Perspectives to Ponder

Martin Luther Protestant Reformer

“This is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a Sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime to produce semen and excite the woman, and to frustrate her at that very moment.” (LW 7.20-21)

Alexandra DeSanctis Writer

“Would all women really embrace a feminism that’s primarily about choice? I, for one, wouldn’t, because I don’t believe that the “freedom to choose” is really the benchmark against which women — or anyone — should measure their happiness. That ubitiquous phrase — “freedom to choose” — is rhetoric that both second- and third-wave feminists use to justify a lifestyle that must be propped up by declaring government-funded birth control a human right and promoting abortion-on-demand as a backdoor out of responsibility when contraception fails.”

National Council of Churches

“… believe[s] that the undesirable use of contraceptives will not be indulged in by most people, and that if the influence of religion and education is properly developed the progress of knowledge will not outrun the capacity of mankind for self‑control.”

The 1934 Resolution on Birth Control

“The Southern Baptist Convention hereby expresses its disapproval of the Hastings Bill, now pending in the Congress of the United States, the purpose of which is to make possible and provide for the dissemination of information concerning contraceptives and birth control; whatever the intent and motive of such proposal we cannot but believe that such legislation would be vicious in character and would prove seriously detrimental to the morals of our nation.”

Holly Grigg-Spall Author, Sweetening the Pill

“The pill had been assimilated into my sense of self; it had become a part of my life and me. It was an adaption that had seen me through from girl to woman.”

Abby Johnson Pro-Life Advocate

“When I say, ‘I want women to have access to authentic female healthcare,’ I mean that I want women to have access to healthcare that supports their natural femininity. I mean that I want women to have access to healthcare that doesn’t include the use of contraception and abortion.”

James Balog Merck Pharmaceuticals

“The issue was if any woman would take a pill every day to prevent the chance she might get pregnant. They believed no one’s going to do that, not when they’re not even sick, and they’re not even sick.”

Mother Teresa Roman Catholic nun

“In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gift of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily.”

Mahatma Gandhi Indian Leader

“Artificial methods [of birth control] are like putting a premium on vice. They make men and women reckless. Nature is relentless and will have full revenge for any such violation of her laws. … If [contraceptive] methods become the order of the day, nothing but moral degradation can be the result. As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception], no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her.”

“Any large use of the methods is likely to result in the dissolution of the marriage bond and in free love. Birth control to me is a dismal abyss.”

“Divorce of the sexual act from its natural consequence must lead to hideous promiscuity and condonation, if not endorsement, of unnatural vice.”

Sigmund Freud Austrian Psychoanalyst

“The abandonment of the reproductive function is the common feature of all sexual perversions. We actually describe a sexual activity as perverse if it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it.”

Gen 38:9-10

“But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife he spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother. And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him also.”

Daniel Dafoe English Author

“a man may, in effect, make a whore of his own wife.”

Ps 126:3-5

“Lo, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”

T.S. Eliot American Poet

By accepting contraception, “the world is trying … to form a civilized but non-Christian, mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in waiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization and save the world from suicide.”

R. Albert Mohler Jr. President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm.. . .A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control — and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies.”

“I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill. It became almost an assured form of contraception, something humans had never encountered before in history. Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation.”

John Calvin Protestant Reformer

“It is a horrible thing to pour out seed. This ‘quenches the hope’ of one’s family and kills the son … before he is born.”

John Wesley Anglican Clergyman

(contraception is) “very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile affections.

Theodore Roosevelt US President

“Birth control is the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement.”

Kerry Gretchen Researcher / Writer

“Many people believe that having unlimited access to every kind of birth control is the only way to be a feminist and therefore speaking out against the pill or other hormonal birth control is anti-women. Let us consider for a moment the types of birth control that are encouraged, advertised, and prescribed, and with these medications, whose body is being affected? Who will pay if these methods fail? Who has to deal with the side effects? As someone who suffered a stroke while on the birth control pill, I am keenly aware of the price that comes with this ‘freedom’.”

Bertrand Russell British Philosopher

“Perhaps the greatest importance of the family, in these days of contraceptives, is that it preserves the habit of having children.”

FDA

“The use of OCs with estrogen and progestin increases the risk of serious conditions, including
myocardial infarction, thromboembolism, stroke, hepatic neoplasia, and gallbladder disease.”