Birth Control

views updated

Birth Control

Birth control refers to the variety of ways in which human reproduction is kept in check. The common term "contraception" means literally the way in which the process of pregnancy is stopped. Religious people hold a range of views on the matter linked to their anthropology and ethics. Such views play a major role in legal, economic, and political options with regard to availability, access, and use of contraceptives.

Earliest forms of contraception thousands of years ago included crocodile dung used as a kind of diaphragm. There were also vaginal sponges and pessaries. Abstinence from heterosexual relations is the only 100 percent reliable form of birth control. But a range of other methods have emerged over time, including coitus interruptus (Genesis 38:8–10); rhythm (referred to as natural family planning); male condoms (especially important to protect against sexually transmitted diseases during the HIV/AIDS pandemic); intrauterine devices (IUDs); sophisticated varieties of diaphragms; female sterilization and vasectomies; oral contraceptives (commonly called the Pill); Norplant; injectable vaccines; female condoms; and, in some instances, abortions. The advent of RU486, a pharmacological procedure that acts to counter gestation, pushes the boundaries between contraception and abortion. Most of the methods are geared toward women's assuming major responsibility for birth control, including incurring health risks, even though a woman's right to make reproductive decisions is still limited in many instances.

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), a nurse and midwife, was a pioneer in the birth control movement. While religious progressives have been identified with promoting birth control and religious conservatives with opposing it, important considerations of racist and eugenic motivations require nuanced discussion.

The breakthrough oral contraceptive, the Pill, became widely available for middle-class women in the United States and elsewhere in the 1960s. The socalled sexual revolution was in full swing. Models of family were changing, with the large number of children so common in rural areas giving way to a population-conscious two or three offspring and shifts in population to the cities. Women claimed that choosing whether and when to have children was a basic human right. In 1965 the U.S. Supreme Court declared access to contraceptives a right for married couples. In 1973 its famous decision Roe v. Wade gave women the right to obtain abortions.

Religious disagreements over birth control have been most virulent in the Roman Catholic Church, which continues to oppose birth control in any form except abstinence and rhythm. By the 1930s the Anglican Church had moved away from such a view, with most other Protestant churches following suit. Exceptions include the Mormon Church, favoring large families, and the Christian Coalition, opposing birth control information for young people. Jewish groups, while promoting family life and the growth of their community, tend to allow most forms of birth control. Islamic groups have been mixed on the question, with some form of birth control permitted virtually all the time. But Islamic traditionalists discourage contraception, since it might lead to promiscuity, or, if the birth control fails, to abortion, which they condemn.

The Catholic debate heated up in the 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council opened the way to church changes and the Papal Birth Control Commission recommended a more liberal policy. It culminated in the promulgation of an encyclical, Humanae Vitae ( July 29, 1968), by Pope Paul VI, in which all "artificial means" of birth control were rejected. Widespread disagreement among Catholics followed. The religious issue was as much freedom of conscience as it was the actual use of contraceptives. Now a majority of U.S. Catholic women of childbearing age use some form of contraception prohibited by the Catholic Church. Ironically, total fertility rates in Spain and Italy, nominally Catholic countries, are among the lowest in the world.

The Catholic Church's position is predicated on the philosophical approach called "natural law," based on ideas of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1275) that certain behaviors and practices are "given" in the order of things and therefore ought to be normative. The "natural" end of heterosexual intercourse is seen as its openness to procreation. Opponents argue that contemporary contraceptive advances have made heterosexual intercourse without procreation just as "natural"—indeed, better—when personal choice and population considerations are taken into account.

In 1994, at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the Vatican and some fundamentalist Muslim groups joined forces to weaken language promoting reproductive rights. The debate has moved from birth control, about which there is widespread agreement to use it effectively despite the teaching, to abortion, over which many Catholics disagree.

Bibliography

Hartman, Betsy. Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: TheGlobal Politics of Population Control. 1995.

McClory, Robert. Turning Point: The Inside Story of thePapal Birth Control Commission, and How HumanaeVitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowely and the Futureof the Church.

Noonan, John T., Jr. Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists.

Mary E. Hunt

Contemporary American Religion