"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."