Doug's Blog: Hating Babies

While I differ with the author on some of his views concerning natural law theory, I appreciate the integrity and historical accuracy of the arguments presented by this cogent defender of life in his article “Hating Babies, Hating God,” published in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

The author, Aaron D. Wolf, addresses the reluctance of professing Christians to address the fundamental ethics of the question of abortion. Often this is because to do so, and to adopt a consistent life ethic, would inconvenience their lifestyles. One angle on this issue which the author addresses is the widespread use of abortifacient contraceptives by Christians, including the Pill and the Patch. The implications of this essay is that there is a distinct hypocrisy when Christians focus on certain “unacceptable” and particularly horrific forms of abortion like partial-birth abortion, but then remain silent on other forms of abortion—including abortafacient contraceptives.

Wolf also addresses the fact that the modern anti-child contraceptive ethic which is widespread in the Church, is a historical anomaly. Below are some of his comments:

”...Behind every pro-lifer who chooses to think, say, about baseball whenever he is told that The Pill kills children is the need to terminate the discussion about contraception in general. There is always the reactionary excuse to fall back on—while Catholics reject (or, at least, they are supposed to reject) contraception because their Pope tells them to, we Protestants listen only to the Bible. From 1517 to 1930, however, no Protestant denomination or group ever permitted the practice, and it was Protestant state legislatures across the country that made the trafficking of contraceptives illegal until the Supreme Court intruded in Griswold v. Connecticut, paving the way for Roe v. Wade...

...Last year, a courageous young Protestant couple, Sam and Bethany Torode, urged fellow evangelicals to forsake birth control in favor of an Open Embrace within marriage. Their work reflects the deep commitment in pockets of resistance all over the United States to the official line that contraception is only a Catholic concern. In a well-researched and poignant book, the Torodes argue that Protestant attempts to separate the pleasures of the marital bed from the spiritual blessing of openness to childbearing is gnostic. “By pitting spirit against matter, and companionship against procreation, contraception can become a means of exploiting the body and using one’s spouse—in spite of our good intentions.” They also argue that any attempt to separate the procreative, unitive, and sacramental aspects of marital union leads to all sorts of physical, emotional, and spiritual deformities...

...Too many Protestant leaders are simply unwilling to let go of the right to choose—in this case, the right to choose to reject God’s blessing of children. The issue, therefore, is simply not discussed. That life begins at the moment of conception is, thanks to the efforts of courageous pro-lifers, all but universally accepted among Bible-believing Protestant evangelicals. But the notion that the observable order of nature demonstrates God’s gracious design and intention for His Creation is ignored when it comes to so-called birth control...

The Anglican Church became the first Protestant body to sanction the use of contraception, although it took great pains to emphasize that contraception should only be used by married couples. Still, the 1930 Lambeth Conference’s declaration rejected natural law in favor of the law of “good intentions”: Contraception was deemed permissible “where there is a clearly-felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood.” It is precisely married couples, however, who are least likely to have a legitimate reason to avoid parenthood, for having children is what they are commanded (or “blessed”) to do. And we know this not only from Scripture (the Creation mandate) but from the birds and the bees, whom God also made...

..Conservative Protestants were horrified by Lambeth. T.S. Eliot said that it was an un-Christian experiment to remake society, and Lutheran Hour speaker Walter A. Maier called it “one of the most repugnant of modern aberrations, representing a 20th-century renewal of pagan bankruptcy.” The Missouri Synod pointed to St. Augustine’s warning that “Contraception makes a prostitute out of the wife and an adulterer out of the husband” and noted that so-called “Companionate marriage has been termed ‘licensed prostitution.’”...Nonetheless, one by one, Protestant denominations began to ignore the wisdom of their forebears...”