Birth Control

"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 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."

"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."

"[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."

"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!!!"

"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.""

"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.""

"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]."

""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?"

"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]."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"[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."

"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?'"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"“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."

"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…"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Contraception is not intrinsically evil."

"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."

"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.”"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"[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."

"[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""

"A murder before birth."