Protestants more prone to unintended abortions?

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There was another thread on contraceptives that got me thinking.

If Protestants use oral contraceptives due to their bible only approach + the minimized emphasis on asceticism and control of the passions in the christian life , wouldn’t that mean that these Protestants in the long term have also unknowingly aborted their children? I am also curious to know what other Christians think of the Catholic stance on non contraception.
 
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Unfortunately, even most Catholics are carnal minded and use this stuff these days (St. Gregory uses the ark of Noah as an analogy for the Church, with the beasts in the ark–representing the carnal minded–greatly out-numbering the spiritually-minded human beings who were saved).

But I have seen some more evangelical types turn away from contraception after seeing its fruits in the world. Here’s an editorial in the Washington Post about this (the slant of the article is of course that evangelicals turning away from contraception is a bad or cynical thing).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...393e50-73cf-11e3-bc6b-712d770c3715_story.html
 
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Sadly, Protestants and Catholics tend largely to mirror each other, in terms of acceptance of contraception, in forms both abortifacient and non-abortifacient. Protestants don’t object to this, because “it’s not in the Bible”, and as for Catholics, well, this is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that nobody wants to discuss. Doing so — as I have found — elicits cries of “you’re judging!”, “you can’t know who uses it and who doesn’t”, “you can’t know that 92 percent of Catholics accept contraception unless you interview each and every one of them”, “there are subjective factors, including ignorance, that reduce or eliminate culpability”, and so on. In the meantime, people do what they want to do, teach their children likewise, and you have a moral doctrine that almost nobody believes. Not good. Not acceptable.

But back to Protestants, if they could be persuaded to avoid at least abortifacient (or potentially abortifacient) contraception, that would be a quantum leap in bringing them closer to Catholic morality. Before the 20th century, this was not a point of disagreement between Protestants and Catholics. It became so because the Anglicans basically caved, and everyone else followed suit. To get them to see the intrinsically disordered nature of contraception, whether abortifacient or not, would be even more of a quantum leap. And much of their acceptance was driven by the idea of “the technology exists, and it makes our lives easier, so why not use it?”. “The technology exists” to nuke troublesome countries into oblivion — Iran, Cuba, North Korea — but that doesn’t make it right.
 
That’s a great analogy I haven’t heard before. Thanks for sharing that from St. Gregory!
 
That’s a great analogy I haven’t heard before. Thanks for sharing that from St. Gregory!
Here’s the actual passage(it starts at par. 8 towards the end of page 230 in the link below):

St. Gregory the Great
And it should not frighten you that in the Church the bad are many and the good few. For the Ark, which in the midst of the Flood was a figure of this Church, was wide below and narrow above, and at the summit measured but one cubit (Genesis vi, 16). And we are to believe that below were the four-footed animals and serpents, above the birds and men. It was wide where the beasts were, narrow where men lived: for the Holy Church is indeed wide in the number of those who are carnal minded, narrow in those who are spiritual. For where she suffers the morals and beastly ways of men, there she enlarges her bosom. But where she has the care of those whose lives are founded on spiritual things, these she leads to the higher place; but since they are few, this part is narrow. Wide indeed is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction; and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate that leadeth to life; and few there are that find it!
 
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Thanks for posting the article. When the Anglican Lambeth Conference first approved contraception in 1930, the editors of the Washington Post blasted them for doing so, saying that it would lead to all types of moral degradation, which it has.

Pax
 
I find fault in the question - you’re actually comparing Catholics to non-Catholics, then you have to assume the Catholics aren’t using contraceptives. Too many assumptions in the question for me. Just my two cents.
 
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