Theopedia

Contraceptives

Definition

Contraception is the intentional use of a device, drug, or method to prevent pregnancy by preventing fertilization itself, as distinguished from a method that acts after fertilization to prevent a newly conceived embryo from implanting in the womb, which Christian ethicists classify as abortive rather than contraceptive.1 Roughly two out of three American women of childbearing age currently use some form of it.2 Scripture contains no explicit prohibition of contraception, but it bears on marriage’s purposes, including procreation, and Christians who hold Scripture in high regard disagree sincerely over how far that bears on the choice to prevent conception.2

Confessional Contrast

Neither the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession nor the wider Reformed confessional family addresses contraception; the question is not one the confession’s authors had in view. What the confession does say bears on the question without adjudicating it. It names three purposes for which marriage was ordained: “the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and the preventing of uncleanness.”3 The Westminster Confession states the same three purposes in nearly identical language, adding “of the Church with an holy seed” to the second.4 Procreation is named as one purpose among three, not marriage’s sole purpose, a fact both confessions state plainly rather than argue for. That threefold view doesn’t itself settle whether every act of marital sex must remain open to conception, a question the wider debate below divides over, but the confessional family’s own list of marriage’s purposes cannot be read to require it either.

Arguments

Ken Magnuson locates the moral question in the purposes of marriage rather than in any prohibition: children are “a blessing from the Lord” (Ps. 127), and marriage’s design includes an openness to the gift of procreation, but that openness need not mean pursuing as many children as biologically possible.1 On this reasoning, the load-bearing distinction is not between “artificial” and “natural” methods, since any deliberate method of avoiding pregnancy is artificial in some sense, but between methods that are contraceptive, which prevent fertilization, and methods that are abortive, which act after fertilization to prevent implantation.1 J. Alan Branch states the resulting position directly: “the use of contraceptives can be viewed as a matter of Christian liberty over which believers have sincere differences of opinion,” while insisting that any method with an abortifacient effect remains unacceptable.2

A minority report, most fully developed within Roman Catholic moral theology, holds that marriage’s openness to procreation applies not just to the marriage as a whole but to each individual act of intercourse. Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, states that each act of sex “must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.”5 On this natural-law reasoning, methods that merely time intercourse around infertile periods are licit, since they do not obstruct procreation in a given act, while barrier and hormonal methods, which do obstruct it, are not.1 Augustine is sometimes credited as this position’s source, but Magnuson notes that Augustine’s own argument, that licit sex requires a procreative intent, is in fact stricter than Rome’s later position: on Augustine’s own terms he would reject the natural family planning Rome permits, since a couple using it still intends to avoid conception.6

Opposing Views

The natural-law position holds that sex and procreation may not be deliberately separated in any single act, so only methods that abstain from intercourse during fertile periods are permissible; condoms, hormonal contraceptives, and sterilization are not, because they obstruct or sever a marital act from its ordered end.5 Magnuson notes this position commands growing dissent even among Catholic theologians, alongside continued official teaching.1

The Christian liberty position, held by most Protestants since the twentieth century, locates openness to procreation in marriage as a whole rather than in each act of sex, permitting non-abortifacient contraception as one legitimate way of stewarding the timing of children.2 The 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops was the first major Protestant body to adopt this position, doing so cautiously and against significant internal dissent, while still warning against “the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.”7

Historical Development

Augustine, writing in the fifth century, argued in On the Good of Marriage that licit sexual intercourse requires a procreative intent.6 Roman Catholic natural-law moral theology later developed a related but distinct position, that each marital act itself must remain open to procreation while permitting the deliberate avoidance of fertile periods, a position Augustine’s own stricter reasoning would not have endorsed.6 That natural-law position held broad sway across the Western church for centuries, including among the Reformers, until the twentieth century. The 1930 Lambeth Conference marked the first significant Protestant departure from it, granting cautious approval to contraceptive use within marriage under limited circumstances.7 The introduction of the oral contraceptive pill in 1960 accelerated both the wider cultural adoption of contraception and Protestant reflection on it.2 Rome responded in 1968 with Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming the natural-law position specifically against the pill.5

Objections and Responses

Does God’s judgment against Onan in Genesis 38:8-10 condemn contraception? Onan, commanded to raise up an heir for his deceased brother, “spilled his semen on the ground” rather than complete the duty, and God put him to death for it (Gen. 38:9-10). Magnuson treats the underlying offense as real but locates it elsewhere: Onan’s sin was refusing the levirate duty he had agreed to perform for his brother’s household, not birth control as such, so the passage does not by itself settle the separate question of contraception within an ordinary marriage.8

Does the birth control pill cause abortions? Randy Alcorn has argued that because the pill can fail to suppress ovulation in some cycles, it may then act on the uterine lining to prevent a newly conceived embryo from implanting, an effect sometimes called the hostile endometrium theory.9 Branch reports that most Christian ethicists find the evidence for this mechanism weak: pregnancies are regularly carried to term while women are using the pill, no clinical observation of the proposed mechanism exists, missed implantations occur at similar rates among women not using the pill, and ovulation itself triggers the hormonal changes that prepare the endometrium for implantation.9

Is the “morning-after pill” an abortifacient? Branch distinguishes two emergency contraceptives sold under this label. Plan B’s mechanism raises the same disputed post-fertilization concern as the ordinary pill. Ella, a separate drug requiring a prescription, was found in 2019 research not to prevent embryo implantation at normal doses.10 Christians who hold that marriage’s openness to procreation belongs to the whole of marriage, not to each act, generally treat that finding as removing the sanctity-of-life objection to Ella specifically, while both sides continue to treat any drug with a demonstrated post-fertilization effect as impermissible on sanctity-of- life grounds.10

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Ken Magnuson, “7. Marriage and Sexuality,” in Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2020). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. J. Alan Branch, 50 Ethical Questions: Biblical Wisdom for Confusing Times (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), chap. 31, “Is It Permissible for Christians to Use Contraception?,” 142-144: “The use of contraceptives can be viewed as a matter of Christian liberty over which believers have sincere differences of opinion.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), 25.2. ↩

  4. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), 24.2. ↩

  5. Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, encyclical letter, July 25, 1968, sec. 2.16, quoted in Magnuson, “Marriage and Sexuality.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, trans. C. L. Cornish, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, series 1, vol. 3 (1886-1889; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 399-413, discussed in Magnuson, “Marriage and Sexuality.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 15, quoted in John T. Noonan Jr., Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 409, and in Magnuson, “Marriage and Sexuality.” ↩ ↩2

  8. Magnuson, “Marriage and Sexuality,” n. 49. ↩

  9. Branch, 50 Ethical Questions, chap. 32, “Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?,” 145-148. ↩ ↩2

  10. Branch, 50 Ethical Questions, chap. 33, “What Is the ‘Morning-after Pill,’ and Is It Moral for Christians?,” 149-152. ↩ ↩2