Is There Anything Wrong with Artificial Contraception?

 I read the article of Jim Paredes in his website Writing On Air entitled “The Separation of Church and Faith” and gave my comment on it. Here is the commentary I wrote on his response to my first commentary.

Let me start with your argument on the word artificial or unnatural. This is not an easy topic to explain. It is quite complicated. I will try to expound on this briefly here, but for a more detailed explanation, you can visit my ericnorm.blogspot.com and read the topic Sex: Bakit ka nilikha ng Dios.

One way to determine whether a certain act is wrong is when it violates the purpose of the thing for which it was made for. You don't use scissors for paper and use it for rubber or else it will become dull. You don't use pliers to hammer down a nail because that will destroy the pliers. Now when you violate the purpose of God for which a thing was made, then it is not only wrong but also sinful. Artificial contraception is immoral because it violates the purpose of sex namely pro-creation. Sex was created by God for pro-creation and if you violate it, then you commit a sin. You don't write with your whiteboard marker with its pointed end covered, you are defeating its purpose to write. You don't make love with a woman using a condom, you are defeating the purpose of God. Artificial contraception has a great effect on the human psyche which renders sex as a mere pleasurable commodity and not as something sacred. Since human life is sacred, the pro-creation of human life is also sacred. Why is sex made pleasurable by God? So we will do it and bear children, for He said, go and multiply. In the Old Testament, Onan was punished directly by God with death when he committed the sin of withdrawal, a method of contraception (Gen 38: 6-10). Perhaps, a clearer analogy is “why is gluttony sinful”? Why did God make eating pleasurable? So we will eat and grow healthy, remain strong and alive. Otherwise, we will grow weak, sickly till we die. Why is gluttony sinful? Because it violates the purpose of eating which is to give health and life to our body. If you eat excessively, you grow fat, become overweight, diabetic and susceptible to many sickness till you die. Why did God make sex pleasurable? So we will do it and pro-create more babies. Now, if there is a serious reason to control pro-creation like having too many children to feed, what can couples do? They can use the natural family planning method. God has created the body of the woman in such a way that she is not fertile for 18 days during the month. This is the window which God has provided to man so he can control birth if necessary. Why not use the artificial method? If you can use medicine to cure sickness of the body why not use medicine to control birth? There is a flaw in this logic. Sickness is a curse of the body while a baby is a blessing from God. If you wish to be biblical about this, suffering and death was the result of sin (Gen. 2:17).  Adam and Eve were originally created by God to be immortal beings till they became vulnerable to suffering and death after they sinned (Gen 3:17-27 and Rom 6:23). So sickness is really a curse of the body brought about by our sins and we need to cure this in order to live. But the baby is a blessing from God.  A baby is not a disease which you need to cure. What is the difference between artificial from natural contraception since it serves the same purpose? Why is mercy-killing immoral when you already know that your father will surely die soon? So why not give him lethal injection immediately to save him from further suffering?

I would like to quote the following excerpts from Catholic.org to answer these questions:

Couples who use natural family planning (NFP) when they have a just reason to avoid pregnancy never render their sexual acts sterile; they never contracept. They track their fertility, abstain when they are fertile and, if they so desire, embrace when they are naturally infertile. Readers unfamiliar with modern NFP methods should note that they are 98-99% effective at avoiding pregnancy when used properly. Furthermore, any woman, regardless of the regularity of her cycles, can use NFP successfully. This is not your grandmother’s “rhythm method.”

To some people this seems like splitting hairs. “What’s the big difference,” they ask, “between rendering the union sterile yourself and just waiting until it’s naturally infertile? The end result is the same: both couples avoid children.” To which I respond, what’s the big difference between killing Grandma and just waiting until she dies naturally? End result’s the same thing: dead Grandma. Yes, but one is a serious sin called murder, and the other is an act of God.

If a person can tell the difference between euthanasia and natural death, he can tell the difference between contraception and NFP. It’s the same difference. I’m not equating contraception and murder. That’s not the analogy. Rather, Grandma’s natural death and a woman’s natural period of infertility are both acts of God. But in killing Grandma or in rendering sex sterile, we take the powers of life into our own hands — just like the deceiver originally tempted us to do — and make ourselves like God (see Gn 3:5).

This is why Pope John Paul II concludes that contraception “is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God” (address Oct. 10, 1983).

If you have resisted the Church’s teaching on contraception, maybe it’s time to give it some more thought.

[Editor's note: Please enjoy regular features from this and other enlightening authors discussing Catholic teaching on sexuality in CE's Theology of the Body channel.]

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You wrote your adherence to gay-rights, same-sex-marriage and divorce. In Corinthians 6 : 9, St. Paul said fornicators, homosexuals, and adulterers will not enter heaven and in Mark 10 : 2-9, our Lord Jesus Christ explicitly said that divorce is against the will of God. If you have a different understanding of these, where do you get your interpretations of the Bible?