Illinois Right to Life Committee
A Protestant analyzes contraception
STANEK: A Protestant analyzes
contraception Wednesday, January 29, 2003 By Jill Stanek OPINION by Jill Stanek -- My eyes used to glaze over
when Catholics would start talking about the evils of birth control. I thought they were
simply taking a good concept too far when they said that not only is killing unborn
children wrong, but taking measures to prevent pregnancy is wrong, too. Even when I became committed to
pro-life activism four years ago, I never thought the day would come that I would care
about the issue of contraception. But that began to change this
past summer when I learned that a nurse named Carol Olmstead quit her job at the Illinois
Valley Economic Development Corporation family planning clinic in Greene County rather
than be forced to dispense emergency contraception (EC), also known as the “morning
after” birth control pill. Nurse Olmstead thought doing so would make her a
participant in an early form of abortion. I thought, this must be a
bigger deal than I understood, and I began to look into how the pill works. My nursing textbook, which I
still have, doesn’t say the birth control pill can act as an abortifacient ("an
agent that causes abortion"). But I found out it can. Birth
control pills and ECs stop pregnancy one of four ways: by killing sperm, by stopping
ovulation, by making an egg impermeable to sperm, or by not allowing a fertilized egg to
attach to the wall of the uterus. The last potential action is what caused Nurse Olmstead
to quit her job. Pro-aborts redefine what
"is" is Pro-abortionists, with their
willing accomplices in the pro-abortion medical community, devised a lie in the 1970s that
has been repeated so often, it is now unquestioned. Defying science and logic, they simply
began to claim a mother isn’t pregnant until her very young embryo attaches to her
uterus – which takes seven to nine days after conception. So, they said, birth
control pills and ECs are not abortifacients, because a mother isn’t pregnant when
they cause a week-old embryo to flush from her body. So, according to pro-aborts,
the first week of 40 that a mother carries her preborn baby, she isn’t really
pregnant. Pro-aborts tinkered with timing
so moral women would be duped into taking the pill and so organizations like Planned
Parenthood could legally receive tax dollars for their family planning clinics and
population control efforts. (The Hyde Amendment specifies that the federal government
cannot fund abortion.) I found out the intrauterine
device (IUD) also causes early abortions by disallowing the fertilized egg to attach to
the uterus, something my nursing textbook did admit but glossed over: “Mechanical
contraceptive methods act either as barriers preventing the transport of sperm to the ovum
or prevent implantation of the ovum/zygote.” All this information was enough
to really set me off. But I became even more interested in this subject when someone told
me the Pope has said that contraception is the root cause of abortion. That’s odd, I thought... a pretty big
statement to make. I began to wonder, does the Bible say anything about contraception?
I think yes, it does. Onan should have let matters
lie The story is told in Genesis 38
of Tamar and Onan. Tamar’s husband Er died, and according to Jewish law (found in
Deuteronomy 25), Er’s brother Onan had to marry Tamar and conceive a son with her to
carry on his dead brother’s name. If a brother refused this duty,
the widow was to tell the elders of the city, take off one of his sandals, spit in his
face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s
family line.” Onan did not refuse to sleep
with his sister-in-law. But, “whenever he lay with his brother’s wife, he
spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he
did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so he put him to death also.” (Genesis
38:9-10) What Onan did came to be called
“onanism,” known to us as coitus interruptus, the oldest form of birth
control practiced by humans. If Onan’s only act of
disobedience was refusing to father his dead brother’s children, the punishment
should have been a slap and a spit. But God killed Onan. Something about Onan’s
action of spilling his semen on the ground was wicked in God’s eyes. Of course, God doesn’t
strike down all who practice coitus interruptus today, or a significant number of
teenage boys and aberrant husbands around the world would be found dead in back seats of
cars and strange hotel rooms. (But I do wonder if He strikes down any!) "Choose Life" Add to that, the Bible is rife
with examples of God demonstrating He is actually The One who makes the “choice”
about human creation. He closed and opened uteruses throughout the Bible to unfold human
history as He in His ultimate wisdom, love, and compassion saw fit. Is there any reason to
think He has stopped doing this? When Jacob married sisters
Rachel and Leah, the discord was immediate. When Leah complained to Jacob, “Give me
children or I shall die,” Jacob responded, “Am I in the position of God, who has
denied you motherhood?” Jacob understood it was not his fault that she did not
conceive; the decision was up to God. And indeed, Genesis 29:31 records, “When Yahweh
saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb while Rachel remained barren.” David’s wife Michal was
fertile until God became angry with her for making fun of David when he danced before the
Lord. “So Saul’s daughter Michal was childless her entire life” (II Sam.
6:23), a punishment for her pride as well as another demonstration of God’s judgment
on the house of Saul. Hannah was barren “because
the Lord had closed her womb” (I Sam. 1:5). But God “remembered” her prayer
and her oath, “so in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth” to
Samuel. Abraham and Sarah were
childless until they were very old. But “the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had
said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a
son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him” (Gen. 21:1-2). Just a few verses before,
“God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so they could have children
again, for the Lord had closed up every womb in Abimelech’s household….”
(Gen. 20:17). I could recount the stories of
Rebekah, Elizabeth, and the Virgin Mary as well as many other examples throughout the
Bible when God granted fertility or withheld it. Is it possible it is not just
abortion that denies life to the children God has planned “for such a time as this,”
but contraception and sterilization as well? Malachi 2:15 tells us God’s
purpose for marriage: “You were united to your wife by the Lord. In God’s wise
plan, when you married, the two of you became one person in his sight. Your flesh and
spirit belong to him. And what does he want? Godly children from your union.” Marriage is a mysterious union
of man, woman, and God, symbolizing God’s love for us through Jesus Christ’s
relationship to His bride, the Church. Just as God cannot be cut out of the Church, God
cannot be cut out of our marriages, including our marriage bed. Dr. Bob McDonald says, in The
Catholic Family: Image and Likeness of God: Our sexuality is not simply the
satisfaction of a basic animal instinct. Human sexual relations are never meant to be
reduced to the mindless copulation of cattle in a field. God created our sexuality to be
holy, and lovemaking is intended to be a sacred act which fulfills God’s perfect plan
for humanity. It is intended to be the means by
which we and God create a new life. God has wonderfully chosen to give to us, mere
creatures, the power to create in cooperation with Him, to share in the awesome miracle,
which by rights is reserved to Him alone. Together, a couple forms their child’s
body, and God honors that by breathing an immortal soul into this little body at the very
moment of conception, a soul destined to live forever. Therefore, anything we do to
frustrate that design of God is a violation of God’s primary purpose for our
sexuality, and is a very serious matter indeed. Marriage… is a covenant
between three people: husband, wife and God…. Any sexual act that cuts God out of the
agreement violates the covenant, and is a serious disorder. In other words, it is a sin. If we use [contraception], then
we cut God entirely out of our sexual union. We buy out His share in the covenant.
Actually it is more like a hostile takeover. I am telling God to back off, that this is an
affair between me and my wife, and there is no room for God in our sexual lives. When I began searching
Scripture and reading Catholic teaching on the subject of contraception, which is very
thorough, it was as if scales fell from my eyes. Next week I will detail the
history of contraception and cite some statistics since contraception became widely
available in the mid 1960s. So much has been written on
contraception, it is difficult to capture in a column. A hundred questions will likely pop
into the minds of properly skeptical Protestants who have never given this subject serious
thought, such as, "What about the overpopulation problem?" I could write another column on
the myth of overpopulation, but I’m going to simply say at this juncture, I’m
banking on God. If God's first instructions to
us were, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen.
1:28), do you think He wouldn’t properly plan to bless us with enough food and room
to fulfill this command? Who are you going to listen to, the same people who once said the
earth was flat, or God? More next week.... ******************** |