Contraception

[Tomb523]

Apparently the "rhythm method" (natural family planning) is not considered to be contraceptive.

I totally understand if you have a personal conscience issue on contraception. But I don't think that the Biblical data is strong enough to forbid contraception for everyone.

Do you know what they call people who practice the rhythm method? Parents! (-;

Contraception is not forbidden in the bible. There is one verse where a man was told by God to lay with and bare children with the wife of his dead brother and he pulled out. He suffered God's wrath, not because He pulled out, but because of the disobedience to God.

 

[hedrick]

It's true that as culture changed - with the church and outside it - Christian women in general have become more open to contraception.

Do we know this? At the moment in the US we have surveys about everything. It seems pretty clear that Catholic women ignore church teaching on this subject, and on other issues of sex and gender as well. But we don't have that kind of data for the ancient world. Do we know that things were any different in the past? Apparently medical writers widely described techniques for contraception. Do we have data on how widely they were used?

http://theconversation.com/how-the-catholic-church-came-to-oppose-birth-control-95694

 

[JCFantasy23]

I'm sure there were many who secretly used contraception techniques when it was considered taboo to do so with the culture, but I don't see a way to verify the numbers accurately at this point.

 

[Jon Osterman]

I don't believe contraception is forbidden by the bible, or by God. There is really no reasonable interpretation of any bible verse that would imply this.

Having said that, my wife and I have never used contraception.