Protestants: defend your use of artificial contraception

[ScapularDude]

The Catholic Church teaches that artificial contraception (pill, condom, IUD, etc) is a mortal sin.

How are you able to accept condom use, etc? Do you not see it as the seed that led to a bad tree (sexual revolution, huge pornography industry, etc)???

I can not comprehend how Protestants have such varied views on artificial contraception. This might be because I have for most of my Christian life been a Catholic.

 

[Newbie2]

Let me take the Protestant side of birth control (other than the type of Pill that can cause abortions, IUDs, etc. that destroy the early embryo).

First, many Christians, even Catholics, do not understand exactly how some forms of birth control work…and as such do not understand that certain types can cause an early abortion. I think many would not use these if they knew that such methods did cause early abortion. Many Protestants, methinks, if they really think about it would agree that an embryo is human from the moment of conception.

Second, I think there is a lack of understanding (again, shared by many Catholics) as to the reasons for NOT using ABC. The main reason, methinks, is the understanding or misunderstanding of INTENT.

The intent of NFP and of ABC is the same…(at least temporarily) avoiding pregnancy. If one does not look past the intent of the act, ABC is justified. However, the crux for Catholics is that the act of contraception itself is intrinsically evil. Many Protestants, methinks, focus on intent, and do not consider both the procreative and unitive aspects of intercourse are essential if we use our bodies the way the Almighty intended.

 

[Suni_Moon]

So, two people are married. They want to have a family.
They have a family. They now have a couple of kids, and cannot support anymore.
And they do not want that to mean no sex ever again, they want to continue to enjoy that intimacy. And they haven’t exactly taken the purpose out of sex… Because they have three kids.

I can understand a lot of the Catholic stance on birth control, but in other ways…
In other ways, I do not get it at all, and it’s one of the stances I disagree with you guys on.
I mean, the pill I’m a little eeehhhhh on, but not condoms, when used in this situation.

I mean, I UNDERSTAND the Catholic stance when people are just using it to take the possibility of reproducing out the equation entirely… But I don’t understand it in situations like these.

Aaaaaaaand apparently I’m going to hell for this belief. Lovely.

 

[ScapularDude]

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.

So, two people are married. They want to have a family.
They have a family. They now have a couple of kids, and cannot support anymore.
And they do not want that to mean no sex ever again, they want to continue to enjoy that intimacy. And they haven’t exactly taken the purpose out of sex… Because they have three kids.

I can understand a lot of the Catholic stance on birth control, but in other ways…
In other ways, I do not get it at all, and it’s one of the stances I disagree with you guys on.
I mean, the pill I’m a little eeehhhhh on, but not condoms, when used in this situation.

I mean, I UNDERSTAND the Catholic stance when people are just using it to take the possibility of reproducing out the equation entirely… But I don’t understand it in situations like these.

Aaaaaaaand apparently I’m going to hell for this belief. Lovely.

 

[Nine_Two]

This thread title makes me think of pirates boarding a ship.

Yar! Prepare to defend yer use of artificial contraception! Yar!

I’m sorry, I’ll leave now.

 

[Redratfish]

So, two people are married. They want to have a family.
They have a family. They now have a couple of kids, and cannot support anymore.
And they do not want that to mean no sex ever again, they want to continue to enjoy that intimacy. And they haven’t exactly taken the purpose out of sex… Because they have three kids.

I can understand a lot of the Catholic stance on birth control, but in other ways…
In other ways, I do not get it at all, and it’s one of the stances I disagree with you guys on.
I mean, the pill I’m a little eeehhhhh on, but not condoms, when used in this situation.

I mean, I UNDERSTAND the Catholic stance when people are just using it to take the possibility of reproducing out the equation entirely… But I don’t understand it in situations like these.

Aaaaaaaand apparently I’m going to hell for this belief. Lovely.

Just saying, a Catholic cannot tell you whether or not you are going to Hell. That is up to God.

 

[OneAugustKnight]

So, two people are married. They want to have a family.
They have a family. They now have a couple of kids, and cannot support anymore.
And they do not want that to mean no sex ever again, they want to continue to enjoy that intimacy. And they haven’t exactly taken the purpose out of sex… Because they have three kids.

I can understand a lot of the Catholic stance on birth control, but in other ways…
In other ways, I do not get it at all, and it’s one of the stances I disagree with you guys on.
I mean, the pill I’m a little eeehhhhh on, but not condoms, when used in this situation.

I mean, I UNDERSTAND the Catholic stance when people are just using it to take the possibility of reproducing out the equation entirely… But I don’t understand it in situations like these.

Aaaaaaaand apparently I’m going to hell for this belief. Lovely.

I know I am way out of the mainstream but I don’t understand why married couples think it’s an impossible burden to be celibate within a marriage if they should not have more children for health or economic reasons. Nobody is supposed to have sex outside of wedlock and people spend years, sometimes their entire lives in situations that necessitate celibacy. People can have close intimate relationships without regular sexual intercourse.

Of course NFP is allowed so married couples don’t have to practice perfect abstinence if they wish to avoid conception. I just don’t get the idea that just because someone is married they should be able to have sex whenever they feel like it.

 

[phoenixrrt62]

I’m not Protestant, not anything, in fact.
However.
First, I am speaking for myself, no one else. I feel that every person has a right to pratice BC (or not) as they see fit, and I do not have any right to inflict my viewpoint on anyone else…

Personally, I see a embryo/fetus as a ***pontential ***life, until it can survive outside the womb. Mind, the time frame is becoming shorter and shorter all the time…but-anyhow. Personally, I would never abort a child from MY womb, unless my life was in immediate danger. However, that’s ME. I would never interfere with someone else’s choice to do what they see fit.

So, that being said, I see nothing wrong with using condoms, a diaphragm, foam, and the pill…all are blocking possible conception, and not destroying a zygote when sperm meets egg and cell division begins. I couldn’t use an IUD, as it stops the division of cells as they make thier way to the uterus via the Fallopian tubes…and that doesn’t sit well with me.

Just my thoughts, FWIW…

 

[Nine_Two]

Personally, I see a embryo/fetus as a ***pontential ***life, until it can survive outside the womb. Mind, the time frame is becoming shorter and shorter all the time…but-anyhow. Personally, I would never abort a child from MY womb, unless my life was in immediate danger. However, that’s ME. I would never interfere with someone else’s choice to do what they see fit.

Have you ever seen a baby? They’re pretty helpless, they can’t survive outside the womb on their own any better than they can inside it. In fact they’re parasitical tendencies continue for quite a few years after birth and can even last into adulthood. Clearly then these are only potential lives, are they not? Can we abort teenagers at will?

 

[PbloPicasso]

So, two people are married. They want to have a family.
They have a family. They now have a couple of kids, and cannot support anymore.
And they do not want that to mean no sex ever again, they want to continue to enjoy that intimacy. And they haven’t exactly taken the purpose out of sex… Because they have three kids.

I can understand a lot of the Catholic stance on birth control, but in other ways…
In other ways, I do not get it at all, and it’s one of the stances I disagree with you guys on.
I mean, the pill I’m a little eeehhhhh on, but not condoms, when used in this situation.

I mean, I UNDERSTAND the Catholic stance when people are just using it to take the possibility of reproducing out the equation entirely… But I don’t understand it in situations like these.

Aaaaaaaand apparently I’m going to hell for this belief. Lovely.

How do you reconcile the fact that Jews during that time as well as Orthodox Judaism also teaches that physical barriers to conceptiong during the marrital act is gravely sinful. It’s a fact. I also learned that sex was prohibited with a woman during her menstral cycle and she was considered unclean until 12 days after her cycle ended. That’ basically leaves a week or two at best for sex. I believe that the spoiled western civilization finally caved into giving into blessings theology. Now it’s not a big deal if a woman, or girl for that matter, is still a virgin, especially when she marries. The double standard for me was always a serious sin that was never properly address anyway. But rather than fix that problem men pushed for a way to have their cake and eat it too. Sad. I always hated contraception in our marriage and saw it deteriorate the way I not only felt about my wife (angry for limiting life) but the way I saw her (slab of meat). Though I resisted seeing her other than with lust, its really difficult to justify sex without including God at it’s very core, life giving act as pro-creators with him. It takes the control away from God and puts it partially in our hands, which is why we got to the point where we think if we’re not ready for a or more children then we can secretly have an abortion and everything will smooth over later. God, the blood is pouring from our society. Have mercy on us Lord for being so blind.

 

[DickVanDyke]

I know I am way out of the mainstream but I don’t understand why married couples think it’s an impossible burden to be celibate within a marriage if they should not have more children for health or economic reasons. Nobody is supposed to have sex outside of wedlock and people spend years, sometimes their entire lives in situations that necessitate celibacy. People can have close intimate relationships without regular sexual intercourse.

Of course NFP is allowed so married couples don’t have to practice perfect abstinence if they wish to avoid conception. I just don’t get the idea that just because someone is married they should be able to have sex whenever they feel like it.

I’ll be honest… when I see posts like this, I think the person must be undersexed. You REALLY don’t understand why it’s so hard? You have the love of your life living with you, sleeping in the bed next to you. You find this person extremely desirable. Making love is mutually pleasurable and strengthens your emotional bond to one another. Some Catholic commentators have gone so far as to call marital sexual intercourse a renewal of the marriage vows and of their sacrament each time it happens. You see the love of your life in various states of undress during the day, say, showering for work, or exercising, or changing into pajamas. So, you are faced with seeing this person you love, every day, desiring them, wanting the closeness that comes from marital love, being affected by your own natural desires and hormonal cycles that constitute sex drive. And your answer is to live in daily torture, in close proximity to your lover, the person you desire, your only moral sexual outlet, yet unable to enjoy them. You really can’t see the spiritual and emotional damage that will come from that?! You really can’t understand how that will damage the marriage?

Maybe I am oversexed, but I could not live like that. I am Catholic by the way, though some would throw me out of the Church because I failed to live up to the standard…

 

[DickVanDyke]

I always hated contraception in our marriage and saw it deteriorate the way I not only felt about my wife (angry for limiting life) but the way I saw her (slab of meat).

Sorry you made the CHOICE to see your wife this way. I had my tubes tied three years ago, and I am absolutely certain that my husband loves me, body, soul, and mind. Our lovemaking is about love, connection, and giving ourselves to each other. You could have chosen to see your wife as a whole, if flawed, person, and found things to love about her. Instead, you fixated on her reproductive organs and their function, and so without those, she had no value to you. You really think that’s her fault? That attitude was your choice.

 

[stephe1987]

You don’t have to abstain 100% of the time just because you don’t want more kids. Have you heard of NFP? It is very effective and the times a woman gets pregnant is on a “risky” night. Just avoid those nights and there is no problem. No egg means no fertilization.

Embryo/fetus is a potential life? No, it’s alive; it is growing. It is a new being with complete (sperm cells and egg cells are not complete humans) and separate DNA from both the mother and the father. The gender is already decided from the moment of fertilization.

If we start ranking humans based in life stages, we will get the same problems experienced in Nazi Germany. Babies are “potential” children. Teenagers are “potential” adults. The elderly were classed as “post-adults” (past the stages where they were considered, i.e able to work) and were murdered in masses. Also, the ill were also declared sub-human and then murdered. And the most obvious is that Jews, Africans, Poles, etc. were classed as “not as good” or “less evolved” humans and were mass murdered and/or forced to work in concentration camps.

I think the “pro-choice” people need to review their 19th and 20th century history.

 

[PbloPicasso]

Sorry you made the CHOICE to see your wife this way. I had my tubes tied three years ago, and I am absolutely certain that my husband loves me, body, soul, and mind. Our lovemaking is about love, connection, and giving ourselves to each other. You could have chosen to see your wife as a whole, if flawed, person, and found things to love about her. Instead, you fixated on her reproductive organs and their function, and so without those, she had no value to you. You really think that’s her fault? That attitude was your choice.

I
Edited this to add that we are now Catholic in case I didn’t make that clear. She was not culpable and I doubt I truly was as well. But God planted a seed in me a very long time ago that must have induced a sense of Catholic guilt as I’ve heard. Something about it seemed wrong. That attitude was not a choice but something I fought off. It was probably guilt eating at me. But I do appreciate your attempt at helping. But I always made a great effort to treat her as a whole. There is a whole bunch of information excluded from this. She also had her tubes tied 5 years ago. It broke my heart. I felt like she was rejecting me, not the other way around. You see she was a very beautiful woman that had issues when I married her. Knowing this I married her anyway to help her thinking it would eventually pass. It was very prideful of me to be so arrogant. She’s 6 years my junior and had gone through a serious abuse case that last quite a long time because of her fears. It was from a man at her church while a teenage girl.

I tell this story this way to convey a real problem. Openly giving God the right to choose life within the marrital act is a sacrificial statement between a husband and wife. We give ourselves completely to each other. I must have had some hangup of guilt because before I married her I was Catholic, but poorly catechized and very frustrated with the politics of the Church. Finding out she was contracepting shocked me and I tried to figure this out for many years. It finally made sense to me and how I describe it today. Don’t feel you have to try to console me. I told it this way just to help someone else understand some aspect that I learned form my experience.

If you want to pray for me pray for our situation at our parish instead where we have been made to look like fools in front of our pastor, who finally seems to realize that he wasn’t being told the entire truth about a situation that caused us to pull our children out of CCD. We’re teaching them ourselves.

 

[pira114]

This thread title makes me think of pirates boarding a ship.

Yar! Prepare to defend yer use of artificial contraception! Yar!

I’m sorry, I’ll leave now.

I have to agree that this thread just screams baiting. I’m Catholic, but if I were Protestant, my answer would be “why should I?”

If you’re trying to convert someone, then maybe you should state why you believe ABC is wrong, instead of challenging someone. If you’re not trying to convert, and you’re just curious, maybe you should say so. Just saying.

And for the record, there is no way any one can tell me that NFP is not birth control. It’s not open to life if your specifically planning around the possibility of conception. Using any method other than blind faith is, to some extent or another, birth control. And NFP is very accurate, which would lead you to believe that it’s a very effective form of birth control.

 

[PbloPicasso]

I feel much the same way about NFP as you do. The only thing I can say is that it’s natural and places not physical barriers. Yet in some ways the manipulation of the body must have some chemical effect. I’m under the impression that most people use it exactly like contraception and thus by this intention makes is sinful according to what I’ve read.

I also agree with your other statement - “baiting”. It’s not very charitable in my view. But when it’s done I try to add experience issues to explain that not everyone is in the same place as those doing the baiting. It might even be a good thing to not be in the same place under the circumstances - meaning possible lacking charity or good will. it’s a form of proselytizing is what I mean.

 

[DickVanDyke]

You don’t have to abstain 100% of the time just because you don’t want more kids. Have you heard of NFP? It is very effective and the times a woman gets pregnant is on a “risky” night. Just avoid those nights and there is no problem. No egg means no fertilization.

Those “risky” nights also happen to be the ones of greatest desire for her husband. Which goes back to my torture analogy in my first post.

And regardless of how effective it may be, our experience of living it was one of constant worry that maybe we read the signs wrong. We have five children, cannot afford more, do not believe we can effectively parent more, and my body has damage from carrying them that would only be worsened by another pregnancy. Incontinence and uterine prolapse may be surgically reparable… if you have good insurance coverage and the money for the deductible. These things are just not as simple as people make them out. We decided that the health and strength of our marriage, which is the ultimate good we can give our children, was our paramount concern. Were we happy about the choice we felt we had to make? No. Am I particularly proud of it? No. I realize I am a failure. But I made the best choice I could in the circumstances in which I live.

 

[thecatholicamer]

My one (name removed by moderator)ut on the comparison to NFP and contraception is a bit warped. They both yes are too avoid pregnancy but the big difference is the how and why. With NFP there is always the possibility, with no barrier, of the formation of life, if God wills it. With contraception we have the complete removal of this union and in sense taking God out and putting ourselves into this position. You must remember contraception is intrinsically evil and can NEVER be a good thing. This is the teaching of the Church.

 

[PbloPicasso]

Those “risky” nights also happen to be the ones of greatest desire for her husband. Which goes back to my torture analogy in my first post.

And regardless of how effective it may be, our experience of living it was one of constant worry that maybe we read the signs wrong. We have five children, cannot afford more, do not believe we can effectively parent more, and my body has damage from carrying them that would only be worsened by another pregnancy. Incontinence and uterine prolapse may be surgically reparable… if you have good insurance coverage and the money for the deductible. These things are just not as simple as people make them out. We decided that the health and strength of our marriage, which is the ultimate good we can give our children, was our paramount concern. Were we happy about the choice we felt we had to make? No. Am I particularly proud of it? No. I realize I am a failure. But I made the best choice I could in the circumstances in which I live.

My wife requires surgery as well to stop the spraying when she laughs. It’s very embarrassing to her. I’m grateful she sacrifice herself for our children, even me. I am happy I have a few children instead of a couple. The first one is 7 years older than the next with less difference in age between the second and third.

 

[DickVanDyke]

And you must realize that there are a lot of people out there who just are not convinced that it’s ALWAYS intrinsically evil. And many of us are well-educated and catechized.