious that the age in which contraception has won its way is not one which has been conspicuously successful in managing its sexual life. It is possible that, by claiming the right to manipulate his physical processes in this matter, man may, without knowing or intending it, be stepping over the boundary between the world of Christian marriage and what one may call the world of Aphrodite-the world of sterile eroticism against which the Church reacted so strongly (perhaps too strongly) in its early days? For one of the characteristics of the latter world was (and is) the exercise of unlimited self-determination in sexual activity.”"

"Karl Barth is another contemporary theologian who has discussed contraception at rather greater length. Having conceded that family planning is generally accepted by theologians as desirable, he goes on to discuss the legitimacy of the means that may be employed. Abstinence he characterizes as an “heroic” course, which is not wrong in itself but may be psychologically dangerous. The safe period might seem the ideal expedient, but the anxiety caused by its unreliability as well as its check on the spontaneous nature of sexual expression are grave objections to its use. Coitus interruptus is fraught with psychological dangers and its practice may well imperil marital union. There remains the last alternative of contraception, the use of mechanical devices, which are not evil in themselves. If, says Dr Barth, human interference with the natural act of coitus is regarded as wrong in itself, then all four methods must be rejected without distinction. If, on the other hand, family limitation is recognized as desirable, then it should be recognized that all the methods are open to some objection, and this is the price to be paid for an extension of freedom. In making the choice between the various methods certain considerations apply. The choice must be made in faith and with a free conscience, and it must be a joint decision of husband and wife taking into account the significance of their joint life together and the whole purpose of the matrimonial union. These Protestant approaches are similar in that they offer no binding principle which can be universally applied, but rather that in certain circumstances the informed Christian conscience can conclude that contraception is lawful without the incurring of sin."

"Official acceptance of birth control by Protestant Churches has kept pace with theological development. In March 1931, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America approved of artificial methods of birth control by a vote of 24 to 4. Since then, numerous other Protestant Churches and Sects have followed suit. In 1954 the Synod of the Augustana Church at its meeting in Los Angeles endorsed birth control. The Methodist Church in America took unanimous similar action at its General conference in 1956. In England, Methodists have expressed similar views. In May 1959, the United Presbyterian church in the U.S.A. at its General Assembly reversed its former condemnation of birth control. Typical of numerous Protestant statements is the following by the Reverend James L. Novarro: “We Baptists definitely consider fertility and conception as providential and a power given to man to be properly utilized. Fertility and conception should not be left up to accident, but should be well planned thereby contributing to the moral, spiritual, and physical health of all concerned.” Baptists, however, like many Protestant sects have not officially supported birth control but leave it to the consciences of individual members of their congregation to decide for themselves. It seems beyond question that the overwhelming weight of Protestant opinion favours artificial birth control at least to some degree."

"Although Protestant opinion was responsible for the passing of the Comstock law and its State derivatives, the profound changes which have taken place in its assessment of birth control now render it hostile to such legisla-tion. Those who accept contraception as a positive good could hardly favour its theoretical outlawing. The same is true of those who favour its use in exceptional circumstances only, and those who leave the whole matter to be decided by the individual conscience. To legislate on the matter would be to substitute the collective moral assessment of the community for that of the individual. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the Protestant churches have taken a leading part in seeking to repeal or amend the legislation passed by their predecessors. This zeal may not have been totally disinterested since the laws in question are now by an historical paradox enthusiastically supported by the Roman Catholic community, and the movement for repeal is certainly influenced by dislike of Catholic power, as well as by a less reasonable anti-Catholicism. Protestants and others might well be satisfied by the lifting of the ban on contraceptive advice given for medical reasons, and although this limitation has become illogical with the theological acceptance of contraception as part of married life, it might well be acceptable since in practice it means that married couples who wish to obtain contraceptives may do so."

"As a scholar specializing in both the history of the Catholic Church and gender studies, I can attest that for almost 2,000 years, the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception has been one of constant change and development. And although Catholic moral theology has consistently condemned contraception, it has not always been the church battleground that it is today."

"The first Christians knew about contraception and likely practiced it. Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman texts, for example, discuss well-known contraceptive practices, ranging from the withdrawal method to the use of crocodile dung, dates and honey to block or kill semen. Indeed, while Judeo-Christian scripture encourages humans to “be fruitful and multiply,” nothing in Scripture explicitly prohibits contraception. When the first Christian theologians condemned contraception, they did so not on the basis of religion but in a give-and-take with cultural practices and social pressures. Early opposition to contraception was often a reaction to the threat of heretic groups, such as the Gnostics and Manichees. And before the 20th century, theologians assumed that those who practiced contraception were “fornicators” and “prostitutes.”"

"The fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine characterized the sexual act between spouses as immoral self-indulgence if the couple tried to prevent conception. The church, however, had little to say about contraception for many centuries. For example, after the decline of the Roman Empire, the church did little to explicitly prohibit contraception, teach against it, or stop it, though people undoubtedly practiced it. Most penitence manuals from the Middle Ages, which directed priests what types of sins to ask parishioners about, did not even mention contraception. It was only in 1588 that Pope Sixtus V took the strongest conservative stance against contraception in Catholic history. With his papal bull “Effraenatam,” he ordered all church and civil penalties for homicide to be brought against those who practiced contraception. However, both church and civil authorities refused to enforce his orders, and laypeople virtually ignored them. In fact, three years after Sixtus’s death, the next pope repealed most of the sanctions and told Christians to treat “Effraenatam” “as if it had never been issued.” By the mid-17th century, some church leaders even admitted couples might have legitimate reasons to limit family size to better provide for the children they already had."

"By the 19th century, scientific knowledge about the human reproductive system advanced, and contraceptive technologies improved. New discussions were needed. Victorian-era sensibilities, however, deterred most Catholic clergy from preaching on issues of sex and contraception. When an 1886 penitential manual instructed confessors to ask parishioners explicitly whether they practiced contraception and to refuse absolution for sins unless they stopped, “the order was virtually ignored.” By the 20th century, Christians in some of the most heavily Catholic countries in the world, such as France and Brazil, were among the most prodigious users of artificial contraception, leading to dramatic decline in family size."

"By the early 1950s, however, options for artificial contraception were growing, including the pill. Devout Catholics wanted explicit permission to use them. Church leaders confronted the issue head-on, expressing a variety of viewpoints. In light of these new contraceptive technologies and developing scientific knowledge about when and how conception occurs, some leaders believed the church could not know God’s will on this issue and should stop pretending that it did, as Dutch Bishop William Bekkers said outright on national television in 1963. Even Paul VI admitted his confusion. In an interview with an Italian journalist in 1965, he stated, “The world asks what we think and we find ourselves trying to give an answer. But what answer? We can’t keep silent. And yet to speak is a real problem. But what? The Church has never in her history confronted such a problem.”"

"Although no Scripture mentioned contraception, Ford believed the church’s teachings were grounded in divine revelation and therefore not to be questioned. The question was left for consideration by the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, held between 1963 to 1966. This commission by an overwhelming majority – a reported 80 percent – recommended the church expand its teaching to accept artificial contraception. That was not at all unusual. The Catholic Church had changed its stance on many controversial issues over the centuries, such as slavery, usury and Galileo’s theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. Minority opinion, however, feared that to suggest the church had been wrong these last decades would be to admit the church had been lacking in direction by the Holy Spirit. Paul VI eventually sided with this minority view and issued “[w:Humanae Vitae|Humanae Vitae]],” prohibiting all forms of artificial birth control. His decision, many argue, was not about contraception per se but the preservation of church authority. An outcry ensued from both priests and laypeople. One lay member of the commission commented, “It was as if they had found some old unpublished encyclical from the 1920s in a drawer somewhere in the Vatican, dusted it off, and handed it out.”"

"The problem of responsible procreation represents a particularly delicate point in Catholic moral teaching relating to conjugal life. This is especially the case with regard to the administration of the sacrament of Reconciliation, in which doctrinal affirmations confront concrete human situations and the spiritual paths of the individual faithful. It has become necessary, in fact, to recall firm points of reference which make it possible to deal pastorally both with new methods of contraception and the aggravation of the entire phenomenon."

"Contraception, directly opposed to the transmission of life, betrays and falsifies the self-sacrificing love proper to marriage, "altering its value of total self-giving" and contradicting God's design of love, in which it has been granted to married couples to participate."

"The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity; it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of matrimony), and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of human life. A specific and more serious moral evil is present in the use of means which have an abortive effect, impeding the implantation of the embryo which has just been fertilized or even causing its expulsion in an early stage of pregnancy. However, profoundly different from any contraceptive practice is the behavior of married couples, who, always remaining fundamentally open to the gift of life, live their intimacy only in the unfruitful periods, when they are led to this course by serious motives of responsible parenthood. This is true both from the anthropological and moral points of view, because it is rooted in a different conception of the person and of sexuality. The witness of couples who for years have lived in harmony with the plan of the Creator, and who, for proportionately serious reasons, licitly use the methods rightly called "natural," confirms that it is possible for spouses to live the demands of chastity and of married life with common accord and full self-giving."

"On the part of the penitent, the sacrament of Reconciliation requires sincere sorrow, a formally complete accusation of mortal sins, and the resolution, with the help of God, not to fall into sin again. In general, it is not necessary for the confessor to investigate concerning sins committed in invincible ignorance of their evil, or due to an inculpable error of judgment. Although these sins are not imputable, they do not cease, however, to be an evil and a disorder. This also holds for the objective evil of contraception, which introduces a pernicious habit into the conjugal life of the couple. It is therefore necessary to strive in the most suitable way to free the moral conscience from those errors which contradict the nature of conjugal life as a total gift"

"When the penitent shows a willingness to accept the moral teaching, especially in the case of one who habitually frequents the sacrament and demonstrates trust with regard to the spiritual help it offers, it is good to instill confidence in divine Providence and be supportive, in order to help the penitent to examine himself honestly before God. For this purpose it will be necessary to verify the solidity of the motives inducing a limitation of fatherhood or motherhood, and the liceity of the methods chosen to distance or avoid a new birth. Special difficulties are presented by cases of cooperation in the sin of a spouse who voluntarily renders the unitive act infecund. In the first place, it is necessary to distinguish cooperation in the proper sense, from violence or unjust imposition on the part of one of the spouses, which the other spouse in fact cannot resist. This cooperation can be licit when the three following conditions are jointly met: 1. when the action of the cooperating spouse is not already illicit in itself; 2. when proportionally grave reasons exist for cooperating in the sin of the other spouse; 3. when one is seeking to help the other spouse to desist from such conduct (patiently, with prayer, charity and dialogue; although not necessarily in that moment, nor on every single occasion). Furthermore, it is necessary to carefully evaluate the question of cooperation in evil when recourse is made to means which can have an abortifacient effect."

"The Roman Catholic Church allows certain “natural” birth control practices (rhythm method and coitus interruptus), but rejects as sinful the use of artificial contraceptives. This perspective did not develop in a vacuum, but has its origins in the theology of Augustine (354 – 403 A.D.) and Aquinas (1225 – 1274 A.D.). Even though neither theologian directly addressed the issue of birth control, both did much to influence the contemporary Catholic view of the meaning and purpose of sex within marriage."

"Put simply, “seeking venereal pleasure not in accordance with right reason [procreation]” is the essence of “the sin of lust.” Marital sex must be consistent “with the end of the venereal act” or one commits a “vice against nature, which attaches to every venereal act from which generation cannot follow.” If the sin of lust is present in marriage when the sex act is inconsistent with the goal of procreation, only sex performed with openness to the possibility of children is free of sin and divinely ordained."

"In the papal encyclical Casti Connubii (“On Christian Marriage”) by Pope Pius XI, birth control is described as a “criminal abuse” by those who “frustrate the marriage act” by committing “a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.” No excuse is valid including “difficulties… on the part of the mother or on the part of family circumstance.” Furthermore, “no reason, however grave, may be put forward” to justify the use of birth control. Those who feel overwhelmed by childrearing have no excuse and are guilty of sinful lust, “wish[ing] to gratify their desires without their consequent burden.”"

"Before the Reformation, the value of sexual intercourse was viewed almost exclusively through the lens of procreation. After the Reformation, the lens widened to embrace the unique joys and pleasures of the covenant companionship marriage provides. Thus, sex could be wholeheartedly enjoyed even if performed without the express intention of conceiving children. This view helped paved the way for acceptance of what are now known as “natural” birth control methods. Yet, neither the Catholics nor the Reformers could ever have fathomed the numerous other options that would arise in light of modern medical advances."

"Contemporary life has brought with it a new openness to birth control. Technological advances have produced newer, safer, and more reliable birth control options. As with all technological advances, this has been a mixed blessing. Obviously, the same birth control methods that can be used responsibly by married couples are also available to decrease the risk of pregnancy and disease for those who choose to live sexually immoral lives. At the same time, our “culture of death” seems fixated on undervaluing and cheapening human life through violence and abortion and human sexuality through the objectification of people into sex objects. This complex state of affairs is the backdrop for the current debate among Christians concerning “family planning” and the means of family planning—birth control methods."

"Natural family planning advocates argue that only “natural” birth control methods such as the rhythm method (avoiding intercourse when the chances of conception are high) and coitus interruptus (withdrawing the penis from the vagina prior to ejaculation) are acceptable to God. They contrast these methods to the “artificial” methods of contraceptives, such as condoms, foams, and the pill. The difference between these two positions rests on the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” forms of birth control—a distinction that is fuzzy, forced, and ultimately, unhelpful."

"All methods involve some unnatural element intruding into the course of marital union. What is natural about imprisoning “couples in a casuistry of methods, and forc[ing] them to discover tricks in order to dodge and escape the letter of the official doctrine”? Isn’t it obvious that the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” almost disappears, becoming very imprecise and blurred? “The act that becomes ‘safe’ by means of a computation of days or by mastery of the will is in every instance not natural, unless one plays with words.” Therefore, both practitioners of “natural family planning” and users of contraception are engaged in “planned procedures to avoid pregnancy that require communication between husband and wife.”"

"The Bible does not directly address the issue of birth control and family planning. Thus it is impossible to directly prove the propriety of responsible family planning by means of birth control from the Scriptures."

"Since the 1930s, the Catholic Church had been the leading-indeed the only-force working to preserve state laws against birth control in the face of a concerted campaign to repeal them. Two events that occurred in 1965-the conclusion of Vatican II and the Supreme Court's ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut- brought their efforts to an immediate halt. Catholics were astonished when, in 1959, [[Pope John XXIII] convened the Second Vatican Council, which no one had expected. Some were even more surprised by the dramatic changes the council wrought. In the political realm, that meant prodding Catholics to fight for social justice while prohibiting them from restricting the religious freedom of others. The Church, which had long sought to enforce personal morality through politics, now faced constraints. At the same time, Catholics who favored campaigns for social justice now had more than ever to engage in them. Campaigns for tougher obscenity laws, an area of traditional interest for the American Catholic Church, gave way to liberal priests' protests against the Vietnam War. Anti-vice campaigns were out civil rights were in."

"At the time, Protestants, like Catholics, opposed contraception, and they saw a connection between abortion and birth control. The anti-obscenity crusader Anthony Comstock lumped birth control, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and abortion under the general category of obscenity, and the laws for which he campaigned in the 1870s attempted to limit all of these supposed vices by making it illegal to send advertisements for contraceptives or abortions through the mail. For fifty years, Comstock's prohibitions remained the law of the land. The first apparent challenge to this consensus came with the birth control campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s. The campaigns were not about abortion per se- they focused on contraception-but Catholics nevertheless viewed them as a dangerous assault on human life that would soon put the societal consensus against abortion in jeopardy. For decades, the two issues had been linked, in both Catholic teaching and public discussion. In addition to the national Comstock laws, there were state laws that restricted the sale or use of birth control devices. Neither Catholic nor Protestant churches approved of contraception; the Anglican Communion issued official condemnations of the practice in 1908 and 1920."

"In the early 1920s, Margaret Sanger and her American Birth Control League (which later became Planned Parenthood) challenged this taboo and quickly won widespread acceptance among middle-class Protestants for the use of contraceptive devices. The Anglican Communion reversed course in 1930 and declared that Christian married couples had a right to use artificial birth control, and other Protestant church bodies quickly followed suit. The Federal Council of Churches' on Marriage and the Home issued a report endorsing contraception in in 1931. By the late 1930, national committees of the American Episcopal, United Methodist, United Presbyterian, and Congregational Christian Churches had officially endorsed birth control. Several Jewish organizations, including the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the National Council of Jewish Women, did the same. Though many Protestant fundamentalists continued to oppose contraception for several decades, liberal Protestants and Jews embraces it as a progressive humanitarian measure. By 1946, 3,200 ministers were members of Planned Parenthood's Clergyman's Council."

"In 1947, 98 percent of American doctors approved of contraception for health reasons and 79 percent approved of it in cases when a family's economic situation required it. One Jesuit philosophy professor in Kansas lamented in the mid-1950s that it was almost impossible to find a non-Catholic doctor who would refuse to fit a patient with a birth control device in at least some circumstances. In less than a generation, a once-taboo (and often illegal) practice had become a positive good that was now used by most middle-class Protestant couples, prescribed by their doctor's and endorsed by their pastors. A few heavily Catholic states in the Northeast, including Massachusetts and [[Connecticut, continued to restrict the sale of birth control devices until the 1960s, but those states were in the minority. After the 1930s, the overwhelming body of Protestant opinion in the United States was in favor of birth control use, with 85 percent of Americans in 1943 believing that married women should have access to contraceptives, according to a Fortune magazine survey."

"With the exception of some Protestant fundamentalists, Catholics stood almost alone in their refusal to countenance artificial birth control and sterilization under any circumstances. While a sizeable minority of Catholics (a minority that included 30 percent of married, white Catholic women of childbearing age, according to a 1955 survey) quietly violated official Catholic teaching by using forbidden means of birth control and then abstaining from communion until they received absolution for their "sin" from a priest, the majority of Catholics continued to follow their church's teaching on this issue, and some launched public efforts to oppose the rapid liberalization of public attitudes toward contraception and sterilization. They believed that birth control was equally wrong for both Catholics and non-Catholics, because the use of contraception not only violated nearly two thousand years of Church teaching but was also an offense against natural law which should have been accessible to anyone-whether or not they were Catholic-by reason alone. In their view, abortion, contraception, and sterilization were violations of the same natural law principles, so they were dismayed when Protestants, who for the most part still opposed abortion, nevertheless rejected natural law arguments against contraception and sterilization, thus jettisoning the philosophical principles on which, for Catholics, opposition to abortion rested. Protestants saw the matter differently of course. Though nineteenth-century Protestants had often conflated contraception and abortion, Protestants of the mid-twentieth century separated the two issues, approving of one as a beneficial social good while condemning the other as the taking of a human life that should be performed only in extreme circumstances. But Catholics were convinced that a compromise on contraception would inevitably lead to an acceptance of abortion, and they became increasingly vocal in their defense of the natural law principles that condemned both practices. Indeed, in their successful campaign against a referendum to legalize birth control in Massachusetts in 1948, they claimed that birth control was "like abortion" and against "God's law.""

"Catholic theologians argued that contraception contravened natural law in several ways. First, it separated sex from its natural purpose of procreation. Second, by attempting to prevent the formation of new human life, it challenged God's authority as the Creator. Finally, it treated human life as something to be prevented rather than valued. Contraception introduced a "deadly...cheapening of human life," the Jesuit magazine America charged in 1924. Those who promoted contraception "would destory the [[law of God and the law of nature by interfering with human life at its inception. For they would teach the custodians of human life how to frustrate life before birth. In the views of Catholics, this was only a short step removed from abortion. "Does artificial prevention of life stand on any higher moral ground than the artificial taking of life?" Edward J. Heffron, executive secretary of the National Council of Catholic Men, asked in 1942."

"The birth control campaigns created a religious divide in American's approach to reproductive issues. After the 1930s, few Protestants outside of fundamentalist circles preached against birth control, and many clerics from more progressive denominations joined campaigns to promote its use. By rejecting Catholic natural law-based arguments against birth control, Protestants made it more difficult to use those arguments against abortion. By the time that abortion policy became a matter of political controversy, most Protestant denominations had no consistent theological position on the subject. Catholics, by contrast, became more vocal in their denunciations of both birth control and abortion after the 1920s. American Catholic priests were preaching against birth control long before Casti Connubii, but the encyclical encouraged their efforts and gave renewed vigor to their campaign. Warnings against the use of contraception appeared in Catholic diocesan papers and Sunday homilies, and premarital counseling sessions for Catholic couples invariably included instruction on the subject. The discussions of birth control in the mid-twentieth century laid the natural law groundwork for later arguments against abortion. Some priests even preached directly about abortion as early as the 1930s."

"The Church's intense focus on issues of reproduction at a time when the medical community was becoming increasingly open to the idea of birth control forces Catholic doctors to make the difficult choice between the teachings of their Church and the views of their profession. In reaction to this crisis, Brooklyn physician Richard Rendich began to organize guilds of Catholic physicians who chose to remain faithful to Church teachings while carrying out their professional duties. In 1931, he consolidated these local societies into a national organization called the National Federation for Catholic Physician's Guilds, whose chief purpose, according to the organization's Jesuit moderator Fr. Ignatius Cox, was to "form a powerful barrier of both science and Catholicism, against the loose morals and sex liberalism of the day." Nowhere were these "loose morals" more evident than in the areas of birth control, the Federation's leaders believed. The Federation's organizational meeting featured a keynote address against birth control, and the organization's official journal the Linacre Quarterly', devoted much of its space to contraception and sterilization, publishing detailed natural law arguments about why artificial birth control was not only "intrinsically evil" but also a violation of the Fifth Commandment's prohibition against the taking of human life. Conscientious catholic physicians were aghast that their Protestant colleagues-including, as the Jesuit medical ethicist Fr. Gerald Kelly lamented, "even very competent and conscientious doctors, whose general attitude toward the child-bearing function is both wholesome and reverent"-failed to view contraception as an assault on human life, and even gave contraceptive assistance to their patients who requested it."

"The Federation argued that American's willingness to use contraceptives signaled a dangerous disrespect for human life that could compromise the entire Western legal tradition of respect for human destiny. When the American Medical Association endorsed contraception in 1937, Fr. Ignatius Cox viewed the resolution as a setback for a much larger program of human rights. "This action is closely connected with a long denial of a truly living wage and of social justice in our present economic order," he declared. "Those who advocate contraception...have a philosophy which in its cynical disregard of the dignity of human life is equivalent to the philosophy which accounts for the massacred of history." If people began to view the formation of new human life an impediment to societal progress, economic prosperity, and social well-being-something that they should try to prevent if it inconvenience them in any way-then we should not be surprised, Catholics such as Fr. Cox thought, when they had little regard for the rights of workers, the poor, and other people whom they viewed as burdens on society."

"The debate over birth control in the 1930s was thus a conflict between two factions of political progressives who both saw their stance on reproductive issues as a logical extension of their support for social reform and a welfare state. On the one side was an eclectic coalition of Protestant, Jewish and secular progressives who believed that they could use state resources and the power of technology to improve society by reducing the number of unwanted children and hungry mouths to feed, especially impoverished households. Some of these progressives were New Deal administrators who saw the promotion of birth control as an extension of government efforts to reduce poverty and advance human happiness through social reform. On the other side were Catholics who were also avid supporters of the New Deal, but who believed that the attempt to improve society through the artificial limitation of human reproduction signaled a dangerous disregard for human life. Their commitment to poverty relief equaled or exceeded that of many of the birth control promoters and political liberals; indeed, the pope, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and politically progressive clerics such as Fr. John Ryan had been calling for the recognition of worker's rights and a living wage for years before Franklin D. Roosevelt's election in 1932. They believed that they were advancing the principles of the New Deal by protecting human life. Ryan, for instance, who had been campaigning for a living wage for decades and who served on Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration Appeals Board, was also an outspoken leader in the campaign against contraception. Because the politics of reproduction had not yet become a partisan issue, Catholic opponents of contraception in the 1930s could happily join with birth control advocates in supporting the New Deal, unaware that their disagreement on the politics of reproduction would eventually split apart the liberal coalition."

"Poverty, illiteracy, religious fanaticism and lack of family planning, etc. are mainly responsible for the growth of EBOM population. Lack of education, child marriage, polygamy, poverty, etc. are making the population issue more complex … the illiterate char-chapori people believe that more children can eradicate their poverty and hence more children is the answer to their poverty. Added to it, religious fanaticism and superstitions are galore—they believe that children are the greatest gifts of Allah and He will also provide food and shelter to them. Human beings have nothing to do—they are just means. Hence they consider birth control exercises as anti-Islamic practices."

"Birth control should be resorted to only in cases of extreme necessity, such as the wife's ill-health owing to constant births. Imam Abu Hanifa holds it makruh (abominable)."

"[It is] one of the fundamental tenets of Islam -- namely, to multiply the tribe."

"Had the monster of 'Birth Control' as an instrument of state policy raised its head in the days of the Holy Prophet, he would surely have declared Jihad against it in the same manner as he waged Jihad against Shirk (polytheism)."

"There is no denying the fact that the political prestige and military strength of a country depends upon the size of its population. (...) In the Islamic context greater population has a double significance because one cannot wage an effective Jihad without an expanding population."

"The Qur'an says that 'Children are an ornament of life' and Hadith literature views with favour larger families for the greater strength of Ummah, and as such birth control / family planning cannot be in any way compatible with the Shari'ah."

"Islam is one of the few religi­ons that allow for birth control."

"The ulema declare: If need be, then, as long as the excuse lasts, one can use contraceptive methods, but, frankly speaking, it is sheer ingratitude for divine bounty that one gets oneself deprived of offspring through tubectomy without a legal excuse. The Holy Prophet (pbuh.!) has said: ‘Contract marriage with women who love more and beget more children so that on account of your multitudinousness on the Day of Judgement I may take pride in your number vis-à-vis the other ummahs’ (Mishkat). God is the Provider; He will provide for you as well as your children. The children’s provider is God, not we. He who supplied nourishment in the mother’s womb, He will provide it after birth also. The list of livelihood the offspring bring with them from the mother’s womb and they will receive their quota according to the same. Why should then one entertain such thoughts? The Divine Commandment is: ‘And that ye slay not your children because of penury—We provide for you and for them’ (6:151). At another place it has been said: ‘Slay not your children, fearing a [fall to poverty]; We shall provide for them and for you’ (17:31). It is reported in a hadith that certain Companions, in order to save themselves from sins and wordly worries and to engage themselves in devotions, expressed the wish to get themselves castrated. The Holy Prophet (pbuh.!) did not permit it and recited the Quranic verse: ‘O ye who believe ! Fobid not the good things which Allah hath made lawful for you, and transgress not. Lo! Allah loveth not transgressors’ (V. 87). (Bukh., vol. ii, p.759). It is conclusively proved from this that castration, that is, the discontinuance of procreation artificially is unlawful (haram) according to the explicit verse of the Quran also and is included in transgression from the limits fixed by God. Hence an operation that discontinues procreation is unanimously unlawful (UQ, vol. xx, p. 72)... And the jurisconsults have said: ‘Castration of men is forbidden’ (haram). (DM & S., vol. v, p. 342). And: ‘And that ye slay not your children because of penury—We provide for you and for them.’ (VI: 151). And: ‘Slay not your children, fearing a fall to poverty.We shall provide for them and for you.’ (XVII: 31)."

"When the Companions asked the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho Aliaihe wa sallaml) about coitus interruptus (‘azl), he said: ‘This is like burying a live child.’ And this is the same which has been described in the Quranic verse: ‘And when the girl-child that was buried alive is asked’ (LXXXI) (Vide Muslim Sharif, vol. i, p. 466; Mishkat Sharif, p. 276). In Path al-Mulhim Sharh-e Sahih-e Muslim, Allamah Shabbir Ahmed Usmani quotes that Qazi has written that the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho Aliaihe wa sallam!) has determined coitus interruptus ‘a hidden burial’, that is, to waste the seed which Allah Most High had prepared for procreation is like infanticide and burying the child alive. The result is the same: the only difference is that it is not buried alive openly and hence it has been called hidden. There is a hadith in the Bukhari Sharif to the effect that when the Companions, on account of their zest of engaging in devotions and in order to avoid sins and for remaining aloof from relations, expressed the desire to get themselves castrated, the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho alaihe wa sallam!) did not allow them and adduced the Quranic verse, ‘O ye who believe: Forbid not the good things which Allah hath made lawful for you, and transgress not. Lo! Allah loveth not transgressors’ (V: 87), in proof. Even as the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho Alaihe wa sallam!) has, by this verse, determined castration to be unlawful, it is obvious that the termination of propagation under the family planning scheme will also be included under this order."

"Birth-control methods varied widely around the Islamic world, and there are a great number of texts suggesting a variety of techniques, ranging from coitus interruptus to more bizarre solutions such as suppositories containing rennet of rabbit, ‘broth of wall flower and honey’ and ‘leaves of weeping willow in a flock of wool’ (a popular option in early medieval Persia). But birth control was not just the woman’s business: male contraceptive techniques included ‘drinking juice of watermint at coitus’, rubbing the juice of an onion or a solution of rock salt onto the end of the penis, or, more alarmingly, smearing the entire penis with tar. Other mysterious solutions to the problems of Islamic family planning included ‘fumigation with elephant’s dung’ and, stranger still, ‘jumping backwards’."

"Narrated Ma'qil ibn Yasar: A man came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) and said: I have found a woman of rank and beauty, but she does not give birth to children. Should I marry her? He said: No. He came again to him, but he prohibited him. He came to him third time, and he (the Prophet) said: Marry women who are loving and very prolific, for I shall outnumber the peoples by you."

"It was narrated from Aishah that: the Messenger of Allah said: “Marriage is part of my sunnah, and whoever does not follow my sunnah has nothing to do with me. Get married, for I will boast of your great numbers before the nations. Whoever has that means, let him get married, and whoever does not, then he should fast for it will diminish his desire.” (Hasan)"

"It was narrated from Samurah that: the Messenger of Allah forbade celibacy. Zaid bin Akhzam added: “And Qatadah recited: 'And indeed We sent Messengers before you (O Muhammad ), and made for them wives and offspring.'”(Sahih)"

"It was narrated that: Sa'd said: “The Messenger of Allah disapproved of Uthman bin Maz'un's desire to remain celibate; if he had given him permission, we would have gotten ourselves castrated.” (Sahih)"

"It was narrated from Abu Hurairah that: the Messenger of Allah said: “Marry, for I will boast of your great numbers.”(Sahih)"

"Marry women who will love their hus­bands and be very prolific, for I want you to be more numerous than any other people."

"The Condum being the best, if not the only Preservative our Libertines have found out at present... yet, by reason of its blunting the Sensation, I have heard some of them acknowledge, that they had often chose to risque a Clap, rather than engage cum Hastis sic clypeatis [with spears thus sheathed]."

"Armour against enjoyment, and a spider web against danger."

"As only one underpowered study was identified, we cannot distinguish between the contraceptive effectiveness of the diaphragm with and without spermicide. We cannot draw any conclusion at this point, further research is needed. However, the study provides no evidence to change the commonly recommended practice of using the diaphragm with spermicide."

"Marie Stopes had championed her ‘Pro-Race’ version of the rubber cervical cap because the diaphragm ‘must be worn so as to cover the whole of the end of the vagina and depends on stretching the vaginal walls to stay in position…[so] certain movements of physiological value (particularly to the man) which ideally the woman should make are then impossible’. Van de Velde agreed with Stopes that the diaphragm limited vaginal movements but he commented dismissively that most ‘women to-day are not able to operate their pelvic muscles voluntarily to the best advantage in coitus, so the inability to do so would not represent any appreciable loss to them’. It is possible that the sexual upbringings of women over generations ensured they were unaware of the range of movement the muscles associated with vagina were capable of."

"In 1977, Ruth Hall felt there was ‘little evidence to support Stones’ belief that the vaginal pessary [diaphragm] would stretch vaginal walls’. Yet diaphragms came in sizes ranging from 5 to 9 centimetres in diameter and there was no consensus as to whether the use of larger sizes was more or less uncomfortable for users. As vaginas vary in size, the larger sizes must have stretched the vaginal walls and, in some women, pressed on the bladder or otherwise caused discomfort. This is another example of the willingness to see the vagina as inactive."

"Giovanni Giacomo Casanova takes credit in his autobiography for inventing a primitive version of the diaphragm/cervical cap (Suitters, 1967). He placed the partly squeezed halves of lemons over his lovers’ cervices. Casanova was exaggerating his own inventiveness. Similar devices had been used for centuries around the world. Asian sex workers applied oiled paper discs to their cervices. The women of Easter Island used algae and seaweed (Himes, 1963). Sponge, tissue paper, beeswax, rubber, wool, pepper, seeds, silver, tree roots, rock salt, fruits, vegetables, and even balls of opium have all been used to cover the cervix in an attempt to prevent unintended pregnancy (Himes, 1963; London, 1998; Skuy, 1995). In 1838, German gynecologist Friedrich Wilde created rubber “pessaries” for individual patients with custom-made molds. Wilde’s pessaries resembled today's cervical caps. He used modern materials to imitate the traditional German custom of applying disks of melted and molded beeswax to the cervix to prevent conception. Primitive rubber pessaries were made by Connecticut inventor Charles Goodyear in the 1850s (Himes, 1963). Pharmacies sold them to married women, supposedly to support the uterus or hold medication in place (Chesler, 1992). By 1864, the British medical association was able to list 123 kinds of pessaries being used throughout the empire (Asbell, 1995). In America, sponges enclosed in silk nets with drawstrings attached were commonly used and advertised in newspapers and magazines (London, 1998). But the Comstock laws that were enacted in the 1870s suppressed the dissemination of contraceptive devices and information in the U.S. (Chesler, 1992)."

"The diaphragm played a special role in Margaret Sanger’s effort to rescue America from the Comstock laws. During a trip to Holland in 1915, she learned about the use of snugly fitting spring-loaded diaphragms that were developed in Germany during the 1880s. In 1916, she was arrested and sent to jail for telling women about them. Her month in jail only strengthened her resolve to teach women how to use diaphragms —she even taught diaphragm use to the women she was with in jail (Chesler, 1992). Sanger had to find a way around the Comstock laws, which prohibited the transport of birth control devices or information through the mail. Her solution, clever ⎯as well as illegal ⎯also involved the diaphragm (Chesler, 1992). Sanger's second husband, Noah Slee, owned the company that manufactured 3-IN-ONE Oil, a lubricant for metal parts. Slee imported diaphragms from manufacturers in Germany and Holland to his factory in Montreal. He had the diaphragms packed in 3-IN-ONE cartons and shipped to New York (Chesler, 1992). Slee also solved Sanger’s difficulty obtaining contraceptive jelly to use with the diaphragm. He got the German formula and manufactured the jelly ⎯illegally⎯ at his plant in Rahway, New Jersey. In 1925, he put up the money for founding the Holland-Rantos Company, which manufactured the first American diaphragms, and ended the need for contraband versions (Chesler, 1992). Sanger met a Japanese physician at an international conference on birth control and got him to mail her a package of diaphragms in 1932, but the package was confiscated by U.S. Customs officers. Undeterred, Sanger decided to test the Comstock laws that forbade distribution of contraceptives and contraceptive information through the mail (Chesler, 1992). She arranged to have another package of diaphragms mailed from Japan to Dr. Hannah Meyer Stone, a New York City physician who supported Sanger's crusade for reproductive rights. This package was also seized by Customs (Chesler, 1992). In 1936, Manhattan Judge Augustus Hand, writing for the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit, ruled that the package could be delivered. The case, United States v. One Package—said package “containing 120 rubber pessaries, more or less, being articles to prevent conception” ⎯was a watershed in U.S. birth control history. It severely weakened the federal Comstock law that had prevented dissemination of contraceptive information and supplies since 1873 (Chesler, 1992)."

"By 1941, most doctors recommended the diaphragm as the most effective method of contraception (Tone, 2001). But with the invention of the pill and the increased popularity of the IUD, the diaphragm and cervical cap fell out of favor during the 1960s. Diaphragms continued to be available but U.S. companies stopped producing cervical caps. When the early high-estrogen birth control pills and certain IUDs were found to cause medical problems, American women increasingly returned to using simple barrier methods that didn’t affect their hormones or menstrual cycles (Bullough & Bullough, 1990). Diaphragms became quite popular again, but the cervical cap had disappeared from the American scene (Chalker, 1987). The Food and Drug Administration approved the Prentif Cavity-Rim Cervical Cap for use in this country in May 23, 1988 ⎯nearly 60 years after it was introduced in the United Kingdom. Strenuous efforts by clinicians affiliated with feminist health centers had brought the cap back to America (Bullough & Bullough, 1990). But by 2002, the Prentif cervical cap was displaced in the marketplace by FemCap® (Cates & Stewart, 2004).Today, fewer than 0.01 percent of U.S women rely on diaphragms and caps for contraception (CDC, 2010)."

"The cervical cap, used even in antiquity, has been modified and improved so that it now promises to be an effective, safe, and convenient method of fertility control. Gynecologist U. Freese and dentist R. Goepp, working at The University of Chicago, have combined the techniques of their 2 disciplines to provide this improved form of the cervical cap. Using dental techniques, a method has been established for fitting the cervical cap exactly to the individual cervix. Such a method allows for longterm use of the device without appreciable dislodgment and odor. The method is comfortable and permits sexual spontaneity. No chemical spermicides are necessary. A 1-way valve in the cap allows the menstrual flow to be released each month without removal of the device. Minimal time and cost are required for the initial fitting. Most women will be able to remove and replace their own caps."

"The cervical cap is an ancient method of contraception revitalized during the 1970s by feminist health care practitioners. It acts as a contraceptive both mechanically and chemically. This study looks at the effectiveness and satisfaction of the cervical cap in 76 women fitted over a 1-year period. The cap is 80.4% effective according to the Pearl Index and 89% of the women are satisfied with using the cap. There is a 51 % continuation rate over a 1-year period. The cervical cap appears to have a satisfactory rate of contraception when compared with other barrier methods and women are adept at its use. A significant finding is that most pregnancies occur in the first three months of cap use. A much higher effectiveness is seen subsequently."

"The cervical cap is a small barrier device which can be filled with spermicidal agent and placed over the cervix. Protocol at the authors’ practice recommends that women fill the caps two-thirds full with a contraceptive agent containing 5% nonoxynol-9 spermicide. The cap can be left in place for a maximum of seven consecutive days without further attention provided the cap retains its spermicide. The cap should be removed when menstruation begins. Currently, there are no contraceptive caps manufactured in the United States. However, there are several types of cervical caps available from Europe. (The caps discussed below are available from Lamberts (Dalston) Ltd., Queens-bridge Road, London, England: approximate price, $11.00.)"

"Matching a cap to a woman depends on multiple factors related to the angle, shape, and size of her cervix. Careful attention to the anatomy of the cervix is essential when fitting a woman for a cap. An assessment of the angle at which the cervix enters the vagina is crucial. If the cap’s rim can be touched by the penis during intercourse, then the potential for cap displacement is greatly increased. The length of the cervix must also be assessed. If the cervix is exceptionally long or short, it may be impossible to create a suction between the cervix and the cap’s interior."

"A follow-up study on 130 women fitted with a cervical cap over a 12-month period drew a response rate of 43% (56 respondents). The group was young, well educated, and highly motivated. The failure rate was 16.9 per 100 women years (Pearl method), with inconsistent use and dislodgement being of major importance. The continuation rate was 75% (minimum 3 months of use), and 84% expressed satisfaction with the method. No significant side effects or risks to health were encountered. The conclusion is that there is a significant demand for alternative contraceptive methods among a select group of women. However, in the present state of knowledge, use of the cap should probably not be encouraged as a primary means of contraception, but should be reserved for those women with multiple contraceptive problems or for highly motivated women who seek out this means, understand its limitations, and can accept the relative uncertainty of its effectiveness."

"By 1941, most doctors recommended the diaphragm as the most effective method of contraception (Tone, 2001). But with the invention of the pill and the increased popularity of the IUD, the diaphragm and cervical cap fell out of favor during the 1960s. Diaphragms continued to be available but U.S. companies stopped producing cervical caps. When the early high-estrogen birth control pills and certain IUDs were found to cause medical problems, American women increasingly returned to using simple barrier methods that didn’t affect their hormones or menstrual cycles (Bullough & Bullough, 1990). Diaphragms became quite popular again, but the cervical cap had disappeared from the American scene (Chalker, 1987). The Food and Drug Administration approved the Prentif Cavity-Rim Cervical Cap for use in this country in May 23, 1988 ⎯nearly 60 years after it was introduced in the United Kingdom. Strenuous efforts by clinicians affiliated with feminist health centers had brought the cap back to America (Bullough & Bullough, 1990). But by 2002, the Prentif cervical cap was displaced in the marketplace by FemCap® (Cates & Stewart, 2004). Today, fewer than 0.01 percent of U.S women rely on diaphragms and caps for contraception (CDC, 2010)."

"Legend has it that Arab camel drivers inspired the modern IUD. According to the story, tiny stones were inserted into the uterus of each female camel to prevent pregnancy during long caravan journeys across the desert (Bullough & Bullough, 1990). The story was a tall tale told to entertain delegates at a scientific conference on family planning, but it was repeated so many times that many people have assumed it is true (Thomsen, 1988)."

"During the ninth century, a Persian physician recommended inserting into the cervix paper wound tightly into the shape of a probe, tied with a string and smeared with ginger water (Manisoff, 1973). Also, during certain rituals, the Maori people of New Zealand put small pebbles into women’s vaginas to make them “sterile as stones” (Himes, 1963). Similarly, Casanova, who claimed to have invented almost everything that has to do with sex, soaked a small gold ball in an alkaline solution and inserted it in his lover’s vagina (Suitters, 1967)."

"The IUD is now safer than ever than ever before and it has excellent credentials. Both the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association name it among the safest, most effective, and least expensive reversible methods of birth control available to women (Knowles &Ringel, 1998)"

"There are two inconsistencies in the “pro-life” movement from the viewpoint of pro-choices: There appears to be relatively little mention of IUD’s (Intra-uterine devices). The precise mechanism by which IUDS prevent pregnancy is unknown. Some researchers believe that the IUD immobilizes sperm, preventing them from reaching the ovum. Others believe that it causes the ovum to pass through the fallopian tube so fast that it is unlikely to be fertilized. Most believe that the IUD interferes with the implantation of fertilized ovum in the uterine wall. If the third property is true, then IUDs terminate the development of a fertilized ovum after conception, and cause its expulsion from the body. To a person who believes that human personhood begins at the instant of conception, there is no difference between using an IUD, having a first trimester abortion, or having a partial birth abortion, or –for that matter –strangling a newborn just after birth. Yet pro-life groups actively campaign against PBA’s, picket abortion clinics, and attempt to pass restrictive legislation limiting choice in abortion. Some have made negative statements about IUDs. But none have, to our knowledge, picketed IUD manufacturing facilities, or sponsored anti-IUD legislation. This is surprising, because in those countries where IUDs are widely used, the number of fertilized eggs which IUDs apparently expel from women’s bodies far exceeds the number of surgical abortions. About 43% of American women will have had a surgical abortion sometime during their lifetime. Women who use an IUD will expel about one fertilized ovum annually (assuming that they engage in intercourse once per week) IUDS are becoming increasingly popular. Two studies have reported effectiveness rates of 99.4 and 99.9%"

"Tietze’s new studies showed that population control programs with conventional methods “were getting nowhere fast.” Intensive review of old methods continued, but reported results remained contradictory, probably reflecting differences in motivation between populations. Some members of the Population Council were convinced by the futility of programs based on conventional methods that something better had to be found. Frank Notestein, who succeeded Fredrick Osborn as president of the Population Council in 1958, remembers his frustration in knowing that something had to be done to control rapid population growth but lacking the contraceptive means that would enable the council to take decisive action. “I’ve never been in another situation in my life that made me feel so helpless.” It was this sense of urgency which prompted a reevaluation of intrauterine devices."

"Alan F. Guttmacher, chief of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and a member of the medical advisory committee of the council, had warned against intrauterine devices in his popular marriage manual, but when a member of his department at Mount Sinai approached him in 1958 with an idea for a new kind of IUD, Guttmacher listened. Dr.Lazar Margulies, who was Berlin trained and who had used an intrauterine device in the late twenties in Berlin came to me with the idea that an intrauterine device could be made of molded plastic and the advantage was that you could stretch it to a linear form. . . and it would resume its original shape. Marguies has been inspired to give the old method a second look when he heard John Rock, the Harvard gynecologist who had served on the AMA committee on contraception in the 1930s and who has the object of an intense lobbying effort by Robert Dickinson, lecture on the dangers of overpopulation. The substitution of plastic for wire meant that the device could be inserted without dilating the cervix (stretching the mouth of the womb), a painful procedure that required local anesthesia. The molded plastic coil was unwound into a thin rod, the rod slipped into the uterus, and the coil pushed out of the rod into the uterus, where it regained its original shape. Guttmacher allowed Margulies to try out the device “with some fear and hesitation because I was taught in medical school how dangerous the intrauterine device was.” They worked. Patients did not die of pelvic inflammatory disease or develop galloping cancer."

"In 1962, Population Council gave Guttmacher a grant “to travel around the world to assess what methods of birth control they should back.” He reported that conventional contraceptives were not working and advised the council to invest in development of the IUD. The council invited forty-two clinicians to a conference on intrauterine contraception. Tietze remembered the “conspirational air” that surrounded the conference “It was a very exiting period. . . . we were working with something that had been absolutely rejected by the profession . . . we had a great feeling of urgency to produce a method that worked. It seemed to work. Now we had to establish it. And we had to start from scratch.” The council invested more than $2.5 million in the clinical testing, improvement, and statistical evaluation of the IUD, which proved to be highly effective for the approximately seven out of ten women who could retain one. Tietze, an unusually candid man with the habit of precise expression, recalls the care with which clinicians were recruited and the effort poured into making sure that their records were accurate. There was such a feeling of urgency among professional people, not among the masses, but something had to be done. And this was something that you could do to the people rather than something people could do for themselves. So it made it very attractive to the doers. Armed at last with a method that was inexpensive and required little motivation from the user beyond initial acceptance, family planning programs began to have an effect on birth rates in South Korea, Taiwan, and Pakistan. By 1967 a review article in Demography criticized the over optimism of the Population Council technocrats about the prospects for controlling world population growth. Other social scientists claimed that population control was getting too much of the development dollar and pointed out that population control was no substitute for social justice. Lower birth rates did not guarantee a better society. Whether or not world population growth could be controlled remained an unanswered question."

"By the late 1960s discussion of the population problems of underdeveloped countries had helped to stimulate renewed interest in family planning programs in the United States. Happy, there was a growing discussion about the social and philosophical issues involved in the management of human reproduction, whereas only a decade before, informed interest had been limited to a few social scientists. The whole nature of the debate, however, as well as the prospects for controlling population growth, had been radically altered by the availability of the plastic intrauterine device, an American gift to the world."

"The history of the intrauterine device is remarkably short and its survival has been jeopardized several times from the beginning when Gräfenberg introduced the intrauterine ring in 1928, and later when product liability claims in the USA forced companies to withdraw the IUD from the market. However, a revival is happening, and one of the withdrawn copper IUDs has been re-introduced in the USA. In the 1980s, pessimism about the future of the IUD was based on the fact that there are still two major imperfections inherent in intrauterine contraception: its lack of protection against both 'gyne' and sexually transmitted disease."

"Intrauterine devices (IUDs) were derived from what Marie Stopes (1924) called the interuterine devices, conceived for therapeutic purposes and used in later years for providing contraception. Because an interuterine device connects the external environment (vagina) with the internal genital tract, pelvic inflammatory disease was a frequent complication in an era when gonorrhea was endemic and no adequate therapeutic measures were available. To avert the inherent infective hazard, interuterine devices were replaced by IUDs. The IUD has had a troubled history. Initially ignored by the medical profession, it courted a flourishing period during the early 1930s, which soon came to an end due to largely non-medical reasons. The rehabilitation of intrauterine contraception started in the USA in the early 1960s, as a result of a change of mentality concerning the acceptability of birth control in general, the discovery of the phenomenon of the population explosion, and the introduction of improved IUDs. This review gives an overview of the evolution of intrauterine contraception, focusing on the scientists who were innovative in this field."

"In 1909, an authoritative German medical journal, Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, published a paper by Dr Richter of Waldenburg (near Breslaw) entitled 'Ein Mittel zur Verhütung der Konzeption' (a means of preventing conception). Because of the taboo surrounding contraception, the very title of the article will no doubt have surprised many readers and shocked some. The device described by Dr Richter was the first genuine IUD. It consisted of two strands of coarse silkworm gut (crin de Florence) wound in a particular pattern, the free ends of which were capped with celluloid to prevent injury to the endometrium. The threads were united by a thin bronze filament to diagnose expulsion and to facilitate retrieval of the IUD, which was inserted using a metal female bladder catheter. Dr Richter's invention had no impact on the practice of birth control and clinical data were never supplied. Contraception continued to use the traditional interuterine devices, for example, the metal wishbone spring pessary patented by Dr Carl Hollweg (1902) and the cervico-uterine pessary made of silkworm gut attached to a cervical glass button described by Dr Karl Pust."

"Conscious of the hazards inherent in the use of interuterine devices, Dr Grafenberg took up the search for the serviceable IUD in the early 1920s. Whether he knew about Dr Richter's pessary remains an open question. Initially, he used star-shaped devices and coils of silkworm gut (1924). Because they were expelled too readily, he conceived the Ring IUD, made of helicoidal1y wound silver filaments, which still bears his name. He did not hesitate to publish clinical results (1928-30), thus making his invention known beyond the boundaries of his native Germany. Shortly thereafter, other European physicians added statistics, issuing an increasing number of damaging reports of pelvic inflammatory disease associated with IUD use. Gräfenberg's last presentation on the subject was in 1931 at the German Congress of Gynecology in Frankfurt. His report was denounced by virtually all leaders of German gynecology attending the congress, who branded intrauterine contraception as a medically unacceptable method of birth control. Shortly thereafter, the streamroller of the Nazi regime started poisoning the air of Germany. Jewish physicians were removed from the hospital posts and contraception was proclaimed to be a threat to the physical and mental health of Aryan women. Ultimately, the advertising of contraceptives and/or contraceptive advice became illegal in Germany and the other Axis States. Barred from practice and research, ostracized by his colleagues and persecuted by the authorities, Dr Gräfenberg left Germany in 1940. He arrived in New York in 1941, where he resumed a busy life as an obstetrician and gynecologist. His scientific reputation opened the doors of a teaching hospital (Mount Sinai Medical Center) and the New York Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (later renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau after the nurse who convinced America that control of conception is a basic human right). Dr Gräfenberg was able to resume his research, but in America, as well as in Europe, the fight for the acceptance of family planning had not yet been won. Notwithstanding these barriers, Dr Gräfenberg, according to his friend and his former Berlin assistant Dr Hans Lehfeld, transgressed medical rules and continued to use the Ring, albeit in private practice and in secret."

"In Japan, Dr. Tenrei Ota, born in 1900, began pioneering intrauterine contraception in the 1930s. Once his country had joined the Axis and contraception was forbidden, Dr Ota became a political target, changed his name and finally went into hiding. As a consequence, knowledge of the Ota Ring would reach the Western world only after the end of World War II. Dr Ota had initiated his experiments in intrauterine contraception by inserting objects made from a great variety of materials and shapes, from gold spheres to coils of human hair. Since the rudimentary IUDs were expelled too easily, he decided, in 1933, to modify the Gräfenberg Ring (of which he had heard but never seen). He stiffened the Silver Ring by providing it with a central disc attached to the outer ring by spokes. Dr Ota called his silver or gold IUD the 'Precea Ring', ‘precea' being Anglo-Japanese for 'pressure'. The Pressure Ring was to remain popular in Japan well into the 1980s. Less well-known is that Dr Ota may have been the first physician to devise a plastic IUD. However, the inferior quality of plastic material put at his disposal ruined the idea."

"In the 1940s, alarm about the worlds burgeoning population, and the naive belief that the phenomenon could be curbed by the introduction of improved contraceptive methods, led to extensive research in the USA. The results of these endeavors were the pill and the plastic IUD. Plastic devices solved the problem inherent in the insertion and retrieval of the Rings of Gräfenberg and Ota. Made of thermoplastics, the new IUDs were given a memory of their original shape, could be straightened to fit inside a narrow straw-type inserter tube and regained their initial contour after introduction into the uterus. The notion that intrauterine contraception is safe and effective was proven in the early 1960s by the medical statistician Dr Christopher Tietze (1908-84), a Jewish emigrant to the USA, and a great admirer of Gräfenberg (Figure 2). Having collected and analyzed clinical results obtained with the Gräfenberg and Ota Rings, Dr Tietze organized the first international symposium on intrauterine contraception in New York City in 1962, sponsored by the Population Council. At the conference, the pioneers of the plastic devices, Dr Margulies and Dr Lippes, were invited to demonstrate their invention and report preliminary clinical results."

"Dr J. Lippes (Figure 3) is an example of the thoroughbred American (born at Buffalo, NY in 1925), who since 1957 has been Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Although he had become acquainted with the Gräfenberg Ring in 1952, he had not dared to use it for fear of being accused of malpractice. Seven years later, two papers on intrauterine contraception appeared, both in English. The first, written by the Japanese gynecologist Ishihama and published in the Yokohama Medical Journal, gave an enthusiastic clinical assessment of the Ota Ring. In the second paper, Dr W. Oppenheimer of Jerusalem overviewed the results of three decades of personal experience with the modified Silk Ring. The fact that the latter paper had been accepted by the authoritative American journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology was perceived by Dr Lippes as a sign that intrauterine contraception had become a discussable subject in his country. That same year he started inserting Silk and Presea Rings under the auspices of the Buffalo PIanned Parenthood Center. The former device being too flexible, and the latter too stiff, Dr Lippes decided to remove the spokes from the Ota Ring and affix a piece of monofilament nylon to the IUD to facilitate removal and to allow the wearer to check that the device was still present. However, the modified Ring tended to rotate in utero and to wind the marker thread into the cavity, eliminating its intended uses. Therefore, to prevent IUD rotation, a radical change of shape was needed. After many experiments, the double-S Loop (the Lippes Loop) emerged in 1961. Due to its particular shape (trapezoid), the Lippes Loop fits the (relaxed uterine cavity snugly. The Lippes Loop was to become extremely popular and, of all first-generation IUDs, had the greatest worldwide impact."

"In fact, Dr Lippes had a predecessor in this field; Dr Lazar C. Margulies (Figure 4). Dr Margulies was born in Galicia (now part of Poland) in 1895. As a medical student, he had served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. Following the armistice, he graduated from the University of Vienna in 1921, where he specialized in obstetrics and gynecology. He started practising in Vienna, but, expelled from the hospital, this Jewish gynecologist emigrated to the USA in 1941. In New York City he joined the staff of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in 1954 and was promoted to Associate Professor 9 years later. Dr Margulies died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1982. His Chief at Mount Sinai, Dr Alan Guttmacher, who had opposed intrauterine contraception during Gräfenberg's life (Gräfenberg himself had practised at Mount Sinai for a decade and a ha1f) encouraged Dr Margulies to attempt to improve the Silver Ring. Most certainly, Guttmacher's change of mind was prompted by the alarm over the world's demographic surge, and was reinforced by the 1959 IUD papers from Israel and Japan. Gambling on the use of thermoplastics, Dr Margulies conceived his famous spiral-shaped IUD in 1960, the Perma-Spiral, marketed by the Ortho Pharmaceutical Company as Gynecoil. To insert the Margulies Spiral, the unwound device was introduced into a thin plastic tube and expelled with a plastic plunger. Dr Lippes later borrowed this technique for the insertion of his Loop IUD."

"In subsequent years, resourceful investigators produced scores of originally (and sometimes peculiarly) shaped plastic IUDs. One of these was the notorious Dalkon Shield fitted by the inventor (Dr H.J. Davis, 1970) with a soft sheath filled with hundreds of nylon filaments instead of the usual stiff monofilament polyethylene thread. Serious, and even lethal, infections were observed, and it was claimed that the tailpiece of the Shield IUD acted as a wick conveying bacteria from the vagina upward into the uterine cavity. The thousands of lawsuits which followed discredited the inventor of the Dalkon Shield, caused financial ruin to the producer ( A.H. Robbins Corporation) and had a deleterious effect on the practice of intrauterine contraception."

"Because the first intrauterine contraceptive device proposed by Dr Richard Richter in 1909 was ignored, the Silver Ring of Dr Ernst Gräfenberg (1928) is currently labeled as the prototype of modern IUD generations. The Ring of Gräfenberg, however, was proscribed in the 1930s, and, although the basis for the condemnation was more political than scientific, three decades had passed before the rebirth and general acceptance of intrauterine contraception. The development of the plastic IUDs, announced by Dr Lazar Margulies and Dr Jack Lippes in 1960-61, solved the insertion problem of metallic IUDs, but did not eliminate the main side-effects, that is, bleeding and pain. In 1969, the first copper-bearing device was introduced by Dr Jaime Zipper and Dr Howard Tatum. The metallic contraceptive adjuvant, though allowing reduction of the platform size, did not solve the menorrhagia problem. This was achieved by Dr Tapani Luukkainen thanks to the invention of the gestagen- releasing IUD (Ng Nova-T) in 1977. The final step in IUD engineering was the invention of the GyneFix, a flexible, frameless copper-bearing IUD anchored permanently to the uterine tissues, which the inventor (Dr Dirk Wildemeersch) calls an intrauterine contraceptive implant or IUCI."

"Over the last couple of decades a reduction of estrogen by at least 80% in combined oral contraceptives (OCs) and much research have resulted in effective and safe contraception. We still do not know longterm effects of OCs however. OCs may protect against endometrial and ovarian cancer. A link between current OC use and liver cancer exists in areas where liver cancer is rare. An association between OC use and cervical cancer disappears when researchers control for sexual activity and barrier method use. Some research shows OC use increases the risk of breast cancer, while other research does not. There does appear to be an increased risk of breast cancer developing in women younger than 46 years of age and who have used OCs for at least 10 years. Women who have a preexisting cardiovascular condition and/or smoke should not use OCs. OC progestogens may impair glucose metabolism in healthy women, but just for 6 months. Women with diabetes mellitus can use OCs, but may need to increase insulin intake. OCs can cause hypertension in 4-5% of healthy women and worsen hypertension in about 9-16% of hypertensive women. Progestogen-only OCs have fewer systemic side effects than combined OCs, but often cause menstrual changes. Their long term effects are not yet known. Injectables containing a progestogen cause few, if any, adverse effects. The subdermal implant, Norplant, tends to cause menstrual disturbances, but is safe and effective. Progestogen - only vaginal rings are as effective as progestogen-only OCs, but menstrual irregularities are common. Failure rates for combined vaginal rings match those of combined OCs. Long-term effects of vaginal rings are not known. Postcoital contraception does not cause serious side effects, but may cause vomiting and menstrual irregularities. A levonorgestrel-releasing IUD is effective and reduces menstrual blood loss, sometimes resulting in amenorrhea. Hormonal injections in men are unlikely in the near future."

"In the early 20th century, Margaret Sanger became one of the most avid proponents of contraception in the United States. By 1950, she and Katharine McCormick had contracted with biologist Gregory Pincus to develop an effective birth control pill. A collaborative effort by Pincus and other researchers led to trials of the pill in Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Mexico between 1956 and 1957, which pro-vided the basis for an application to the Food and Drug Administration for approval of the first oral contraceptive."

"The large influx of poor immigrants and advocacy by women's rights groups provided the impetus for the birth control movement of the early 1900s. The subsequent development of the oral contraceptive pill gave women, for the first time, the ability to control their fertility."

"In 1961, when the pill was introduced to Britain, women pushed their, often reluctant, doctors to give them the drug. By the late 1960s, young women were talking about a revolution in women’s sexual attitudes, but since then the suggestion that the pill just meant women couldn’t say no has been widely repeated, alongside negative assessments of the ‘sexual revolution’. As early as the 1880s, there had been suggestions that fear of pregnancy gave wives an excuse for denying their husbands their conjugal right of sexual intercourse. By the early 1990s, over 80 per cent of British women of reproductive age since the early 1960s had taken the pill."

"[T]he pill did produce a situation in which these pre-existing social conditions led to a new twist on male sexual exploitation of young single women in the 1960s. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the family, the Church, and later schools had attempted to supervise and control unmarried women’s sexual behavior. In this social setting women might have had to struggle against persuasive male arguments and persistent groping but they had the entire weight of society, backed up by the ulti-mate sanction of pregnancy, supporting them if they did not wish to have intercourse. In the 1960s the arrival of the pill meant that for the first time women could have confidence that they would not get pregnant. There is a new sense of excitement and possibilities present in many accounts by heterosexual women who were young and single at this time. In choosing to reject the control of their sexual be-haviour they saw themselves as rejecting control over their lives as a whole However, abandoning the traditional moral position left many confused, with no substantial arguments against casual or dishonest male sexual exploitation. By the early 1970s, men assumed fashionable young women were on the pill and statistics show that well over half actually were."

"Years of disappointment had taught Pincus that it wasn’t always the science that determined an experiment’s success; it was often the forces surrounding the science, including public sentiment. Now that Pincus had settled roughly on the hormone progesterone as the key to his pill, he needed to build the team to do the scientific work, forge alliances with manufacturers, conduct his trials, and, if all went well, spread the news of the coming invention so that it might have a chance at acceptance. He knew that his progestins (synthetic forms of progesterone) stopped ovulation in rabbits and rats. The next step was to test them on women. And to do that, he would have to add a player to his team—a doctor who could reassure patients they were safe and would convey to the drug companies supplying the drugs that no one would be harmed. There had never been a medicine made for healthy people before—and certainly not one that would be taken every day. The risks were enormous. Pincus settled on a physician named John Rock, a gynecologist respected by his peers and adored by his patients. Rock looked like a family physician from central casting in Hollywood: tall, slender, and silver-haired, with a gentle smile and a calm, deliberate manner. Even his name connoted strength, solidity, and reliability. Rock had one more thing going for him: He was Catholic."

"The rapid increase in the world population makes it mandatory to develop new contraceptive methods. Disseminating reversible inexpensive and practical hormonal methods to developing countries is a target of many international agencies and funds."

"In 1965, a brand called Oracon became the first to include placebo pills in its packaging. Oracon's most documented motivation behind the first placebo pills was to help women ensure that they were taking their pills correctly: Inactive pills meant that women now took a pill every single day, thus putting them on a more routine schedule and making it easier to notice if they'd missed one. Of course, the pill's engineers could have just as easily added an extra week of active pills so that women were still taking one a day. That, however, would have meant that women no longer bled once a month, and the 60s weren't quite ready for that. This formula—three weeks of hormonal pills, followed by one withdrawal week, complete with the requisite bleeding—remained unchanged for over 40 years. Then, in 2003, the drug company Barr released Seasonale. This was the first oral contraceptive to give women the option of foregoing monthly withdrawal bleeding; it contained 84 hormone pills and seven placebo pills. Women using this method would ex-perience withdrawal bleeding just four times a year—or once per season, as the drug name intimated. Four years later, the FDA approved Lybrel, the first oral contraceptive to offer continuous active pills with no breaks for withdrawal bleeding whatsoever."

"Today, the science is more settled, though there hasn't been a long-term study on the continuous use of oral contraceptives yet. But based on data from the long-term use of non-extended cycle birth control pills, which are chemically the same as extended cycle contraceptives, gy-necologists have largely reached the conclusion that the practice is safe. "At this point, I can't think of any OB/GYNs that would have a problem with [extended cycle oral contraception]," says Dr. Lauren Naliboff, a fellow at the American Con-gress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. A study by the Cochrane organization found that women on extended cycle pills "fared better in terms of headaches, genital irritation, tiredness, bloating, and menstrual pain" than those on pills with monthly bleeding. A peer-reviewed article by Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica acknowledged that long-term studies are lacking, but ultimately concluded that continuous use oral contraceptives showed no unique side effects beyond increased spotting, and still resulted in less "bleeding days" than non-continuous birth control pills. Philosophical and scientific debates aside, perhaps the largest barrier between women and their right to decide whether or not they want to bleed is a lack of information. Many women are una-ware that consistently skipping withdrawal bleeding is an option, let alone that extended cycle pills ex-ist, or that menstrual suppression can also be accomplished with hormonal IUDs, NuvaRing, birth control injections, and contraceptive patches."

"The invention of the pill was one of the most significant advancements in the fight for reproductive agency; it allowed us, as a society, to dramatically reconceptualize sexuality and gender relations. At the same time, our relationship to this groundbreaking medical technology has been shaped and con-strained by our own conceptions of what's "natural" and what defines a woman. Similar reproductive and sexually liberating advancements that target men—Viagra, for instance—have not led to similar debates on what it means to be a man, or to have an "unnatural" hard-on. And while Viagra is covered by insurance, Dr. Naliboff says that most insurance companies do not cover extended cycle birth control to this day, even in cases where patients are on the pill for medical issues like primary ovarian insufficiency or endometriosis. The discrepancy in education and affordable access is telling: The normalization of placebo pills and subsequent withdrawal bleeding means that even in 2017, many women do not know that extended cycle pills exist, let alone that menstrual suppression is a safe option. Combined with the fact that the percentage of schools teaching students about contraception has declined drastically since 2000, this means that many women are likely to stay in the dark about their options when it comes to choosing whether or not they want to bleed once a month."

"What Pike discovered in Japan led him to think about the Pill, because a tablet that suppressed ovulation—and the monthly tides of estrogen and progestin that come with it—obviously had the potential to be a powerful anti-breast-cancer drug. But the breast was a little different from the reproductive organs. Progestin prevented ovarian cancer because it suppressed ovulation. It was good for preventing endometrial cancer because it countered the stimulating effects of estrogen. But in breast cells, Pike believed, progestin wasn’t the solution; it was one of the hormones that caused cell division. This is one explanation for why, after years of studying the Pill, researchers have concluded that it has no effect one way or the other on breast cancer: whatever beneficial effect results from what the Pill does is cancelled out by how it does it. John Rock touted the fact that the Pill used progestin, because progestin was the body’s own contraceptive. But Pike saw nothing “natural” about subjecting the breast to that heavy a dose of progestin. In his view, the amount of progestin and estrogen needed to make an effective contraceptive was much greater than the amount needed to keep the reproductive system healthy—and that excess was unnecessarily raising the risk of breast cancer. A truly natural Pill might be one that found a way to suppress ovulation without using progestin. Throughout the nineteen-eighties, Pike recalls, this was his obsession. “We were all trying to work out how the hell we could fix the Pill. We thought about it day and night.”"

"Today, a growing movement of reproductive specialists has begun to campaign loudly against the standard twenty-eight-day pill regimen. The drug company Organon has come out with a new oral contraceptive, called Mircette, that cuts the seven-day placebo interval to two days. Patricia Sulak, a medical researcher at Texas A. & M. University, has shown that most women can probably stay on the Pill, straight through, for six to twelve weeks before they experience breakthrough bleeding or spot-ting. More recently, Sulak has documented precisely what the cost of the Pill’s monthly “off” week is. In a paper in the February issue of the journal ‘’Obstetrics and Gyne-cology’’, she and her colleagues documented something that will come as no surprise to most women on the Pill: during the placebo week, the number of users experiencing pelvic pain, bloating, and swelling more than triples, breast tenderness more than doubles, and headaches increase by almost fifty per cent. In other words, some women on the Pill continue to experience the kinds of side effects associated with normal menstruation. Sulak’s paper is a short, dry, academic work, of the sort intended for a narrow professional audience. But it is impossible to read it without being struck by the consequences of John Rock’s desire to please his church. In the past forty years, millions of women around the world have been given the Pill in such a way as to maximize their pain and suffering. And to what end? To pretend that the Pill was no more than a pharmaceutical version of the rhythm method?"

"In the 1960s, manufacturers of the new birth-control pill imagined their ideal user as feminine, maternal and forgetful. She wanted discretion. She was married. And she wanted visible proof that her monthly cycle was normal and that she wasn’t pregnant. In 2019, the user of the pill is perceived as an altogether different person. She’s unwed, probably would prefer to skip her period and is more forthright about when it’s that time of the month. As such, many birth-control brands now come in brightly colored rectangular packs that make no effort to be concealed. But one part of the equation remains: the week of placebo pills, in which hormones are abruptly withdrawn and a woman experiences what looks and feels a lot like her regular period — blood, cramps and all — but isn’t. Physicians have widely described this pseudoperiod as medically unnecessary. So why do millions still endure it? That’s largely the legacy of two men: John Rock and David Wagner."

"First there’s Rock, a Harvard fertility expert and a developer of the pill. There’s a longstanding myth that Rock, a Catholic, designed the pill in the 1950s with the church in mind and included a week of hormonal withdrawal — and therefore bleeding — to make his invention seem more natural. In fact, the thought never crossed his mind, the Rutgers University historian Margaret Marsh says. Instead, it was Gregory (Goody) Pincus, the other developer of the pill, who suggested that the pill be given as a 20-days-on, 5-days-off regimen. Pincus wanted to provide women in his trials with reassurance that they weren’t pregnant, and to know himself that the pill was working as a contraceptive. Rock agreed. After the F.D.A. approved the pill in 1960, however, those few days of light bleeding took on a new significance. Anticipating the church’s opposition, Rock became not just a researcher but also an advocate. In his 1963 book “The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor’s Proposals to End the Battle Over Birth Control,” he argued that the pill was merely a scientific extension of the church-sanctioned “rhythm method.” It “completely mimics” the body’s own hormones, he wrote, to extend the “safe period” in which a woman could have intercourse and not become pregnant. “It must be emphasized that the pills, when properly taken, are not at all likely to disturb menstruation,” he wrote. “It has been my consistent feeling that, when properly used for conception control, they merely serve as adjuncts to nature.” He was stretching the truth. Rock knew that the pill’s synthetic hormones caused the lining of a woman’s uterus to thin out, making it inhospitable for a fertilized egg. During the off week, when the hormones were withdrawn, her body got the signal that it was time to shed the lining. But because this event didn’t involve ovulation, it was better described as withdrawal bleeding than menstruation."

"In 1961, Wagner had concerns that his wife, Doris, wouldn’t reliably take her new birth-control pills, which came in a glass bottle with a complex set of instructions. She was to begin taking a five-milligram tablet on the fifth day of her period, continue taking one a day for 20 days, then take five days off, at which point her bleeding would start. “I was constantly asking her whether she had taken ‘the pill,’ and this led to some irritation and a marital row or two,” he later recalled. So Wagner, a product engineer for Illinois Tool Works, came up with a solution: a pill dispenser in the shape of a round plastic disc, which could be rotated to reveal the dose you were to take on any given day. It held 20 pills, plus a week’s worth of pill-size dimples that indicated the off week. His jerry-built design — he fashioned it out of a child’s toy, sheets of clear plastic and double-sided tape — was quickly picked up by Ortho Pharmaceuticals, and in 1963, the company began selling the pill in a Dialpak, a round foil blister pack with pills labeled with the days of the week. “The package that remembers for her,” the company advertised in 1964. “Easy for you to explain ... for her to use,” another ad promised."

"As more companies bought into the idea, the week of placebo pills was here to stay. Doctors liked that they made explaining the instructions to women easy. Women liked having one fewer thing to remember about their birth control. Few questioned why women on the pill should be having a “period” at all. Today there are a small handful of options that reduce or eliminate monthly bleeding: Seasonale, a form of the pill sold in packets of 84 active pills and seven placebos that make it so bleeding happens just four times a year, became available in 2003. In 2007, the F.D.A. approved Lybrel, the first oral contraceptive to provide continuous active pills, with no breaks for withdrawal bleeding. Doctors agree that a menstrual cycle can be a useful indicator of overall health, and yet it still isn’t necessary. When Dr. Lori Picco’s patients ask if they can skip the inactive pills, she says she tells them to go right ahead. “It’s completely fine — there’s no medical concerns,” says Dr. Picco, a gynecologist at Capital Women’s Care in Washington and a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “Honestly, I would think people would want to do it all the time.”"

"Ludwig Haberlandt is the 1st great name in hormonal contraception. As early as 1919 he was conducting studies which showed that transplants of tissues or extracts of these tissues (now known to contain progesterone) could produce infertility in rabbits and mice. In 1930 Reiprich of Breslau suggested that the antifertility action of estrogen might be the result of pituitary inhibition. In 1938 ethinyl estradiol was synthesized and 1 year later Dodds and his group reported the synthesis of a series of nonsteroidal estrogens (stilbestrol, hexestrol, and dienestrol). None of the clinical trials conducted in the 1940s could have demonstrated the superiority of 1 estrogen over another with respect to ovulation inhibition at equivalent estrogenic dosage. Studies of this aspect lagged until the 1960s. At that time it was clearly demonstrated that the ethinyl side-chain imparted an augmented pituitary inhibiting potency to estradiol as compared either to other natural estrogens or to other synthetics. It was a fortunate accident that the early clinical preparations of contraceptive progestins contained about 1% contamination with mestranol from the process of manufacture. While this quantity appeared trivial to the chemists, the presence of about 150 mcg of mestranol in the original 10 mg doses of the 19-norprogestins could have accounted totally for their contraceptive efficacy. It was not until several years later than estrogen-free norprogestins were prepared and their intrinsic antiovulatory action proven. When these purified progestins were used for contraceptive therapy, an increased incidence of menstrual irregularities appeared. One standardized quantity of ethinyl estrogen was reincorporated into contraceptive preparations for the control of menstrual regularity, but without any idea that a contribution was being made to contraceptive effectiveness. Clinical studies with continuous low-dose progestin only formulations have demonstrated that their effectiveness in inhibiting ovulation is substantially lower than that of sequential or combination type preparations. A progestational agent added to a baseline estrogen dose appears to produce a greater suppression of plasma gonadotropins than estrogen by itself. While cyclic estrogen administration is capable of inhibiting ovulation with a high degree of efficiency, such a therapeutic regimen is impractical from the point of view of menstrual regularity. The entire matter of cardiovascular hazards related to OC use has been called into question by studies of mortality statistics in the U.S., Great Britain, and Taiwan. In none of these studies is the predicted mortality from cardiovascular disease in OC users confirmed."

"Ludwig Haberlandt (1 February 1885 - 22 July 1932), pioneer in hormonal contraception, was born in Graz, where he graduated from the university in 1909 in medicine summa cum laude and began his career as a physiologist. The idea of temporary hormonal contraception in the female body entered his mind in February 1919, when he was already Professor of Physiology in Innsbruck. He pursued his project ambitiously and by 1921 demonstrated temporary hormonal contraception in a female animal by transplanting ovaries from a second, pregnant, animal. From 1923, after further successful scientific work in this field, he began highlighting the importance of clinical trials in presentations. From then, he was criticized by his colleagues, who accused him of hindering unborn life. His idea was contradictory to the moral, ethic, religious and political agendas of that time in Europe. In 1927 official reports escalated, his family was ostracized by the local population, and Ludwig Haberlandt refused any further interviews. Against all opposition, in 1930 he began clinical trials after successful production of a hormonal preparation, Infecundin, by the G. Richter Company in Budapest, Hungary. Although at the peak of his scientific career, he was unable to pursue other scientific agendas because of the disputed contraception project. After he committed suicide, on 22 July 1932, scientific discussion about hormonal contraception ceased until 1970 when scientists began referring to his earlier medical and scientific work."

"By 1960 the world's population had grown to around 3 billion people, having taken just 33 years to increase from 2 billion.1 Although many agreed that growth rates needed to fall, couples at the time had few reversible contraceptive choices: mainly barrier methods, spermicides, and a few plastic-only and metal-based intrauterine devices (IUDs). Many relied on ‘withdrawal’. This was soon to change dramatically because during the 1950s scientists had patented two synthetic progestogens, norethisterone and norethynodrel.2 Clinical studies showed that these hormones inhibited ovulation, although some accompanying oestrogen (initially mestranol, now ethinylestradiol) was needed for acceptable breakthrough bleeding and pregnancy rates. The first combined oral contraceptive was marketed in the US in 1960, and in the UK the following year. Many women enthusiastically embraced ‘the pill’; for some because it separated contraception from the act of intercourse and for others because it could be used without their partner's knowledge. Early on, howev-er, concerns were expressed about the method's carcinogenic potential, and about reports of associated venous thromboembolic and other cardiovascular events.2 Furthermore, the unfolding thalidomide tragedy of the early 1960s provided a powerful reminder of the epidemiological truth that when millions of people use a medicinal product small increases in risk still result in many people affected."

"Oral contraception is now one of the most scrutinised medicinal products on the market. Two British investigations that celebrated their 40th anniversaries in 2008 have been major contributors to the evidence base for current clinical practice. Both illustrate the enormous research opportunity of NHS clinical records. The Oxford/Family Planning Association (Oxford/FPA) Study began in 1968, when 17 family planning clinics in England and Scotland started recruiting 17 000 white, married women using oral contraception, the IUD or the diaphragm.3 The Royal College of General Practitioners' (RCGP) Oral Contraception Study started at the same time, with 1400 GPs throughout the UK recruiting 47 000 mainly white, married (or living as married) women, half of whom were using oral contraception. Both studies have followed up their cohorts through a mixture of clinic or practice reports, personal contact, and the cancer and death notification services of the NHS Central Registries. Each study has provided, in different ways, key insights into the effects of different contraceptives; as well as novel information about other women's health issues. For example, the RCGP study was the first to show that the risk of cardiovascular disease is much higher in pill users who smoke,5 especially among older women, and that the risk of hypertension and arterial disease is related to the combined pill's progestogen content.6 The Oxford/FPA study assessed the effectiveness, safety, and return to fertility after stopping different methods. Long-term mortality and cancer results from both studies have been reassuring."

"We now have a clearer picture of the cancer risks associated with combined oral contraception. Compared with non-users, current users have an increased risk of being diagnosed with breast,11 cervical,12 or hepatocellular cancer.13 Hepatocellular cancer is rare in developed countries. The breast and cervical cancer risks decline after stopping oral contraception, returning to that of non-users within about 10 years.11,12 Conversely, combined oral contraceptive users have a reduced risk of endometrial,13 ovarian,14 and colorectal cancer.13 The ovarian and endometrial benefits appear to persist for many years after stopping oral contraception, perhaps more than 15 years.13,14 Limited evidence suggests that today's lower oestrogen dose formulations provide similar protection against endometrial and ovarian cancer as older, higher-dose preparations.15,16 At least within the RCGP cohort, the long-term cancer benefits appear to counterbalance the short-term harmful ones; indeed there may even be a net public health gain.8 Collectively, the research shows that benefits of oral contraception use outweigh risks, when provided appropriately. Importantly, prolonged use of oral contraception does not appear to reduce future fertility.17"

"Ludwig Haberlandt, physiologist in Innsbruck, tried in the late twenties to develop hormonal contraceptives based on sex hygienic ideas of Sigmund Freud. Although the chemical-physiological knowledge of that time encouraged this plan, after Haberlandt's death in 1932 his tests were dropped and forgotten. It was after World War II, when research in this field was begun in the USA by Gregory Pincus, supported by "Planned Parenthood Federation" under leading of Margret Sanger. Although clinical tests proved to be successful, restrictive social-political conditions in the fifties delayed this project considerably. But in 1958 the first Anti-Baby-Pill reached the US-market."

"Women excrete estrogen naturally, and women on birth control pills also secrete the synthetic estrogen in those pills. And these estrogens, depending on the level of wastewater treatment, may not be completely broken down during sewage treatment, so they get discharged into rivers and streams. It doesn't take a lot of estrogen to feminize male fish and, based on the results of our experiment, to impact fish populations."

"When in 1953 Gregory Pincus approached Rock about collaborating on a study of the contraceptive effects of progesterone, Rock unhesitatingly signed on. The two scientists had known each other since the 1930s and closely followed each other’s work. Rock’s finding, in the course of his research on in-fertility treatments, that small amounts of female hormones inhibited ovulation, helped validate Pincus’s similar results in animal trials. Pincus needed someone with Rock’s clinical experience to ex-tend research trials to human subjects. And it helped in terms of fund-raising and public relations that Rock had an unimpeachable reputation as physician and medical researcher. Their cooperative work was made possible by an influx of funds from Katharine Dexter McCormick, whom Sanger had convinced to support Pincus’s promising research. Starting in the summer of 1953, McCormick began to immerse herself in the project and sent regular progress reports to Sanger mentioning Rock’s involvement. In November 1953 McCormick informed Sanger that Rock and Pincus had begun the first human trials in the study. But Sanger, who was preoccupied with setting up the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), did not appear to be aware of the extent of Rock’s participation. Nor did she feel completely comfortable with his involvement."

"The use of contraceptives can be morally acceptable in other contexts as well, again, because such uses do not constitute acts of contraception. For example, when a woman has severe menstrual bleeding, or pain from ovarian cysts, the hormonal regimen contained in the Pill may sometimes provide a directly therapeutic medical treatment for the bleeding or the pain. This use of contraceptives is an act of medical therapy to address a pathological situation, not an act of contraception. The secondary effect from the treatment, namely, marital infertility, is only tolerated, and should not be willed, desired, or in-tended in any way by the couple. It is worth noting that it would not be acceptable to make use of contraceptives like the Pill for these medical cases if other pharmacological agents or treatments were available which would offer the same therapeutic benefits and effects without impeding fertility."

"Although American scientists had been busy studying hormones in the 1930s and 1940s, Marga-ret Sanger's dream of a pill for birth control improbably came to fruition because of the discovery of a wild Mexican yam. The yam was key to the development of synthetic hormones, a scientific advance necessary for the creation of the Pill."

"Natural progesterone was hard to come by. Extracting it from animal sources was difficult, time consuming and prohibitively expensive. Natural progesterone drug therapy required huge doses to be effective, and at a cost of anywhere from $80 to $1,000 per gram, only the richest patients could afford the treatment. The only customers for the drug turned out to be world-class race horse breeders, who used it to improve the fertility of their mares. Aside from the high cost, the drug had to be given as an injection, and the shots were painful and not well metabolized. Unless researchers could find a way to produce a highly effective synthetic oral dosage of the hormone, the treatment would remain impractical. In 1943 a chemist by the name of Russell Marker came up with the answer. As a professor at Penn State, Marker had discovered a way to extract progestprogesterone from plant material. Soon after, he was able to create synthetic estrogen from vegetation as well. His path-breaking process, which became known as the "Marker Degradation," remains the basis of synthetic hormone production today. Marker still needed to find a plant that could yield enough progesterone to make mass production possible. He traveled across America in search of the right source, but came up empty-handed. Unwilling to abandon his quest, he headed south to Mexico in search of a plant called cabeza de negro that he had read about by chance in a dusty old regional Texas botany book. His hunch was correct, and the giant tubers proved to be an excellent source for the cheap mass production of progesterone."

"In the early 1950s, Frank Colton and Carl Djerassi, two chemists working independently at separate pharmaceutical companies, took Marker's work one step farther. The scientists each created a highly potent oral form of synthetic progesterone. Working for Syntex, a pharmaceutical company based in Mexico, Djerassi invented norethindrone. This synthetic progesterone was not only orally effective, it was also eight times more potent than natural progesterone. At Searle, Colton created another version of orally effective synthetic progesterone called norethynodrel. With the advent of these new drugs, the Pill came into existence. Although neither Djerassi or Colton developed the drug for contraceptive purposes, both Searle and Syntex had an oral contraceptive right under their noses. Although Djerassi synthesized his version of the drug first, Searle beat Syntex to market. Less than a decade after Colton and Djerassi's breakthrough, with Gregory Pincus making the connection to contraception, Searle's Pill would reach American consumers."

"On October 29, 1959, the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle filed an application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to license their drug Enovid for use as an oral contraceptive. Less than a decade after birth control activist Margaret Sanger first told scientist Gregory Pincus about her hopes for a "magic pill," it appeared that success was imminent. The trials presented in the application for FDA approval of Enovid as an oral contraceptive were the largest drug trials ever run. In the trials, 897 women had taken 10,427 cycles of the Pill with no side effects the doctors considered harmful. In 1959 the main hurdle to FDA approval for any new drug was that it be proven safe. Effica-cy was not yet a requirement. Since the FDA had already reviewed the issue of safety when it approved Enovid's use for menstrual disorders in 1957, Searle assumed the application would glide through the process. Searle and the Pill researchers were soon disappointed. The FDA sat on the application, and months went by without any word. Safety wasn't the issue clogging up the review process. It was the revolutionary nature of the Pill itself. Oral contraceptives would be the first drugs whose purpose was not to cure a medical ailment. Instead, the Pill would be given to healthy women for long-term use for a social purpose, and the FDA was uncomfortable with the concept."

"When the Pill came on the market in 1960, it was enthusiastically embraced by the medical profession and the public. But by the end of the decade, after a crisis over the drug Thalidomide (which was prescribed for morning sickness and caused birth defects) and increasing reports of potential health risks from the Pill, confidence in the drug was ebbing. In 1969 concerns came to a head with the publication of The Doctor's Case Against the Pill."

"In January 1970 experts assembled in the stately Senate chamber and began giving their testimony on the hazards of the Pill. Alice Wolfson, a member of the radical collective D.C. Women's Liberation, was sitting in the audience listening to the experts. Her group had come to the hearings because they had all taken the Pill at one time or another and had experienced side effects. The group was outraged that their doctors had never informed them of the risks when they prescribed the Pill. As they sat in the chamber and heard one male witness after another describe serious health risks, they were furious that there wasn't a single woman who had taken the Pill there to testify. After hearing one expert say, "Estrogen is to cancer what fertilizer is to wheat," the women spectators could no longer contain their anger. They stood up and started hurling questions at the men on the dais. The feminists set the room abuzz when they demanded, "Why are you using women as guinea pigs?" and "Why are you letting the drug companies murder us for their profit and convenience?" When told by Senator Nelson to sit down and remain quiet, they retorted, "We are not going to sit quietly! We don't think the hearings are more important than our lives!" Although Senator Nelson was the driving force behind the hearings, the young protesters were so angered by his failure to include women in the hearings -- and by what they viewed as his patronizing behavior --that they went on the attack. The group decided to protest the structure of the hearings and the men leading them, in addition to speaking out about the medical dangers of the Pill. The feminists' grievances gained national attention. National television networks covered the proceedings, and Wolfson's group appeared frequently on the nightly news during the hearings. An estimated eighty-seven percent of women between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five fol-lowed the hearings. Eighteen percent of them quit taking the oral contraceptive as a result of the hearings. In the hearings' aftermath, hormone levels in the Pill were lowered to a fraction of the original doses. A few years after the hearings, prescription rates rebounded, and the number of users in the United States peaked at approximately nineteen million. The real impact of the hearings was not on Pill usage, but on the nascent consumer health movement. D.C. Women's Liberation succeeded for the first time in making informed consent a national issue. In the aftermath of the hearings, the U.S. government would require the pharmaceutical industry to include a patient information sheet with complete information on side effects in every package of birth control pills sold. The growing women's movement was prompting women to assert control over their bodies, and in doing so it changed forever the way Americans take prescription medications."

"With the arrival of the birth control pill in 1960, many believed the Church was about to change the position it had held for centuries. The Church was in the midst of reform, and in this climate of modernization it seemed possible that the Vatican might bend on birth control. Since 1957, Church law had allowed women with "irregular" cycles to take the Pill to regularize their cycle and enable them to better practice the rhythm method. Approval of the contraceptive pill, many believed, was soon to follow. Pro-Pill Catholics had a powerful ally on their side. John Rock, the eminent Catholic physician who had carried out Pill trials with Dr. Gregory Pincus, publicly argued that the Pill was merely an extension of the body's normal functioning. Since the Pill used the same hormones already present in the female reproductive system and did not tamper with sperm, Rock believed the Church should view the Pill as a "natural" form of contraception. The Vatican convened a commission to study the question of the Pill, but the Church would take eight years to determine its policy towards the Pill. In the interim, the Pill quickly became the most popular method of birth control among American women —regardless of religion."

"The introduction of oral contraception in 1960 was not the result of one person's fortuitous discovery as happened with X rays or penicillin. It was, rather, the product of small accretions of knowledge resulting from the effort, talent, and determination of many people over a period of years."

"The chemical history of the pill begins with the isolation of progesterone in May 1933 by Corner and Allen. With the help of Dr. Hickman from the research laboratory of the Eastman Kodak Company, they used high-vacuum distillation of the oils extracted from corpora lutea to isolate the hormone in a crystalline form which they named progestin. Before the end of that year, Wintersteiner and Allen determined the structural formula of the hormone (C21 H30 O2). This admittedly was not difficult, since the structural formula of pregnanediol was known from previous work by Butenandt. As Allen later recalled, the correct structural formula of progesterone had originally been sketched on a napkin during a lunch with William Strain, long before the definitive structural proof was furnished! In the summer of 1934 the isolation of crystalline progesterone hormone was announced also by Butenandt and Westfall in Danzig, by Slotta et al. in Breslau, and in Switzerland by Hartman and Wettstein. A short time later Butenandt and Schmidt converted pregnandiol to progesterone, and Fernholz succeeded in synthesizing progesterone from stigmasterol."

"The early production of progesterone was extremely complex and laborious and the resulting product prohibitively expensive. Butenandt required a ton of cholesterol, obtained from the brains and spinal cords of cattle and the grease from sheep's wool, to obtain 20 lbs of starting material from which commercial quantities of progesterone could be produced. Progesterone, when available, was quoted at $l,000/gm. What opened the door for the development of the pill were two advances in steroid chemistry: the introduction of a new technique that changed progesterone from an expensive rarity to the cheapest of all steroid hormones, and the subsequent modification of the progesterone molecule to make it effective orally."

"I invented the pill at the request of a woman."

"Historically, contraception was believed to affect the voice negatively. However, more recent studies using low-dose oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) show that they stabilize the voice. However, stabilization generally occurs only during sustained vowel production; connected speech appears unaffected. Therefore, singers may be the only population that experiences clinically increased vocal stability as a result of taking hormonal contraceptives."

"[Margaret Sanger] said that when she started out in 1912, one of the first things she thought of was a new method for women to use. She after all was a nurse. She was an obstetrical nurse. She knew about birth control. She knew what methods were out there, and she knew they were lousy. She knew they worked sporadically. She knew it took the cooperation of the male and the female, the man and the woman, to make the method work. This was not always satisfactory, and she wanted to apply science and medicine to her feminist mission of giving women control of childbearing, so from the very early days in 1912, she dreamt of a pill. She knew the science wasn't there yet, which is why it took over four decades for this to happen."

"The history of the development of oral contraceptives (OCs) has been a progressive reduction in dosage to what is now probably the lowest does that is compatible with the desired therapeutic effect -- to inhibit ovluation. Yet, controversy and argument continue."

"There is not the slightest doubt that a woman who is over 35, who smokes, and who, in addition, may be obese and has hypertension should not use OCs. Progestogen (mini) OCs have a slightly higher failure rate and a greater incidence of irregular bleeding than have combined OCs. The mini OC has little place in women who need effective hormonal contraception and good cycle control. The mini OC may have a place in a patient who finds other contraception unacceptable and in whom estrogens are contraindicated specifically."

"The possibility of hormonal contraception was postulated as early as 1919 by the physiologist Ludwig Haberlandt in Innsbruck. The same year, he began to test his hypothesis in animal experiments. In 1924 he succeeded in his efforts to render mice infertil by orally administering ovarian and placental extracts. He failed to have his method tried in women."

"One of the early female graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Katharine McCormick believed in science and in the advancement of women. Margaret Sanger witnessed unwanted pregnancies -- and desperate abortion attempts -- when she worked as a nurse among New York's poorest women. Though they came from different worlds, the two women set out to improve women's lives through "birth control," a phrase Sanger coined. When Sanger and McCormick first met in 1917, women had been working for decades to achieve the vote. Thirty-nine years had gone by since a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage was first proposed, and three more years would pass before the states ratified it. At a time when women struggled for voting rights, job opportunities, or access to education, both McCor-mick, a suffragist, and Sanger, a birth control proponent, were outspoken advocates for giving women more control over their own lives. Thirty years later, McCormick's sizable inheritance combined with Sanger's tireless advocacy would bring about the birth control pill and spark a revolution. "An estimated eighty percent of all American women born since 1945 have taken the Pill," says historian An-drea Tone, giving them the ability to plan their reproductive lives."

"McCormick's involvement with the Pill is extraordinary. I think she's one of the most underappreciated figures in not just Pill history, but the entire history of scientific and technological innovation. First of all, it was very uncommon for a woman in the 1950s to have the kind of fortune that McCormick had. She had a fortune that was so vast that, as John Rock said at one point, she couldn't even spend the interest on the money that she had. So she was unique from the get-go in simply having this access to capital... At the time, the pharmaceutical companies which had historically been involved in some kinds of birth control production, like condom production and diaphragm production, saw the Pill project also as too controversial. Many large companies had passed on the opportunity to develop the Pill, including Pfizer and Merck, because they just didn't want to touch it. And so, were it not for McCormick, it's unclear how the Pill would have been developed. She really deserves credit for single-handedly financing one of the most important developments of the 20th century."

"Introduction of the birth control pill in the United States in 1960 marked the end of a relatively short period of time (< 10 years) to intentionally produce an oral contraceptive, and the beginning of a relatively long period of controversy surrounding the use of the pill. Availability of the pill had an impact on various aspects of social life, including women's health, fertility trends, laws and policies, religion, interpersonal relationships and family roles, feminist issues, and gender relations, as well as sexual practices among both adults and adolescents. The pill proved to be highly effective from the outset. Although safety issues developed with the earlier formulations, continued evolution of pill hormones and doses has resulted in a greatly improved and safe oral contraceptive. A broad range of noncontraceptive health benefits also is associated with the pill. These health effects are significant, as they in-clude protection against potentially fatal diseases, including ovarian and endometrial cancers, as well as against other conditions that are associated with substantial morbidity and potential hospitalization and associated costs. The popularity of the pill has remained high, with rates of use in the past 30 years in the United States ranging from one-quarter to almost one-third of women using contraception. Almost 40 years after its introduction, the pill's contraceptive efficacy is proven, its improved safety has been established, and the focus has shifted from supposed health risks to documented and real health bene-fits."

"By the end of their reproductive years, more than 80% of US women will have used oral contraceptives (OCs), for an average of about 5 years. The pill has had a dramatic impact on social life in the US, affecting women's health, fertility trends, laws and policies, religion, interpersonal relations, family roles, women's careers, gender relations, and premarital sexual practices. The emergence of the women's rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s was significantly related to the availability of the pill and the control over fertility it enabled. This capability allowed women to make choices about other life arenas, especially work. Over the past 40 years, both the content and dose of the steroid components of OCs have changed significantly, with consequent reduced health effects. This improved safety profile has been further bolstered by the identification of women with risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, history of cardiovascular disease, and diabetes with vascular disease. In recent years, the emphasis has shifted from the health risks of OC use to the noncontraceptive health benefits."

"Progestin-only contraceptives are known to alter the cervical mucus, exert a progestinal effect on the endometrium, interfering with implantation, and, in some patients, suppress ovulation."

"Oral contraceptives (OC) convey a protection against ovarian, endometrial and perhaps colorectal cancer. However, OC use is associated with excess risk of breast (current or recent use only), cervical and liver cancer. Benefits and risks of OC use on cancer were reviewed in 2005 by a Working Group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which concluded that combined OCs are carcinogenic to humans, based on an increased risk for hepatocellular carcinoma, cervical and (for current use only) breast cancers. The Working Group also concluded that there is conclusive evidence that OCs have a protective effect against cancers of the ovary and endometrium."

""It is the prerogative of the human intellect to dominate the energies offered by irrational nature and to orient them towards an end conformable to the good of man." In regard to your question as to why the pill is so bad if it is permitted by the Church to be used sometimes and at other times it is forbidden. The answer is that the pill is not intrinsically evil, of itself. It is made up of varying levels of the hormones called progestogens and estrogens. There is nothing evil about these hormones; God Himself created them! Yet He created them with a biological purpose of giving the female body the potential for fertility . . ."

"When one approaches the cycle of a woman's body from the standpoint that God made it and has made it for a purpose, one can then understand the relation of the pill to this cycle. To be blunt, a woman's cycle is ordered toward fertility, toward life. The pill, when used as an oral contraceptive, is ordered toward infertility, toward death. The pill (made up of estrogen and progestogen) is ordered toward infertility because it inhibits the release of the follicle stimulating hormone and stops the luteinizing hormone from triggering ovulation. The pill is ordered toward death because both estrogen and progestogen "change the endometrium in such a manner that even if ovulation did take place, implantation of the fertilized egg would be unsuccessful." In some cases, a child is conceived, and the pill acts as an abortifacient. This is the murder of an innocent!"

"On the 50th birthday of the pill, it is appropriate to recall the milestones which have led to its development and evolution during the last five decades. The main contraceptive effect of the pill being inhibition of ovulation, it may be called a small miracle that this drug was developed long before the complex regulation of ovulation and the menstrual cycle was elucidated. Another stumbling block on its way was the hostile climate with regard to contraception that prevailed at the time."

"Almost every decade we have witnessed a breakthrough in oral contraception. Social and moral objections to birth control have gradually disappeared and, notwithstanding some pill scares, oral contraceptives are now one of the most used methods of contraception."

"It had already been known for several decades that sex hormones were able to suppress ovulation in animals. Ludwig Haberlandt, an Austrian physiologist is sometimes called the grandfather of the pill. Indeed, in 1921 he found that rabbits and guinea pigs became temporarily sterile after transplantation of ovaries from pregnant animals. These experiments paved the way for pharmacological studies on the effect of progesterone on ovulation. The anti-ovulatory effect of progesterone was demonstrated by A. W. Makepeace and co-workers in 1937 who injected progesterone in mated female rabbits. Large-scale experiments with progesterone, which hitherto had been extracted from animal ovaries became possible after Russell E. Marker, a professor of organic chemistry, found that progesterone could be manufactured from a substance named diosgenin, extracted from the root of a plant (Dioscorea mexicana) which grows in Mexican jungles."

"Pincus made his name in the field of experimental biology when, in 1934, he produced rabbits in vitro by parthenogenesis. In 1944, he established the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology where he surrounded himself with a group of brilliant young investigators. One of them was a Chinese immigrant, Min-Chueh Chang, who repeated and refined the experiments of Makepeace and established the experimental model to study the anti-ovulatory effect of sex steroids. The impetus for converting findings of animal experiments into human hormonal contraception was given by Margaret Sanger, founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). She approached Pincus in 1951 and provided a small grant to begin hormonal contraceptive research. In the same period, John Rock, an expert in the treatment of infertility, was experimenting with the oral administration of high doses of oestrogen (diethylstilboestrol) and progesterone to induce pseudo-pregnancy in infertile women. He reasoned that high doses of sex steroids promoted the growth of the uterus and the Fallopian tubes and so restored fertility; but he also found that this treatment suppressed ovulation. The biologist Pincus and the gynaecologist Rock shared their experience and their intention to develop a hormonal oral contraceptive."

"There is a vast difference between the original pill and the current forms of hormonal contraception. This evolution was characterised by the reduction of hormonal dosages, introduction of new progestins, elaboration of various oestrogen-progestin administration schemes and the development of alternative routes of administration. It was driven by the search for oral contraceptives causing less side effects, but also by competition between pharmaceutical companies, and was facilitated by advances in the knowledge of hormonal mechanisms and the monitoring of the endocrine and metabolic effects OCs elicit."

"Epidemiological studies by the Medical Research Council, in the UK, revealed that pill users were more susceptible than nonusers to thromboembolism9. On second thoughts, this complication could be anticipated because of the established link between high oestrogen levels and thromboembolism during pregnancy. Later, it was shown that oestrogens and ethinylestradiol in particular stimulate the synthesis of several clotting factors and hepatic proteins among which the renin substrate angiotensinogen, re-sponsible for pill-induced hypertension in susceptible women. This first pill scare led to the gradual reduction in the dosage of ethinylestradiol from 50 to 30, 20 and even 15 μg. This dose reduction was associated with less side effects such as breast tenderness, nausea and bloating. But, even at these low doses, oral contraceptives still exert a prothrombotic effect."

"ON June the United States celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the approval of Enovid, the first oral contraceptive. From the time of the first clinical trials to the present, nearly million women have swallowed various formulations of the contraceptive pill, making it one of the most widely consumed class of drugs in the world. By the end of the twentieth century oral contraceptives had become a feature of everyday life, with more than 70 million women reaching for their pill packet on a daily basis around the globe. Widely regarded as a revolutionary drug in its early years, the pill might retrospectively be considered the first “designer” or “lifestyle” drug of the twentieth century."

"Developed in the1950s, the pill was once optimistically hailed as a scientific cure for the world’s rising population and its consequent social and political ills. Historians, however, have begun to show that the oral contraceptive did not prove to be the social panacea envisioned by its inventors, and that its history is more complex. Much of its history cannot be disentangled from the wider political, economic, and social issues of the day .Watkins, for instance, has shown that the availability of the pill in the United States had a major impact on the relationship between doctors and female patients in the1960s. Similarly, Critchlow has illustrated how the contraceptive controversy in American politics started with the appearance of the pill and continued with the debates surrounding RU-486, the abortion pill. More recently, Marks has challenged previous histories, which have championed the pill as a North American product that fuelled the sexual revolution, suggesting that its roots and subsequent adoption were much more diverse in origin and can only be understood within a wider international framework."

"Adding to the growing knowledge about the pill and its wide spread influence on twentieth-century history, we offer a detailed cross-cultural (or at least transatlantic) history of the actual processes by which the first pill formulation, Enovid (U.S.) and Enavid (U.K.) came onto the market. Such a detailed account of the marketing of the pill emphasizes that the birth control pill was introduced in various stages, rather than simply approved at a single point in time. The drug was first marketed in 1957 for treating gynecological disorders. Only in 1960 was it allowed to carry a contraceptive claim, and only after 1961 did reports begin to appear that the drug could cause serious, albeit rare, thrombotic complications (blood clots). Between the time that Enovid was approved as a menstrual regulator and then as a contraceptive, attitudes regarding the perception of safety changed greatly, as did the evaluations carried out to assess risk and efficacy."

"For most women, thalidomide came to epitomize the potential and unknown dangers posed by any drug used in pregnancy, while the horror that this drug inspired led directly to stronger laws governing the marketing of new drugs in Britain, the United States, and most of Europe between 1962 and 1964. As a drug intended to prevent pregnancy, the pill played a special role in the debate about the safety and efficacy of drugs."

"By 1967, British scientists had conclusively linked the pill with thrombosis, but they did so relying largely on epidemiological data. This increasing reliance on statistical evidence supported and advanced a more analytical and less communally determined drug approval process. This change in the risk-benefit equation calculations of a new drug, of course, may have been inevitable and had been initiated with an earlier drug, chloramphenicol, but it was the stature and novelty of Enovid that propelled it forward so dramatically. In the United States, concerns about the safety of the pill before 1967 led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administrations ”first permanent advisory committee, further changing the nature of the drug approval process and initiating what Jasanoff would later call the “fifth branch” of government in the United States."

"Much of the criticism of the pill, however, as Watkins has shown, arose from the fact that the pill altered the relationship between women and their physicians. In retrospect, it is clear that women’s rejection of medical paternalism underlay much of the social criticism leveled at the pill. We believe that the unique decision-making processes that introduced oral contraceptives and allowed them to remain on the market even after potentially dangerous side effects were discovered are an important and instructive example of the intermingling of science, policy, and practicability in the approval process for a revolutionary twentieth-century drug."

"The process by which the pill came to be marketed in Britain and the United States differed, according to the distinct drug regulatory mechanisms of each country. The United States had some premarketing control over the introduction of new drugs onto the marketplace, which had been established in 1938, but Britain had no premarketing controls aside from a requirement that all pharmaceutical manufacturers be licensed. In the end, however, both countries had similar versions of the pill on the market within months of each other."

"In Britain, government control over the manufacture and supply of pharmaceutical drugs had been tightened in 1947 and 1957. Such restrictions, however, primarily concerned dangerous drugs and self-medication drugs, as well as biological products (e.g., antibiotics, vaccines, and insulin, all of which had to best and ardized by biological techniques). Products had to be scrutinized to insure that their manufacturing methods and potency testing met the stipulated requirements. Drugs subject to these restrictions were only a small minority in the pharmacopoeia. All other drugs could be released onto the British market without submitting to any formal procedure. In general, the British government took a laissez-faire approach toward pharmaceutical companies in the1950s. The only restriction imposed on drugs in this period was that they could not be advertised as curing cancer, venereal disease, or Bright’s disease. Britain and the United States thus had very limited testing requirements when the first pill was initially approved, and Enovid underwent governmental premarket review only in the United States. The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act specified that a drug is not defined by its ability or lack of ability to treat a disease, but rather as any product “affecting the structure or function of the body.” This language had been incorporated into the 1938 law for the explicit purpose of giving the FDA jurisdiction over products such as obesity drugs (obesity was not considered a disease), nose straighteners, and especially contraceptive devices such as pessaries and condoms, which, like oral contraceptives, had both therapeutic and contraceptive applications. Therefore, by definition, Enovid was a product that clearly fell under the jurisdiction of the FDA."

"G.D. Searle and Company made the first American application for the approval of Enovid to the FDA in 1957.The company sought approval for the use of Enovid in cases of menstrual irregularities, including amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, and menorrhagia, as well as endometriosis (a painful proliferation of uterine tissue outside the uterus) and infertility. Incases of infertility, it had been shown that women who were given the drug for several months-to “rest” their ovaries-often went on to conceive, a phenomenon often referred to as the “Rock Rebound” effect. Although the original submission addressed only gynecological disorders, it was well known among many scientists that this particular formulation could prevent ovulation and therefore could be used as a contraceptive. Publications worldwide had reported Pincus’s work and has speculated on the pills clinical prospects."

"Once marketed in the United States and Britain, Enovid/Enavid was freely available to women whose doctors would prescribe it, either as a treatment for infertility or for menstrual disorders. Medical doctors in both countries could then, as they can now, prescribe drugs for purposes other than those approved because neither country has ever sought to regulate the practice of medicine. The fact that so many women may (or may not) have had access to Enocid/Enavid years before it was formally approved by FDA as a contraceptive makes any discussion about the approval of the pill which centers upon numbers very difficult. The most commonly cited figure is that by 1959 more than 500,000 women were taking the drug for menstrual disorders in the United States."

"When Searle notified the FDA in 1959 that it wished to submit a supplemental application for Enovid to expand the drug’s labeling indications to include use as an oral contraceptive, it rapidly became clear that the American federal government wanted little to do with the process and saw it as no more than routine bureaucratic process of new drug review and approval at the FDA. As Critchlow and Watkins have discussed in great detail, there mere mention of contraception as a credible component of overseas aid had drawn the opposition of American Catholic bishops. Moreover, with the 1960 presidential election looming, neither President Eisenhower nor the Catholic presidential candidate, John Kennedy, wanted to make an issue out of contraception and the pending approval of the contraceptive pill. In Britain, the central government also vigorously refused to initiate debate over the pill. The British Ministry of Health had stated as early as 1955 that it did not want any involvement with contraceptive testing and approval. Again, in 1956, when news emerged of the possible availability of a contraceptive pill in the United States, the Medical Research Council, the main British government body responsible for clinical trials since 1919, refused to sponsor any monitoring of the new drug on the grounds that it was too politically and morally sensitive an issue for them to handle."

"Searle had originally asked the FDA to consider simultaneously an application for three dosages of Enovid: 10, 5, and 2.5 milligrams. Searle was particularly interested in promoting the lower dosage forms of Enovid because one of the chief criticisms of the pill up to this point had not been a medical one, but rather an economic one. Partly developed in response to concerns about world hunger, it was feared that Enovid would prove far too expensive for woen in poorer countries. The cost of the hormone was directly proportionate to the cost of the drug and the dose. Lowering the dose significantly lowered the cost of Enovid. Searle, therefore, had great incentive to prove the safety and efficacy of its lower dosage pills. As far as Searle officials were concerned, the lower dose of Enovid should not have required a separate NDA because they considered it merely an alternative dose of the same drug. As one Searle representative wrote when seeking approval of the lower dosage: “[I find it] very difficult to understand how less of a drug can be more dangerous than a larger dose...a basic fact of any drug use is adjustment of the dosage to a particular individual’s requirement. That’s all we are trying to do with the lower dosage forms of Enovid....I find it impossible to understand how one increases danger by reducing the dose.” The FDA, however, viewed the dosage question as an issue of efficacy and possibly safety in 1959. The lower doses produced an increased incidence of breakthrough bleeding. It was not immediately clear whether this was an indication that ovulation had not been effectively suppressed. If so, it would have undermined Enovid’s effectiveness as a contraceptive, rendering it unapprovable. The FDA was therefore very cautious in considering any alteration in the original dose formulation of the pill."

"By the end of the fourth quarter of 1964, more than 4 million women had used Searle’s pill. Such unexpected and unprecedented popularity not only surprised the pharmaceutical industry, but amazed physicians, family planners, social reformers and politicians as well. The early enthusiasm for oral contraceptives, however, was soon dampened as the high hormonal doses of the first pill produced nausea, headaches, and dizziness so severe that some women abandoned the pill as quickly as they had embraced it."

"In Britain, publicity over the pill’s potential risks reached a crescendo in late 1969, when a number of British medical journals and popular newspapers published articles accusing the medical profession of being too complacent on the links between the pill and thrombosis. The debate intensified in December 1969 when Professor Victor Wynn, an endocrinologist and an expert on metabolic effects of anabolic steroids, appeared on a David Frost television program and detailed before millions of British viewers a panoply of risks associated with the pill. Appearing in a total of three Frost programs that month, one of which was broadcast to an audience in the United States, Wynn’s testimony caused public and parliamentary uproar. These broadcasts, together with the publication of the British epidemiological studies linking the pill with thrombotic complications, resulted in the British government warning doctors to no longer prescribe the higher dose (10-milligram) pills. In the United States, an impassioned public debate on the safety of the pill had also been inaugurated with the publications of journalists Morton Mintz and Barbara Seaman. Both journalists challenged what they characterized as the “diplomatic immunity” which had dominated news about the oral contraceptives up to that time by questioning not only the overall safety of the pill but the way in which the U.S. regulatory authorities had approved it. Mintz, in particular, widely publicized as fact that the pill had been tested on only 132 women prior to its approval for contraception and that its safety had not been proven before it went on the market. By the end of 1969 Senator Gaylord Nelson called for congressional hearings (known as the Nelson hearings) on the safety of the pill. The primary focus of the Nelson hearings was on safety and informed consent: Had women been adequately informed about the risks and significant side effects of the pill? Should the pill be removed from the market, or should new studies be instituted?"

"As Watkins has discussed, the Nelson hearings infuriated many women. During the 1960s many feminists had begun to protest against the paternalistic attitudes of the state and male-dominated medicine. After the hearings, women were critical of the process, which excluded testimony from female patients, and angry about the analogies to women as guinea pigs. Many responded by parading in front of the hearings carrying placards demanding “Feed the Pill to your guinea pigs at the FDA not live women.” After the hearings, women’s groups, particularly the Washington D.C.-based Women’s Liberation group, called for new separate hearings centered around women’s concerns, angrily arguing that, “In spite of the fact that it is women who are taking the pill and taking the risks, it was the legislators, the doctors, and the drug company’s representatives, all men of course, who were testifying and dissecting women as if they were no more important than the laboratory animals they work with every day.” In this charged atmosphere, there is no doubt that what feminists took away from the writings of journalists and the Nelson hearing proceedings was that women had indeed served as guinea pigs as drug companies prospered, and that, even ten years later, physicians were still not sure if the pill was safe."

"By the 1970s, however, there had been a sea tide of change in the evaluation of the safety of oral contraceptives since 1960. In 1962, before the British researchers established the statistical link with thrombosis, many physicians felt that the whole question of the pill’s side effects had been magnified, not by the actual danger, but by the concerns over thalidomide. No one disputed, however, that there was a need for more research to substantiate the concerns. By the time of the Nelson hearings, several large-scale studies of the pill and of thrombotic phenomena had been designed, and others were underway. The American Cancer Society, to cite a single example, initiated a seven-year study comparing 5000 pill users with 5000 nonusers. Experience with such large studies and interpretation of their results, as well as the new drug evaluation methods mandated by laws and regulations enacted in the wake of the thalidomide disaster, strengthened the entire new drug approval system worldwide."

"The pill, of course, is still on the market, and although it is still controversial in some corners, the social and medical concerns it originally engendered have now been supplanted by concerns over the abortion drug RU-486, approved in the United States in 1999. The pill, like other drugs before and after it, added experience and knowledge that strengthened the regulatory process. Moreover, early and continuing public criticism of the pill and its approval was crucial in opening up the larger debate over the safety, labeling, and information provided to consumers of prescription drugs in both countries. Seaman’s tireless, and at times heroic, efforts to mandate a “patient package insert” for the oral contraceptives cannot be overlooked as a major contribution to the history of the women’s health movement. Because of the knowledge gained from Enovid/Conovid, pharmaceutical researchers have gone on to create a new generation of oral contraceptives which are, in the words of journalist Robin Herman,“99.9% effective,” but are generally safer and have far fewer side effects than any of the original pill formulations. Only in 1995 was it established that a mutant gene (called factor V Leiden) puts some women at increased risk of venous thrombosis. With the recent commercial availability of genetic screening for this gene, women now have the option of being screened before they take the pill."

"The trials began with small-scale tests on rats and rabbits. Each day, for a period of five days, re-searchers pumped immature female rabbits full of the reproductive hormones estrogen and progesterone. On the fifth day, the scientists allowed the rabbits to copulate, then removed their fallopian tubes and examined them for signs of egg fertilization. For years, Massachusetts scientists worked diligently on hundreds of caged rabbits in a basement lab on a shoestring budget, searching for the perfect compound. On June 23, 1960, a decade after the tests began, the hormonal birth control pill hit the market. The idea was simple: Take a little white pill once a day, avoid accidental pregnancy. The implications were revolutionary."

"On June 23, 1960, a decade after the tests began, the hormonal birth control pill hit the market. The idea was simple: Take a little white pill once a day, avoid accidental pregnancy. The implications were revolutionary. Women could work without fear of becoming pregnant. Sex before marriage be-came less risky. Sex after marriage became less fraught. Feminist historians herald this day as the be-ginning of the sexual revolution—but the story of the birth control pill is also one of conflicting ideologies and medical exploitation. The Harvard-educated scientists who formulated the pill relied on invasive tests and shaky medical consent."

"After her husband died on January 19, 1947, Katharine D. McCormick came into $35 million. A life-long feminist and birth control advocate, she spent the money on what Margaret Sanger, famous feminist and Planned Parenthood founder, explained to her as “the greatest need of the whole [Planned Parenthood] movement”—“a simple, cheap, contraceptive.” Feminists had dreamed of a birth control pill a woman could take without a man’s knowledge, and Rock and Pincus were their best chance yet."

"Ten years after its first release, the birth control pill made headlines again during the Nelson Pill Hearings, a Capitol Hill investigation into the pill’s safety. When feminist activists noticed that no women were being invited to testify, they interrupted the proceedings and testified from their seats. “Why isn’t there a pill for men?” activist Alice Wolfson shouted. “Why are 10 million women being used as guinea pigs?”"

"[M]edical history is often swept clean, praising progress without remembering those who suffered to create it. For the most part, the popular narrative of the pill is one of celebration. When a 2009 Harvard Gazette story discussed Harvard’s role in creating the birth control pill, they did so without referencing the Puerto Rican trials or the asylum testing. Pincus and Rock are largely remembered for their contributions to women’s reproductive empowerment, without reference to their troubling methods."

"By the beginning of the 20th-century, the idea of oral contraception in conventional medicine had died. It was not to be revived until the century was half over. The woman who made it happen was Margaret Sanger (Riddle, 1992)."

"The efforts of Sanger and McCormick would have been for naught, however, if it hadn’t been for the medical folk traditions of the descendants of the w:Aztecs. The basic research for the pill became possible when Russell Marker discovered that generations of Mexican women had been eating a certain wild yam ⎯the Barbasco root, also called cabeza de negro⎯for contraception (Chesler, 1992). It was from these yams that Marker was able to extract the progestin that Gregory Pincus combined with estrogen to formulate the first birth control pill (Grimes, 2000). The first pill was far from perfect ⎯but its effectiveness, simplicity, and ease of use extended to millions of women an unheard-of control over reproduction, for the first time allowing them to truly separate vaginal intercourse from procreation (Bullough & Bullough, 1990). Margaret Sanger’s pill made the sexual liberation movement of the ‘60s a lot less risky than the one that occurred after World War I. More than 20years ago, the FDA proclaimed that “...more studies have been done on the pill to look for serious side effects than have been done on any other medicine in history” (Asbell, 1995). That scientific scrutiny has continued to this day. The pill of today, as well as other more recent combined hormone methods —the patch and the ring—offer safety and effectiveness with greatly decreased doses of hormone (Knowles &Ringel, 1998)."

"During the 1950s, in the early days of hormonal contraceptive research, pellets of progesterone were inserted under the skin of rabbits to prevent them from conceiving (Asbell, 1995). Forty years later, a variation on those experiments became an approved form of birth control in the U.S. ⎯Norplant. But just as with DMPA, American women had to wait longer than their sisters around the world to have access to this very effective method (Asbell, 1995). Developed by the Population Council and distributed in the U.S. by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, Norplant was approved by the WHO in 1984, after nearly 20 years of research and clinical trials. WHO heralded Norplant as an “effective and reversible long-term method of fertility regulation ⎯particularly advantageous to women who wish an extended period of contraceptive protection” (Population Council, 1990).Six years later, the FDA approved Norplant for use in the U.S. By then it had been used by a half-million women in 17 countries where it had received regulatory approval (Grimes, 2000). By July 1994, nearly a million women in the United States had chosen to use Norplant implants (Lewin, 1994)."

"The Searle Company developed the first oral contraceptive (OC), Enovid, in the late 1950s. In keeping with defensive anti-litigation strategy, the company extensively tested the Pill on Puerto Rican women before concluding that it was safe for American women to use in 1961."

"The original class of birth control pills contained a high dosage of both estrogen and progestin, which led to a variety of side effects, including blurred vision, nausea, cramping, irregular menstrual bleeding, headaches, and possibly breast cancer. Beginning in about 1975, the manufacturers of the Pill, in reaction to adverse publicity generated about the severe side effects caused by the high-dosage pills, steadily decreased the content of estrogen and progestin in their products."

"Users of the "old" high-dosage birth control pills experienced relatively severe side effects. However, many of these pills were generally considered non-abortifacient in their two-fold ("biphasic") modes of action. The pills would thicken cervical mucus and inhibit ovulation, but they would generally not inhibit implantation of the blastocyst (the five-day old, 256-cell developing human being) in the uterine lining. However, the new low-dosage pills are "triphasic." They have three modes of action; they thicken cervical mucus, inhibit ovulation, and block implantation. Therefore, the "new" Pills are all abortifacient in nature. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in its 1984 pamphlet entitled "Facts About Oral Contraceptives," said that "Though rare, it is possible for women using combined pills (synthetic estrogen and progestogen) to ovulate. Then other mechanisms work to prevent pregnancy. Both kinds of pills make the cervical mucus thick and 'inhospitable' to sperm, discouraging any entry to the uterus. In addition, they make it difficult for a fertilized egg to implant, by causing changes in Fallopian tube contractions and in the uterine lining. These actions explain why the minipill works, as it generally does not suppress ovulation.""

"It is known that pills which contain only progestin alter the cervical mucus. They also interfere with implantation by affecting the endometrium and suppressing ovulation in some patients by reducing the presence of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). This mechanism is confirmed by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which stated that "Progestin-only contraceptives are known to alter the cervical mucus, exert a progestinal effect on the endometrium, interfering with implantation, and, in some patients, suppress ovulation." The manufacturers of the minipills also acknowledge this mode of action. For example, Syntex Laboratory spokesman Russ Wilks announced that its progestin-only Pill "... did not interfere with ovulation ... It seems to affect the endometrium so that a fertilized egg cannot be implanted.""

"According to United States Federal courts, the birth control pill has been classified as "unavoidably unsafe." This means that, implicit in a woman's consent to use the pill, even if she is not entirely informed of its dangers, is an acknowledgement of physical risk."

"The most dangerous and well-documented side effects commonly associated with the Pill are heart attacks and strokes. The eight-year Nurse's Health Study at Harvard Medical School found that Pill users are 250 percent as likely to have heart attacks and strokes than those who don't use the Pill, probably because the Pill excessively increases blood clotting ability."

"[I]t is obvious that the Pill has contributed greatly to our country's exploding divorce rate, which was about 18 percent in 1965 and now stands at about 50 percent."

"After the Pill was introduced in the mid-1960s, fornication and 'shacking up' both almost doubled in a period of only five years. This behavior also increased steeply when abortion was legalized in 1973. People of all ages (but especially teenagers) are fornicating more than ever before. Wife-swapping clubs, sex addiction treatment organizations, hard-core pornography, and 'fantasy [sex] tours' to Far East nations have increased tremendously. Even the original developers of the birth control pill now acknowledge that their invention has led to widespread promiscuity. Dr. Robert Kirstner of Harvard Medical School said that "For years I thought the pill would not lead to promiscuity, but I've changed my mind. I think it probably has." And Dr. Min-Chueh Chang, one of the co-developers of the birth control pill, has acknowledged that "[Young people] indulge in too much sexual activity ... I personally feel the pill has rather spoiled young people. It's made them more permissive.""

"Since preventing ovulation prevents pregnancy, one could employ the same principles in birth control as in preventing dysmenorrhea [painful menstruation] Thus, for example, if an individual took 1 mg. of diethylstilbestrol [a synthetic estrogen] by mouth daily from the first day of her period for the next six weeks, she would not ovulate during this interval. A hormone regiment would have to be worked out that allowed periodic menstruation, but the medication could be administered to make the menstrual period come on the least undesirable day. Such manipulation of one’s menstrual rhythm is probably not to be advocated indiscriminately, but there is no evidence at the present time to suggest that the individual will not return to her pre therapeutic rhythm on cessation of therapy. By the 1950s both endocrinology and steroid chemistry had advanced far enough so that a hormonal contraceptive was possible. The initiative for a major effort to develop a physiological contraceptive did not come from scientists or physicians, however, but from laywomen. And the scientist that they chose to realize their hopes for better birth control was a refugee from academic biology."

"G.D. Searle and Company was only able to patent the specific steroids developed in its laboratories, not the term “The Pill” or the concept of using steroids as contraceptives. And Searle never would have supplied Pincus with the experimental drugs he needed if in doing so they had risked their right to exclusive control over compounds they developed. Nevertheless, Pincus only encouraged McCormick to make all of her contributions directly to the foundation after G.D. Searle had begun supporting the pill project with both experimental drugs and specific research grant."

"McCormick apparently never understood that Searle had paid a large portion of Pincus’ salary for years. Rather, as McCormick explained to Abraham Stone, Pincus was “acquainted with some one [sic] in the Searl [sic] Company.” Exactly how he was able to convince them to provide free experimental drugs for the project on a large scale was never explained. In fact, Searle’s steroid chemists played an important role in the pill’s development. Although similar feats were being duplicated in a number of competing industrial laboratories, the large number of synthetic hormones that a they were producing gave Pincus an essential variety of compounds with a wide range of effects that he could try on animals, selecting for clinical trial only a few of the most promising out of the dozens that had some contraceptive effect. But McCormick has shielded from the commercial aspects of the project she was subsidizing. Nevertheless, her contribution was vital. She provided the funds that turned a desultory PPFA project into a crash program to develop an oral contraceptive. Pincus asked Searle for substantial help on the project only after he had suppressed ovulation in women with a progesterone regimen. By then he knew that he could develop an oral contraceptive. Searle’s cooperation simply hastened the process. When the first successful use of synthetic steroids as an oral contraceptive in women was announced in ‘’Science’’ in 1956, Sanger wrote McCormick: You must, indeed, feel a certain pride in your judgment. Gregory Pincus had been working for at least ten years on the progesterone of the reproductive process in animals. He had practically no money for this work and Dr. Stone and I did our best to get a few dollars for him and I think that the amount we collected went to pay the expenses of Chang [senior scientist, WFEB]. Then you came along with your fine interest and enthusiasm and with your faith and . . .things began to happen and at last the reports . . . are now out in the outstanding scientific magazine and the conspiracy of silence has been broken. Although “conspiracy of silence” may have been an exaggeration, throughout the late 1950s few scientists believed an oral contraceptive was at hand."

"IN 1967 the National Science Foundation commissioned a study of the relationship between basic research and technological innovation. What role did “nonmission” research, research motivated solely by a desire for knowledge,, play in the development of new products of great economic and social significance, such as the electron microscope, the videotape recorder, and the oral contraceptive pill? Since the National Science Foundation existed to promote research, it was not surprising when the study revealed that 70 percent of the key events leading to technological innovation resulted from so-called nonmission research. Seventy-six percent of this basic work was done in university laboratories; 14 percent in research institutes and government laboratories. Industrial laboratories made only 10 percent of the original discoveries that advanced knowledge. Large diagrams were provided on which the red dots representing basic research stretched far into the past, while the blue symbols for “mission-oriented research” and the green symbols for “development and application” were clustered near the present. In the diagram explaining the origins of the pill, Arnold Berthold’s 1984 demonstration that castrated roosters do not behave like roosters was given equal billing with key events in the development of twentieth century endocrinology. The overall impression was one of a long chain of basic researches leading inevitably to an oral contraceptive."

"Controversy has surrounded "the Pill" ever since it was first marketed in the United States in 1960. It has been studied medically, sociologically and morally, and yet much confusion still exists concerning these potent artificial steroids. The billions of dollars at stake in the marketing of the Pill and the power of the birth control industry to lobby both lawmakers and the media can easily divert the average person from the truth. Research has been published, books have been written, and common sense should make one cautious."

"The Pill manufacturers and many in organized medicine are mainly concerned about the Pill's medical side effects and its effectiveness in preventing pregnancies and are less concerned about how the drug achieves its effectiveness. Unfortunately, many "otherwise" pro-life physicians and pharmacists find it hard to admit that these abortifacient properties exist because they would have to discontinue prescribing and dispensing the Pill if they were to remain consistent in their respect for life at all its stages of development. Pro-abortion organizations and their lawyers readily admit the early abortion potential of the Pill. In February 1992, writing in opposition to a Louisiana law banning abortion, Ruth Colker, a Tulane Law School professor, wrote, "Because nearly all birth control devices, except the diaphragm and condom, operate between the time of conception...and implantation.., the statute would appear to ban most contraceptives." In 1989, attorney Frank Sussman argued before the U. S. Supreme Court that ". . . IUDs (and) low dose birth control pills. . . act as abortifacients.""

"The health risks of the Pill outweigh by far the risks of pregnancy and childbirth to a woman's health, and any claim to the contrary is based on erroneous comparisons between healthy women on the Pill and women who do not receive normal care during pregnancy. A precondition for obtaining the Pill is routine medical care and checkups. For example: if such a woman on the Pill is diagnosed as "precancerous," or if some other side effect is exhibited, she has the advantage of early detection. However, many pregnant women do not receive routine medical care. A clearer picture of the safety of the Pill compared to the safety of pregnancy would be made if healthy women receiving routine medical care during pregnancy and delivery were compared with women receiving routine medical care while taking the Pill."

"Fifty percent of woman taking the Pill discontinue it within the first year because of side effects, the development of benign breast disease, or some abnormality of the sexual organs. Studies of Pill usage do not include these women, and the result is an unbalanced picture of only the healthiest of women who tolerate the Pill. This is compared with the general population of women who are pregnant. The fact is that there are 13.8 million women in the U.S. and 60 million women worldwide who use the Pill (conservative numbers). And there are 7.9 Pill-related deaths per 100,000 women ages 15-44. Therefore, one can calculate that there are over 1090 deaths each year in the U.S. alone simply due to the Pill."

"Although female use of hormonal contraceptives (HCs) has been associated with a variety of physical side effects, the psychological and behavioral side effects have received comparatively little attention until recently. Indeed, the long-term impact of HC use on human psychology has been vastly under-researched and has only recently become a focus for mainstream scholars. Women who use HCs report higher rates of depression, reduced sexual functioning, and higher interest in short-term sexual relationships compared to their naturally-cycling counterparts. Also, HC use may alter women’s ability to attract a mate, as well as the mate retention behaviors in both users and their romantic partners. Some evidence even suggests that HC use alters mate choice and may negatively affect sexual satisfaction in varous women, with potential effects on future offspring."

"From 2006-2008, the number of US women who had ever used the oral contraceptive pill stood at 82%, with 22% of women having used an injectable or shot (Mosher and Jones, 2010). Indeed, the popularity of HCs crosses both political and religious boundaries. High proportions of HC users can be found in developed nations as well as in emerging and developing economies (United Nations, 2009)."

"Recently, researchers have documented negative effects on mood and psychological well-being as a consequence of HC use in women (Bancroft, Sanders, Warner, and Loudon, 1987; Herzberg and Coppen, 1970; Kahn and Halbreich, 2001; Kurshan and Epperson, 2006; Oinonen and Mazmanian, 2002). DeSoto, Geary, Hoard, Sheldon, and Cooper (2003) found that women using HCs exhibited more symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD), a disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of instability in affect regulation, impulse control, interpersonal relationships, and self-image (Lieb, Zanarini, Schmahl, Linehan, and Bohus, 2004), and that women with high pre-existing levels of BPD symptoms became significantly worse after starting HC use (DeSoto et al., 2003). Sanders, Graham, Bass, and Bancroft (2001) found that negative changes in emotional and sexual well-being were important predictors of discontinuation of oral contraceptives (see also Graham, Ramos, Bancroft, Maglaya, and Farley, 1995; Rosenberg and Waugh, 1998; Rosenberg, Waugh, and Meehan, 1995), although HC users report experiencing less variability in affect across the menstrual cycle and less negative affect during menstruation (Oinonen and Mazmanian, 2002). While women low in social anxiety are more likely to use oral contraceptives (Leary and Dobbins, 1983), HC users describe higher rates of depression (e.g., Kulkarni, 2007) than normally cycling women. On the other hand, pair-bonded (but not single) women report lower levels of intrasexual competition when using HCs as compared to when they are regularly cycling (Cobey, Klipping, and Buunk, 2013). Oral contraceptive-using women also showed significantly attenuated cortisol responses to stressors compared to controls (Roche, King, Cohoon, and Lovallo, 2013), with peak cortisol levels only slightly elevated above baseline levels (Kirschbaum, Pirke, and Hellhammer, 1995). Therefore, HC use appears to interfere with the adrenocortical response to psychological stress by influencing the amount of bioavailable unbound cortiso l (see also Kirschbaum, Kudielka, Gaab, Schommer, and Hellhammer, 1999), although reports of affective responses to identical stressor tasks do not differ as a function of HC use (Marinari, Leshner, and Doyle, 1976). Furthermore, Egarter, Topcuoglu, Imhof, and Huber (1999) found that a low-dose oral contraceptive actually improved patients’ perceptions of their own quality of life (see also Caruso et al., 2011; Ernst, Baumgartner, Bauer, and Janssen, 2002), highlighting the need for further research."

"HCs appear to influence sexual behavior, with reported or apparent reduced sexual functioning and interest in humans (Bancroft et al., 1987; Caruso et al., 2004; Graham et al. , 1995; Sanders et al., 2001; Wallwiener et al., 2010; but see Caruso et al., 2005) and in other primates (Guy et al., 2008; Michael, Saayman, and Zumpe, 1968; Nadler, Dahl, Gould, and Collins, 1993; Shimizu, Takenoshita, Mitsunaga, and Nozaki, 1996; Steklis et al., 1982). However, human female HC use is also associated with a greater number of reported sexual partners (Little, Jones, Penton-Voak, Burt, and Perrett, 2002) and significantly greater interest in engaging in short-term sexual relationships across all phases of the menstrual cycle (Guillermo, Manlove, Gray, Zava, and Marrs, 2010), indicating that women who choose to use HCs may differ from others in their degree of sociosexuality."

"Currently, it is unclear whether HCs influence actual mate choice and whether this has real-life consequences for potential offspring. Although HC use may negatively affect intra-couple behavior (Cobey et al., 2011, 2012; Havlíček and Roberts, 2009; Roberts et al., 2012; Vollrath and Milinski, 1995; Welling et al., 2012) and may alter preferences for MHC heterozygosity (Havlíček and Roberts, 2009; Roberts et al., 2008; Wedekind et al., 1995; Wedekind and Füri, 1997), which could hypothetically have negative consequences for future offspring (e.g., Reznikoff-Etievant et al., 1991), direct empirical evidence for these theoretical longitudinal consequences of HC use is lacking."

"In closing, it should be noted that although a full and complete understanding of the potential effects of hormonal contraceptive use on physiology, psychology, and behavior is incredibly important, any effects should be weighed against the multiple benefits that the revolutionary invention of HCs has brought. Effective contraceptive methods have given women control over their fertility that is unprecedented and has aided in many personal and economic achievements for women (Go ldin and Katz, 2002). Regardless, future independent and comparative research on the psychological and behavioral effects of HC use in humans and nonhuman primates is crucial. The additional knowledge gained from this research could help in the development of new contraceptive methods and will allow women to make more informed decisions regarding the type and timing of their HC use."

"Many slave owners looked at black women’s bodies as a source of free labor and often forced relationships or raped enslaved women to produce more children. Generally, enslaved women who bore children were considered more valuable than those who didn’t. At the same time, the backbreaking work expected of the women, the lack of medical care and healthy food, and abusive treatment often resulted in miscarriages, premature births, and stillbirths. Those losses led some southern whites to conclude that enslaved women knew secret ways to manage their fertility. Though the practice probably wasn’t as common as was assumed, some black women did use remedies such as cotton root or looked to a black midwife to end their pregnancies. In doing so, they were asserting some control over their own bodies-and perhaps hoping to avoid the heartbreak of having a child born into slavery or sold away from the family. But the birth rate for black women didn’t notably decline until after the end of the Civil War."

"Margaret Garner, who was born as an enslaved girl, almost certainly did not plan to kill her child when she grew up and became an enslaved mother. But she also couldn’t yet know that the physical, emotional and psychological violence of slavery, relentless and horrific, would one day conspire to force her maternal judgment in a moment already fraught with grave imperative."

"Herbal remedies to induce miscarriage were equally well known to enslaved women. Slaves often grew herbs and mixed their own medicine, derisively referred to as “negro remedies” by Southern whites. A common concern among slave-owners (who, as I mentioned in my last post, stood to gain from their slaves’ pregnancies) was that slave women were using cotton root as an abortifacient. Historian Sharla Fett writes that white doctors worried that enslaved women were using those old emmenagogues pennyroyal, tansy and rue to end pregnancies. Just as with white women, doctors were eager to control the use of slaves’ herbal remedies, particularly those used to regulate menstruation."

"Black women have been aborting themselves since the earliest days of slavery. Many slave women refusing to bring children into a world of interminable forced labor, where chains and floggings and sexual abuse for women were the everyday conditions of life. A doctor practicing in Georgia around the middle of the last century noticed that abortions and miscarriages were far more common among his slave patients than among the white women he treated. Why were self-imposed abortions and reluctant acts of infanticide such common occurrence during slavery? Not because Black women had discovered solutions to their predicament, but rather because they were desperate. Abortions and infanticides were acts of desperation, motivated not by the biological birth process but by the oppressive conditions of slavery. Most of these women, no doubt, would have expressed their deepest resentment had someone hailed their abortions as a stepping stone toward freedom."

"Legend has popularized the image of the Caribbean as a woman compelled to suckle a snake all night long. This image of a woman’s violated body is viewed as paradigmatic of a land and people exploited and ravaged by imperialist aggression. As a corporeal representation, the image recalls Hortense Spillers’s formulation of the New World as a “scene of “actual” mutilation, dismemberment and exile,” where the “seared divided, ripped-apartness” of the flesh serves as “primary narrative.” As legend has encoded it, however, this primary narrative is inscribed in the flesh of the woman’s body and takes the particular form of violated maternity This powerful image of the violated maternal figure has, not surprisingly, found a significant place in contemporary Caribbean and African American literature. The literary representation of the figure of the violated mother is enmeshed with two dominant and long-standing issues of this literature. Although they have long been of concern in Caribbean and African American literature, the slave mother and black motherhood have only recently appeared, in all their complexity, as focal points for the exploration of past history and self-expression. Not only does the issue of violated maternity force the painfully unspeakable and unspoken experience into avenues of objectification, insisting that the sexual abuse of black women, both slave and free, be included in discussion of slavery, but, as image, it can also become emblematic or representative of an entire people, as in the work of Edouard Glissant. As well, it can become the cornerstone for a critique of repressed desire, as in Maryse Conde’s “Moi, Tituba, sorciere . . . Noire de Sale” (1986; Eng. “I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem”). This critique resolves itself, turning absence into presence, through an alternative production/reproduction: that of writing or telling the female self into existence."

"Throughout Antillean oral culture,” writes Maryse Conde in “La parole des femmes” (Women’s Word; 1979), “the mother is glorified as the bearer of gifts and the dispenser of goods. We can easily say that this is also the case in literature written by both men and women.” This idealization of the mother, which Conde characterizes as an enduring feature of the folklore and literature of the Antilles, has given rise to a romanticized, if not exotic, portrayal of maternity. It is only recently, argues Conde, that feminist literature of the Antilles has responded to the model image of a nurturing, supportive, selfless mother and the reductionist conception of maternity as the definitive function of women. The response, Conde adds, is somewhat nuanced: although literary heroines continue to conceptualize the mother as a prominent figure, they themselves refuse maternity. Conde suggests that the ambivalence that accompanies the heroine’s refusal reflects both the persistent defining power of the images and a conscious or unconscious rejection of them (40-47). I would like to suggest that, in addition, the ambivalence is indicative of residual traces of violence against the slave mother, vestiges of the past that consciously or unconsciously shape present conceptions of social identity. Rooted in the violence colonization of black female sexuality, motherhood in slavery was an extremely complex and conflict-ridden experience, the repercussions of which are still felt today and manifest themselves as the literary heroine’s ambivalence."

"It is clear to see how deeply abortion bans are rooted in white supremacy and patriarchal strongholds when we look at the history of Black women in this country. The tradition of disregarding the humanity of Black people is part of more than 400 years of white supremacist systems in America. Although abortion was legal throughout the country until after the Civil War, there were different rules for enslaved Black women than for white women. Enslaved Black women were valuable property. They didn’t have the freedom to control their bodies, and slave owners prohibited them from having abortions. Under the law, white men owned Black women’s bodies. So, enslaved women who had access to emmenagogic herbs — plants used to stimulate menstruation — had to make remedies to induce their own abortions in secret. When slavery was abolished in 1865, the societal control over Black women’s bodies remained. Today, our white supremacist culture judges Black women for both having children and for having abortions — besetting them with blame for virtually any decision they make and any form of agency they take about their bodies."

"Southern slaves were "the happiest, and, in some sense the freest people in the world," wrote George Fitzhugh, Virginia proslavery defender. He claimed bondwomen did "little hard work" and were "protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters." In her famous diary, Mary Chesnut noted that the female slaves "take life easily. Marrying is the amusement of their life." Many antebellum southerners thought the female slaves were sensuous and promiscuous and cited the "easy chastity" of the bondwomen. Since associations were made between promiscuity and reproduction, the desired increase of the slave population seemed to be evidence of the bondwoman's passion. A slaveowner in northern Mississippi told Fredrick Law Olmsted that slaves "breed faster than white folks, a 'mazin' sight, you know; they begin younger," and, he added, "they don't very often wait to be married." Bondwomen's perception of the slave experience is in marked contrast to the slaveowners'. In her remarkable autobiography, Linda Brent, a mulatto female slave, noted, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own." Female bondage was worse than male bondage because the female slave was both a woman and a slave in a patriarchial regime where males and females were unequal, whether white or black. Because they were slaves, African-American women were affected by the rule of the patriarch in more ways and to a greater degree than the white women in the Big House. The size of the food allotment, brutal whippings, slave sales, and numerous other variables influenced the bondwoman's view of the patriarchy. Yet because she was a woman, her view, like that of the white woman, was also gender related. According to Anne Firor Scott, the most widespread source of discontent among white women centered around their inability "to control their own fertility." On the other hand, the bondwoman's entire sex life was subject to the desires of her owner. This essay will, therefore, deal only with the bondwomen's perspective from the viewpoint of gender, using twentieth-century interviews with female ex-slaves who were at least twelve or thirteen years of age at the time of emancipation. Of the 514 women in this category, 205, or almost forty percent, made comments of this nature."

"Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave of free. Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother-“Partus Sequitur Ventrem”. And that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act."

"Claudia Tate has observed that for female slaves "motherhood was an institution to which they had only biological claim". Enslaved women and their children could be separated at any time, and even if they belonged to the same owner, strict labor policies and plantation regulations severely limited the development of their relationships. Hortense J. Spillers concludes that because of this fundamental maternal outrage, and the concomitant banishment of the black father, "only the female stands in the flesh, both mother and mother-dispossessed. This problematizing of gender places her, in my view, out of the traditional symbolics of female gender". George Cunningham further argues, "Within the domain of slavery, gender or culturally derived notions of man- and womanhood do not exist". The predetermined violence of slavery disrupts conventional meanings attached to words such as "mother" and "womanhood." What is motherhood for a woman deprived of the ability to care for and protect her child? How are we to conceptualize maternal identity under conditions of enslavement? Furthermore, because procreation by bondwomen can be regarded as both a means of perpetuating slavery and an act of love and self-sacrifice, the sexuality of enslaved women and their relationship to their offspring must be understood as a complex negotiation involving individual agency, resistance, and power. Due to slavery's basic destabilization of blood relations, the black female subject demands new terms of radical self-determination. Spillers thus reminds her readers, "It is our task to make a place for this different social subject. In doing so, we are less interested in joining the ranks of gendered femaleness than gaining the insurgent ground as female social subject"."

"It is precisely through her flesh as both mother and slave woman that Harriet A. Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) claims the insurgent ground of her social identity and formulates her resistance to human bondage. By emphasizing her narrator's maternal sentiments, Jacobs resists prevailing beliefs concerning black women's indifference to their children while also establishing an important association between her protagonist Linda Brent and domestic ideologies. Much like Harriet Beecher Stowe and other nineteenth-century writers of sentimental fiction, Jacobs describes "nurture as a quintessence of the maternal that crosses race and class boundaries" (Stephanie Smith 215). Relying upon an understanding of maternity as a form of innate attachment, Jacobs presents Linda's actions as largely determined by the effect they will have on her children and their eventual emancipation. Many female slaves were unable to keep their families together, yet by emphasizing the oppositional action inspired by maternal sentiment Jacobs presents motherhood as a force that resists slavery and its supporters. By fashioning a literary persona who is defined almost exclusively by her maternal identity, Jacobs rejects the materialist logic of human ownership. Maternal love is shown to offer a model of relations that opposes the economy of exchange and possession characterizing the antebellum system of human bondage. Converting her body and reproductive abilities from sites of exploitation to vehicles of resistance, Linda undermines the authority of the slave master and works to liberate her children. Works by Carla Peterson, Valerie Smith, and Claudia Tate have focused upon Jacobs's departure from the assumptions and expectations of the male slave narrative to articulate the experiences and concerns of bondwomen. By contrast, I explore forms of female bodily resistance as well as ideological strategies of literary representation. Rather than conflate Jacobs with the text's protagonist, as many previous critics have done, I analyze Linda as a literary figure deliberately constructed to perform certain political aims. As the embodiment of maternal love, she acts almost exclusively to improve the lives of her children. Although Linda strains credibility as a result of her overriding maternal sensibility, Jacobs's reliance upon the trope of motherhood capitalizes on the political import of prevailing beliefs in the sanctity and power of the mother and suggests that a woman's sexuality offers a vital means of resistance against patriarchal oppression."

"From the moment of its introduction into the Atlantic world, hereditary racial slavery depended on an understanding that enslaved women's reproductive lives would be tethered to the institution of slavery. At the same time, few colonial slave codes explicitly defined the status of these children. This essay explores English slave codes regarding reproduction under slavery alongside the experience of reproduction to suggest that legislative silences are not the final word on race and reproduction. The presumption that their children would also be enslaved produced a visceral understanding of early modern racial formations for enslaved women. Using a seventeenth-century Virginia slave code as its anchor, this essay explores the explicit and implicit consequences of slaveowners' efforts to control enslaved women's reproductive lives."

"Atlantic slavery rested upon a notion of heritability. It thus relied on a reproductive logic that was inseparable from the explanatory power of race. As a result, women and their experienced of enslavement shed critical light on what it meant to be enslaved or free in the early modern Atlantic world. Regardless of the rate of reproduction among the enslaved-which remained low in all early American slave societies-the ideological solidity of those slave societies needed reproducing women. Building a system of racial slavery on the notion of heritability did not require the presence of natural population growth among the enslaved, but it did require a clear understanding that enslaved women gave birth to enslaved children. Resituating heritability was key in the practice of an enslavement that systematically alienated the enslaved from their kind and their lineage. Enslaved people had to be understood as dispossessed, outside of the normal networks of family and community, to justify the practice of mass enslavement."

"The practices of abortion and infanticide seem worthy of at least a fleeting mention in most studies of slave women in the United States, yet few historians mention the use of contraception. Those who do, usually conclude that little is known about the subject, but that it is probably not particularly significant. This article will discuss the use of contraception among slaves and will concentrate, in particular, on the use of cotton roots as a form of birth-control. Evidence that the cotton root was used for this purpose is taken mainly from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) narratives, edited by George Rawick. George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Vols. 2–41 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972–1979). As yet, the author has come across only a few references to the use of cotton roots as a form of contraception in any other source. The WPA narratives are a controversial source, but, in sifting through every single interview, the multiple references to such an intimate practice were striking and demanded attention. This article forms part of a chapter from a thesis which looks at the work of slave women in the American South. Liese M. Perrin, “Slave Women and Work in the American South” (University of Birmingham: Ph.D. diss., 1999). A thorough reading of the WPA narratives reveals not only that slave women used contraception, but also that it may have been very effective. In the context of slave women and work, this is a significant discovery, as the evidence, which is detailed below, suggests that slave women not only understood that their childbearing capacity was seen in terms of producing extra capital, but that they were sufficiently opposed to this function to actually avoid conception. The use of contraception can be seen not only as a form of resistance, but also, more specifically, as a form of strike, since reproduction was an important work role for most slave women."

"It is clear to see how deeply abortion bans are rooted in white supremacy and patriarchal strongholds when we look at the history of Black women in this country. The tradition of disregarding the humanity of Black people is part of more than 400 years of white supremacist systems in America. Although abortion was legal throughout the country until after the Civil War, there were different rules for enslaved Black women than for white women. Enslaved Black women were valuable property. They didn’t have the freedom to control their bodies, and slave owners prohibited them from having abortions. Under the law, white men owned Black women’s bodies. So, enslaved women who had access to emmenagogic herbs — plants used to stimulate menstruation — had to make remedies to induce their own abortions in secret."

"This article examines antislavery authors’ attempts in the 1850s to fictionalize the Margaret Garner story of slave infanticide as a means of converting northern white readers to the antislavery cause. In their attempts to gain sympathy for an enslaved female protagonist who had murdered her own child, these authors confronted strong cultural beliefs about femininity, motherhood, and blackness. Almost uniformly, their strategy involved lightening the skin of the main character and presenting the killing of her child as a form of suicide. Nevertheless, the intense emotions surrounding the slavery issue by the mid‐1850s also led these authors to endow their fictional slave women with an aggressiveness that challenged contemporary social boundaries for women."