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Evangelicals have always struggled with the issue
of contraception. In an attempt to produce a Christian view, the
Christian Institute has published Contraception: a pro-life guide.
The aim is to encourage Christians to use what it calls ‘pro-life’
methods of contraception, such as human sterilisation and the
more frequent replacement of long acting hormonal injections,
which do not destroy an early embryo. But is the concept of
‘pro-life’ contraception consistent with biblical teaching?
Christians and the contraception culture
challenges the ‘pro-life’ view of contraception. The struggle
between the Church and the ‘birth control’ movement describes how
the Church moved from believing that contraception was a moral evil
to a means for practising ‘responsible parenthood’. The author
concludes that the Church is in danger of following the mindset of
the contraception culture, thereby ignoring God’ plan for human
fertility. Christians are encouraged to rethink the issue of
contraception from a biblical perspective. The purpose of
Christians and the contraceptive culture is twofold. First, to
challenge the Christian Institute’s guidance on pro-life
contraception and, second, to explain the ideology that underpins
the contraception culture.
Contraception: a pro-life guide, published
in 2005, is undoubtedly an important work for it reveals current
evangelical thinking about contraception. The book’s aim is to
provide background knowledge on how contraceptives work. ‘As a
result we hope that Christian readers will be better equipped to
make well-informed ethical decisions. Above all else the book
explains the difference between those contraceptives which can act
to destroy a human embryo and those which, according to the best
available medical evidence do not.’1 A
pro-life guide sets out to identify what it calls pro-life
contraceptives. In May 2005 the Institute sent a copy of the book to
all church leaders and doctors on its mailing list.
The guide, therefore, sets out to identify those
contraceptives which do not damage the early embryo, labels them as
pro-life, and marks them with a green tick. Contraceptives which
damage the embryo are marked with a red cross. All the main
categories of contraception are reviewed and classified as
‘pro-life’, ‘not pro-life’ or ‘not sure’.
According to the Christian Institute, pro-life
contraceptives include the condom, spermicide, female condom (Femidom),
the more frequent replace-ment of the hormone implant, the
more frequent injections of Depo-Provera, male and female
sterilisation, the combined oral contraceptive pill, natural birth
control (includes the withdrawal method), and the diaphragm.
Contraceptives deemed to destroy the embryo, and therefore not
pro-life, are the morning-after pill, RU486, the progestogen-only
pill and the intrauterine device.
But the Church has not always been so relaxed over
the issue of contraception. In England at the start of the
twentieth century there was growing concern about the activities of
the ‘free love’ radicals, who were agitating for the widespread use
of contraception, and the Neo-Malthusians, who were campaigning for
the need to limit family size to prevent population growth.
In response to the actions of the radicals, in 1908
the Bishops of the Anglican Communion, meeting at the Lambeth
Conference, took a firm stand against contraception, which they
regarded as sinful. The bishops declared: ‘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’.
The sixth Lambeth Conference in 1920 again
expressed its uncompromising and unqualified rejection of all forms
of artificial contraception, even within marriage. Resolution 68
declared: ‘We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural
means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave
dangers – physical, moral and religious – thereby incurred, and
against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the
race.’ The resolution mentioned that the primary purpose for which
marriage exists is ‘the continuation of the race through the gift
and heritage of children’, and opposed ‘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...’
There is no doubt that the Christian mind of the
nineteenth and first part of the twentieth century believed that
artificial contraception was a moral evil and took a strong public
stand on the issue.
Pro-life contraception has no place in the
Christian Church
The Christian Institute’s use of the term ‘pro-life
contraception’ is challenged. Is it legitimate for the Institute to
associate contraceptives such as the condom, spermicides and human
sterilisation with the word ‘pro-life’? In the Christian mind, a
‘pro-life’ attitude is an unqualified good, for God is the author of
all life. By attaching the favourable word ‘pro-life’ to certain
contraceptives the Christian Institute is attempting to make
‘pro-life contraception’ appear to be an unqualified good.
Yet it is fairly easy to see that ‘pro-life
contraception’ is a contradiction in terms. A new life is formed at
conception when the sperm of a man fertilises the ovum of a woman.
So conception, not contraception, is pro-life. The
purpose of contraception is to separate sex and reproduction—by
definition, contraception aims to prevent a new life from being
conceived. Two examples illustrate the falseness of the term
‘pro-life contraception’. To label a spermicide – the word means to
kill sperm – ‘pro-life’ is to twist the use of language. We are
being asked to accept that a substance designed to kill sperm is
‘pro-life’! Similarly, to label human sterilisation, which destroys
God’s gift of reproduction, ‘pro-life’ is an affront to our
intelligence. So what is going on here? The propaganda technique of
the favourable word (pro-life) is being used to make certain
contraceptives appear to be an unqualified good.
There is no doubt that the ideology behind the
contraceptive culture is deeply anti-Christian. It started with the
idea of ‘free love’, progressed to ‘safer sex’ for children, and has
culminated in ‘pro-life’ contraception for Christians. Its ultimate
aim is to make contra-ception available to all, free from moral
restraint. The slogan of Marie Stopes International says it all:
‘Cover the world with condoms’.
It is disappointing that the response of the
Christian Institute to the negative national birth rate and the
widespread acceptance of the two-child norm, even among Christians,
is to produce a glossy booklet extolling the virtues of ‘pro-life’
contraception. Unbelievably, it has presented the worldly wisdom
that flows from the Margaret Pyke Centre to God’s people as
definitive advice on contraception, content to simply go along with
a hollow and deceptive human philosophy that depends on the basic
principles of this world. The real danger is that A pro-life
guide will reinforce a contraceptive mentality in the Church as
it encourages Christian pastors to promote ‘pro-life’ methods of
contraception among Christian couples in premarital courses.
A disturbing thought is that A Pro-life guide
probably reflects the views of a large section of evangelical
Christianity. Today there is hardly any teaching on the biblical
view of sexual conduct, and little acceptance that human fertility
is a blessing from God. As a consequence, we are satisfied with the
concept of the two-child family. Christians have become so muddled,
so influenced by the spirit of the world, that we are no longer even
aware of the moral issues raised by our ready acceptance of the
contraceptive culture. Like the Israelites of old, we have
compromised with the surrounding pagan culture. Yet the God of the
Bible requires the most radical separation between His holy people
and the ways of the world. We must not love the attitudes and
lifestyle of the world, and this is especially so when it comes to
sexual matters.
The Christian Institute would do well to withdraw
this book and make it clear that the concept of ‘pro-life’
contraception has no place in the Church. If this critique serves
the purpose of making some Christians seriously rethink their
approach to the moral issue surrounding contraception and family
planning then it will have accomplished its purpose. But of this we
can be sure, if the Church takes the advice offered by
Contraception: a pro-life guide into its bosom, then the glory
of the Lord will depart from His people. Our God, the Holy God, will
not tolerate the amoral mindset of the contraceptive culture among
those He has called to be a pure, holy people. |