What's Christian about denying women birth control?

Does it say somewhere in the Bible that women should not make any
attempt to control their pregnancies? I believe it was Mark Twain
(not Jesus) who said women should be kept barefoot and pregnant.

Not to start a gender-based flame war, but I bet every one of these
Pharmacists who can't bring themselves to provide women with legally
prescribed contraceptives are men.

By the way, will non-Christian Pharmacists get to refuse to sell prescriptions
to Christians based on religious beliefs if these Fundies get what they want?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1361459&mesg_id=1361459

the moment we take the ultimate step in protecting ourselves: when we stop having sex until birth control and all other legally available forms of self-defense are freely available to us. I know that sounds radical, but by and large, women aren't the ones denying birth control and abortions to other women.

End of rant.

denied their men sex until they stopped fighting?

Men want to control us because we can give birth.

bad spelling I'm sure, but it's something like that. :-)

I think it was actually "Lysistrata," but could easily be wrong. Either way, twas a funny tale.

It's a comedy about a feminist rebellion where Greek women are so furious about the war craze of the men, that they take over the Athenian Acropolis (where the city kept its war chest), and organised a sex strike: no more love making until the men agree to a general peace treaty. :D

it's denying ourselves risky sex until the the pharmacists and doctors meet our terms. The impact no doubt would be felt widely, though.

In fairness, I don't believe all men want to control us. (Certainly, my partner has never even attempted to control me.) Need for control, I think, is genderless, but once anyone sees they can get away with it, they will. Best to nip it in the bud before it becomes widespread.

It would make a great statement, but I think it would be a bit unfair to liberal men who haven't really done anything wrong.

Perhaps women could adopt a "no sex with conservatives" movement?

I believe he was against it for both sexes. I know this will lead to the argument that men don't get pregnant, but I think from his vantage point, it wouldn't matter if they did, his position would be the same.

Check the link.

nothing, just some people who think it is.

that sells condoms, foam, birth control pills, etc.? That way, their precious little consciences would be totally unbothered!

Why do they go get jobs at these pharmacies, and then refuse to do their jobs? I have a suspicion why, and it has nothing to do with their little hurt feelings: they like to force women (and men) to be subject to the consequences of all that rotten sex, and they especially want women to be pregnant and out of the public sphere, back home "where they belong."

in sarcasm toward the church's stance on contraceptives. She said:

"I'll gladly stop taking the pill as long as the Pope agrees to financially support all the future children I'm going to have."

:rofl:

...The fundies with this "culture of life" garbage don't give two flying craps about the kid once it is born. No neo-natal care, no food stamps, no medical care, no pre school, no head start. They will protest like crazy before the kid is born, but the second the child exits the womb, they don't want one single thing to do with it.

that some have said the earth is possibly dying. I read of one study that said there are 10 times more humans than the earth can support naturally.

The solution to that problem is not less birth control! I have to wonder about a group of people who today don't believe in it. What are their motives? Don't they possess the ability to think? If they do, why would they wish for more people? To kill mother earth?

It's the Far East & Asia where large population growths are predicted over the next decades, and most of them are not countries with large Christian populations. South America has somewhat of a growth prediction going forward, but has much less people to begin with, than the two other continents.

I personally believe population growth is one of the greatest dangers the world faces, but governments need to solve that problem, not religion.

But it does seem that the "major" religions of the world agree on 2 things- women are to be subjugated and their numbers must be increased. They can kill 2 birds with one stone by keeping women "barefoot and pregnant" and without power.

I only wish that the "major" religions of the world would let the secular governmental powers deal with this issue, but they won't. They've proven time and again, whether at Rio, Johannesburg or other UN/environmental conference, that they will hijack any conference which supports the dissemination of contraception- or even information concerning same.

countries is declining, below replacement rates. I think the earth is more "capable" than we think, and I also think that we could easily feed it's population if there were fewer crazed dictators who foil food relief and create no stability in their countries.

to a Catholic Hospital, the collection department called about a missed payment and low payments, to which I explained that I couldn't afford to pay anymore than that to which they stated "You should have thought of that before you got pregnant" to which I stated "You of all places should understand an unplanned pregnancy!"
They didn't have much to say after that. Ideology reigns until money enters the picture, then money always takes over.

P.S. I was married, and I had been taking the pill (sin sin), used condoms and abstained (except for 2x) and still got pregnant! What are those Frickin' odds?

the "money" is really blank pieces of white paper with this written in bold black lettering "THIS IS YOUR GOD".
I love that movie.
:popcorn: :applause:

crying baby out of Mass because it bothered the priest, "He wants me to have them. He can listen to them for one hour a week."

... I could then refuse to sell fire-arms and ammunition (?) due to my extreme anti-gun position. Yeah right...

while calling it "religious freedom".

Plus: they're just not commited enough to threaten their own income! :)

they've been taught that sex is the work of the devil. That it's not meant to be enjoyable and only for the woman they're with to have sex to have children and a family. For some reason they have been given wrong information about birth control and they feel it's their duty as a Christian man to deny the woman birth control. It makes me so upset because they are still trying to control me as a person. I get so sick and fed up of these "holier than thou" attitudes from them. :banghead:

"Go forth and multiply." I remember when I was in Catholic HS, we were taught that we were never permitted to refuse sex to our husband, no matter how tired, or sick we were.

Can't speak for any other than Catholics, but they always have supported large families. Any of you remember when a couple had 7, 8, 10 kids, everyone said "they must be Catholic!"

I'm not sure if a new Pope would be willing to recognize that families simply can't afford big families anymore, and might consider an alteration in the Church teachings. We'll see.

is Catholic, one of 10. She didn't want to go through it herself so she asked her priest about birth control.

One really smart priest. He said that the conditions for absolution was that you had to sincerely promise never to do the 'sin' again and that if she had her tubes tied she could make that promise in good conscience unlike other forms of birth control that she couldn't promise not to use again.

That's like saying you can shoot someone who's harrassing you, and as long as you kill him, you can promist neve to do it again!

The priest would have been better off telling your friend that if she really didn't believe that using bc was wrong, it wasn't a sin, because it also takes knowledge that something is wrong, and you simply disregard that fact, and do it anyway.

it's just a hypocritical and unethical one.

Moral and medical decisions aren't supposed to be based on loopholes so you can get one over on God.

Counseling someone to undergo unnecessary major surgery is shameful.

If it was the best decision for her medically and personally, great - but frankly, it sounds more like a prime example of what's wrong with the religious leadership in our country.

The risky procedure is childbirth.

I was thinking hysterectomy, my fault on that.

The rest of my post stands, however. I don't understand the objection to birth control, but if the priest believes birth control is a sin, he shouldn't be counseling people in how to obtain it. He's no better than the anti-abortion activists who had abortions, or the homophobic crowd who solicits young boys in secret.

May as well counsel his congregation in how to have affairs without getting caught by God.

The suggestion that it was like murdering someone and promising not to ever do it again is not...because you COULD murder someone else and that would be committing the same sin again. You could only be absolved once.

Same for taking birth control. You can only confess it and be absolved once. If you continue after that, you can't get absolution again until you DO stop.

This woman was desparate not to end up like her mother and considered the advice fully, then had her tubes tied when her youngest was born. For her it was not UNnecessary surgery.

And each day she opted not to reverse it, she would be making a conscious decision to use it as birth control.

It's not theologically sound for a priest to counsel a person on how to sin and get away with it.

"Go forth and multiply" might have made sense back in the late Bronze Age when life was hard & lifespans short, but this makes absolutely no sense today. Of course, fundies of all stripes also see this imperative as a means to "breed" their way to power & acceptability.

The church would have to throw out the Immaculate Conception of Mary for them to be able to accept birth control.

but man made laws and that is one of the biggest problems that I have always had with the Catholic Church. Women have been thrown out of the Church for using Birth Control Pills, the rules against Birth Control are purely interpretation of the words in the Bible. The "Go forth and multiply" did not say how many times you were expected to multiply.... The eating meat on Friday was another "man made" law, Not turning down sex for any reason from your spouse???? What kind of bullshit is that? Where in the Bible does it say that????? Again based on interpretation.

What I find most offensive, is that the Catholic Church puts their laws on the same level as God's laws!!!! How ludicrous is that?????

As a Catholic you are mislead on what God's laws actually are. (and by the way other Christian religions do much of the same) I was raised Catholic and I witnessed the hypocrisy as well as the flat falsehoods that were taught. There are too many to list. I resorted to reading the Bible and learning myself with God's help what THE WORDS actually said. Since then I feel much more at peace with what Jesus' teachings were and what the essence of Christianity is all about. I don't carry guilt for eating meat on Fridays, I don't carry guilt because I used birth control, I don't carry around guilt for not attending church on Sunday, I don't carry guilt because I don't believe that a 6 week old baby must be baptised...

I am a Christian 1st and foremost and to me the Organized Religion -whatever it may be- has to meet up to my criteria before I commit to it and will only commit to it for further understanding of what I have learned and for fellowship with other Christians and maybe to join into some activity designed to help someone else -individual or group.

underpopulated area with high rates of childhood deaths?? Does it make ANY sense in our dangerously overpopulated world?

I can never understand why people use biblical pronouncements from an entirely different world of 2000+ years ago to guide their decisions in this existance. Idiotic!

Don't some Catholics also home school?

So do some UUs, atheists, agnostics, Pagans, and for that matter, some DUers. :)

edit: typo

there was a DUer who said in another thread that she had a hard time getting a female pharmacist to give her her BCPs until she saw the DUer had children and then the pharmacist decided it was OK for her to have the pills.

Otherwise, I agree with you. I have half a mind to become a pharmacist just so I can refuse to sell men Viagra.

Since sex and reproduction are gifts from God, if a man is no longer able to perform he should simply pray about it rather than try to circumvent God's will through medicine. I'd never fill a viagra prescription just on those grounds alone.

Get right with God, guys, and maybe he'll give you back your erection.

LOL, I may just have to become a pharmacist.

sexes. This is getting to be a real tired old motif around here.

Stand in front of the stores with signs. Let
other women know. Get the press there. Denying
a woman, a family of her/their right to control her/their
financial and health future is unChristian.

hate to see picketers out front! :evilgrin:

I find it so hard to believe that this goes on - it's astounding. It wouldn't fly in Canada.

The Pill is given for other reasons than birth control too, how are the pharmasists supposed to know the reason.

If it happened in Canada, I bet the pharmacy and pharmasist would be sued under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

birth control. Even though they SAY "there are ways to keep from getting pregnant so you don't need abortion", when you look carefully at their agendas you'll see that overturning RvW is the first step. Outlawing birth control is the second.

Fundamentalist ARE against abortion, but to accuse them of being against BC is to be either very badly informed, or lying.

pronouncements then, have you?

Reverend Donald Spitz of Pensacola, Florida who is involved with a Pro Life group in Virginia and with the Army of God.

Not surprisingly, Spitz opposed the use of birth control methods. Copeland asked, “If a woman is raped should she be forced to carry the fetus to term?” Spitz said, “Yes.”

"I would like to outlaw contraception...contraception is disgusting – people using each other for pleasure." -Joseph Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League


"I don't think Christians should use birth control. You consummate your marriage as often as you like – and if you have babies, you have babies." Randall Terry, Operation Rescue

You are trying to take an extremists and make it sound like he is mainstream. Rush does the same thing when he quotes for some of the nutty things that get posted here on DU. He presents them as typical.

The Army of God is a fringe group, and represents no one but themselves. All major fundamentalist denomination have no problem with preventive birth control.

Please remember that I have many decades of experience in fundamentalist denominations. I know what I am talking about.

Fundamentalists ARE aagainst birth control- it's way beyond abortion for them.

They want to overturn YOUR right to right to privacy with respect to reproductive choice.

PERIOD. That includes allowing (and encouraging) states to enact laws that would ban birth control or enacting "fornication" laws against premarital sex- the whole works.

It's dangewously naive (and factualy incorrect) to think otherwise.

And if you ever talk to a real fundamentalist and try and tell them they believe that, you will lose all credibility. They know what they believe and they will know that you are full of bull.

I grew up in a Pentecostal denomination, was saved in 1957, and have been regular in church attendance for many decades. I know the doctrines of my church, and am qualified to teach them.

You are wrong. It is that simple.

and is still changing.
The Christian Medical& Dental Association that promotes the idea that
birth control pills cause abortions work hand in glove with many
Southern Baptist congregations.
Members of the CMDA are pushing this "conscience clause" nonsense, with the full support of the SB.

Here's some interesting "news" articles from SBC site:

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=15067

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=6991

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=3224

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=2479

I don't need an outsider to tell me what my own denomination was doing. And I still have many contacts in the SBC. The SBC will never move against preventive birth control because too many of the members use it. And SBC doctrine is set by the members, not by a Baptist version of a Pope.

I repeat: You are very poorly informed. Yes, you found some articles in Baptist Press. However, the Baptists are such a large organization, (The SBC is the largest Protestant body in the US.)that you can find somebody that will saying whatever you want to quote to make your point. But they are NOT typical of the entire body.

Further, of the four articles that you mention, three of them dealt with a morning-after pill, not with advance prevention. Only one dealt with preventive BC.

Try this experiment: Find a Southern Baptist and tell him that his church is against preventive BC. You will get laughed at.

Look at the number of Christians in this thread that have posted that their churches are NOT against BC.

Fundamentalist Protestant churches have NO problems with preventive BC, and that includes the pill. However, some individuals among us do, and some of them may be prominent, but don't think for a moment that they are representative, because they aren't.

The "culture of life", pro-life, anti-woman stance IS being pushed.
I'm not an "outsider", btw, and have sbc missionaries in the family.
I've also seen the SBC agenda pushed, and congregations inched to wards new beliefs.

AT THIS TIME, no major fundamentalist denomination is against preventive BC. By admitting that some are trying to change the denomination, you admit where it is now. It has no problem with BC. You also should know how the SBC government works. In fact, SBC churches are as independent as "Hogs on ice" as the saying goes, although all do subscribe to the Baptist Faith & Message. The BF&M has nothing against BC.

Are some people trying to change the SBC? Of course they are. Always have been. But they won't be able to change it to being against BC. Too many people use it to allow the convention to go against it.

They were especially helpful in making up the "partial birth" procedure.
No such procedure exists medically.
Now SBC is helping to promote the erroneous science that birth control pills cause abortion.
Pairing pro-life identification with a new definition of conception(leaving off implantation)
will result in birth control pills being disdained by SBC for its members.

Please don't play word games. Partial-birth abortion may not be the medical term for it, but there IS a procedure where the birth is started, stopped when the baby's head (fetus to you) is available, the brains sucked out, and then the dead baby is allowed to be delivered. It is done when the pregnancy is too far advanced for normal abortion. To try to deny it exists by saying that nothing exists by the name, "Partial-birth abortion" is to attempt to dodge an issue by the use of euphemisms, and causes the left to lose credibility.

I am pro-choice, yet I have difficulty with that procedure.

While I am sure that some people may indeed be pushing the position you say they are, it won't fly with the people. And in the SBC, the people have the final say in everything. They will not send messengers to the convention to attempt to outlaw "the pill". Too many of the messengers will have family members that are taking the pill. And they will be able to find doctors that will argue exactly the opposite of the other side's doctors.

The procedure is used to save the woman's life.

We are still talking about the same procedure. Many medical procedures and even body parts have common names that the public knows but are called something different by medical people. Changing the names does not change the reality.

I remember one doctor who want to call a newborn baby, a "post-partum fetus".

So whatever you name the procedure, it is still the same.

Now about saving the woman's life. The baby still has to pass through the birth canal. It is stopped to suck the brains out, then it is allowed to continue being born. How does stopping it while being born save the woman's life? That prolongs the time in the birth canal. Wouldn't it be safer for the woman to minimize the time in the birth canal? Of course that would result in a live birth.

How does stopping the birth to suck out the brains save the woman's life?

The circumference of the fetus' head can become abnormally large.

The head has already passed through the birth canal before the brains are sucked out. So that doesn't save the mother's life.

Also, there is C-section.

There are countless variables in pregnancy and delivery.
The head isn't always thru the birth canal.
The circumference of the fetus' head can be extremely abnormally large.
And yes, the procedure is used to save the woman's life.

I've got to go to bed now. :boring: :hi:

I really don't understand how partial birth abortion can save a woman's life.

In any case, that is off the original topic. If have admitted several times that the all major fundamentalists are against abortion. My statement is that none are against BC, nor will they be as too many of them use it.

Remember that women can conceive until they are in their 50's, and most don't want to after they have as many kids as they want. So most of the women in a church that are still fertile are on the pill, or other BC such as tied tubes, or the husband has a vasectomy.

So you are talking about the majority of the adults in a congregation are using BC. And you think they will allow the church to change it's stance on that? NO WAY.

As they saying goes: "They quit preaching and gone to meddling."

when and how it is used, and some conditions of it. As Lars said, Hydroencephalic fetuses have enlarged heads. Usually the fetus in question is non-viable, either dying or dead. You described the procedure only partially, in this case the fetus's head is so large it could endanger the woman's life or handicap her permanently, through hip displacement or other complications. The head is collapsed so it can pass through the birth canal with fewer complications than if it were totally "natural". Or surgery is performed, in some cases, to remove the fetus.

Another condition is the fetus dying in the 6-9 month period in utero. This is dangerous to the pregnant female, not to mention tragic, because in many cases, the fetus cannot be properly explelled from the body through miscarriage, and instead is reabsorbed into the mother's body incompletely. This leaves her open to infection and more importantly, blood poisioning. These are usually fatal if the fetus is not removed as soon as possible. This is done in the most non-invasive way possible using extraction techniques that people term "Partial Birth Abortions".

Other conditions usually involve the fetus simply not being viable, including no brain, or just a brain stem, or other fatal conditions where they would not survive birth. In those cases, they are extracted to minimize the trauma that the mother would go through rather than through a full birth.

Giving birth is dangerous, there is no question about that, and should be avoided if possible in cases such as these. The total amount of "PBAs" performed in the United States can be counted up to 4 digits, every single one of them, all the way down to the last digit, are medically neccessary. Think about this, they are neccessary, not elective procedures, there is no need for a law to restrict that, period.

You have explained it well, and I appreciate that.

The United States is the industrialized nation with the highest incidence of deaths in childbirth.

If late-term abortions are restricted or made illegal except to save the life of the woman, and a board has to approve it, that means some people are going to restrict how many approvals the board gives out.

It's happening in my state with teens wanting to abort without telling their parents. In a perfect world, teenage girls are NOT afraid of their parents and no one EVER has daddy, big brother, or everyone's favorite male cousin getting a girl pregnant by means of incestuous rape. I don't have to tell you that we don't live in a perfect world.

There are judges being investigated because they don't deny enough requests for non-notification of parents.

Suppose the same people would do that in the case of late-term abortions? If I die because some axe-grinding board refuses to allow me to abort a non-viable fetus that died in the third trimester, who would my next of kin sue? The father? The doctors? Or the approvals board?

the body is partly delivered, the head is still in the womb and comes out last, after it has been "compressed"

You have moved the topic to abortion, not BC.

I will instantly admit that most fundamentalist are anti-abortion. And I will maintain that all fundamentalists that I have met in almost 50 years of being a fundamentalist have been OK with BC.

are erroneously claiming that bc pills cause abortion.
They are trying to change the definition of conception.

Sorry, but I see that as a tempest in a teacup. And there are always other druggists.

Neither has the Catholic Church, but that's another matter. The SBC actually took rather pro-choice positions in the 1970s, until the Falwells and Dobsons of the world took control. Do a little reading of old SBC papers and you'll see it was once a surprisingly tolerant church.


And I'm not an "outsider" trying to tell you what the SBC stands for. I grew up in that church, and have 3 uncles who are SBC preachers. One of whom sat on the SBC in Tennessee until he decided that the "nut jobs" had taken over and he retired. His words, not mine.

Their official position is not anti-contraception yet, so you are technically correct about the SBC. But they're working like hell to fix that little problem.

A fundamentalism movement inside the SBC launched a campaign to gain control of the denomination in 1979, by winning the presidency of the convention for a fundamentalist, and keeping it there. The SBC President makes one appointment each year to the ten man Committee on Committees, which controls all other appointments. If they could put together an unbroken 10 year string of appointments, then they would have solid fundamentalists in all denominational position. So in 1979 Adrian Rogers, (I have met him.)won the presidency of the SBC, and it has remained in fundamentalist hands ever since.

But notice that the different church messengers had to vote on that. So it came from the bottom up. Yes, there was organization from some key leaders, but they still had to win the votes of the people. They were empowered to lead the people where the people already wanted to go.

Since the people use BC very much, I seriously doubt that they will want to be lead to give it up.

Remember, the SBC was founded in 1845 because they didn't want to give up slaves. They are extremely resistant to top down leadership.

When Roe v. Wade is overturned (which is damn near the single defining cause of all fundie group) a case called Griswold v. Connecticut will also necessarily be overturned-

Griswold provides the basis for Roe- which is a right to privacy in reproductive choices. Without that right, states can (and some will) outlaw birth control (as they did prior to Griswold in 1965), they Will enact (and from time to time enforce) sodomy laws. Hell, Alabama just passed a law banning the sale of sex toys in 1998.

Just because fundies may not always state publicly (and some might not even believe) that banning birth control is on their agenda- IT IS.

Both as a practical matter- and in some cases as a matter of dogma.

I go to an Evangelical Christian Church (over 2,000 members) and they have NEVER said a word about birth control being bad.

You have to understand that there are hundreds or thousands of "christian" churches out there and what one or two say doesn't mean the rest of them are following.

They refer to BC as an abortificant (I saw that word on one of those crazy, anti-BC websites). They believe that it prevents a fertilized egg from implanting, though from what I know BC prevents an egg from being released.

And they also promote that BC increases breast cancer risks, that no woman of "child bearing age" should take BC (even for reasons other than contraception).

There is no pregnancy until implantation. Just fertilization alone is not a pregnancy, no matter what they say.

I was born into, raised in, and still attend a very fundamentalist, Pentacostal denomination. I am old enough to have done volunteer work for Kennedy's campaign in 1960. During my life I have also attended conservative Methodist, Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, and independent Charasmatic churches, so I know the teachings of the churchs extremely well.

NO MAJOR FUNDMENTALIST DENOMINATION OPPOSES BIRTH CONTROL.

It is entirely possible that some fringe group may. There are fringe groups that maintain that the KJV is the only Bible and the NIV is a satanic translation. So I am sure that somewhere that is some small group that may believe as you say. After all, there is a tiny group of snake handlers up in East TN, but they are only a few of them. It would be false to accuse the rest of the conservative churches of snake handling on the basis of what a few very strange churches do. So also it is false to accuse the majority of fundamentalists of doing something that only a fringe element of them do.

You do not further our cause by saying things that are not true.

THAT is the lie. Ask your church leaders.

They oppose condoms and lie about their effectiveness to stop people from using them. They say the pill kills fetuses. Same for Norplant and IUDs.

Doesn't leave anything, does it?

If you really want to substantiate something, it'd be better if you went around and pointed out a few denominations at least, rather than giving a "oh come on" response. You could say anything in one of those, including stuff like this:

"OH COME ON, how can you NOT say that flouride is being put in the water as a communist plot?"

"OH COME ON, how can you NOT say that gays want to recruit little boys into their lifestyle?"

You can find an activist group that says anything.

The Bible and Birth Control" by Charles Provan is one that outlines the way the christian taliban wants it to go.

==============================(NOT an exerpt from that book)
* The pro-life movement's legislative goal is passage of the Paramount Human Life Amendment. This would establish legal personhood for all human beings from the moment of fertilization.

The fact is that some so-called "contraceptives" are abortifacient in action and kill already existing human beings (e.g., the "pill," lUD, RU486). Of course, we are against these devices. Every abortion kills a human being, whether accomplished chemically, surgically or by other means.

I'm through trying to get you to prove that any major fundamentalist denomination is against all birth control. I leave you with this: if you do not get your opposition's position right, and if you fabricate it, they are the first to know.

I would say a few radical groups may, but the majority of the Evangelical Christians do not teach against it.

In the Southern Baptist Church, the congregations vote on messengers that attend an annual national convention where the issues of the church are voted on. So the "church leaders" are responsible to and chosen by the people themselves. I personally hold credentials to teach church doctrine in the Southern Baptist Church - SO I KNOW THE CHURCH'S TEACHINGS !!!! AND YOU ARE TOTALLY WRONG.

At present I am in a Pentecostal denomination, where I also have attended the classes to be able to teach in the church. I KNOW THE CHURCH'S TEACHINGS !!!! AND YOU ARE TOTALLY WRONG.

You have made up what you think the churches teach, and are putting it forward as fact. So when you talk so someone who is actually in one of those churches, they know instantly that you are full of bull and you lose all credibility. The rest of your message will not be believed.

I don't need to read somebody's book to know what is happening in the churches that I am personally in every Sunday and Wednesday.

Of course, one can always find fringe groups that are saying nutty stuff. Look how Rush takes some of the very exteme statements on DU and puts them forward as typical of DU. You are trying to do the same thing to Christians. You are forgetting that many Christians are also Democrats.

...which I blame for actually quite a bit of the rise of the religious right, is that for some reason these people go around saying that they know what's really in the minds of people of faith. Of course, those people of faith instantly see that it's a lie, and wants to do something to protect themselves against the threat, and the right comes along and takes advantage of that.

People complain about the pledge of allegiance being changed and religious statements on their money, but they don't remember that that was done out of fear that communists would ban their religion. I think the far left is a prime impetus of the religious right; I really do.

for married people. I went to a Church of Christ. Individuals churches have some autonomy, but the denomination is based on following the Bible. I remember my minister specifically preaching that sex inside marriage is not a sin and is actually important to marriage. He and his wife only had two children. He never preached against birth control. The next minister did have more children, 4 little ones, but his wife did get sterilized after that (he told the congregation to pray for her surgery).
In teen Sunday school and youth group though, we did watch videos about saving sex until marriage and the imperfectness of condomns is preventing disease and pregnancy. A couple of the older girls did get pregnant and married right way, one to a young man who was sentenced to prision for assault before the baby was born. I thought that was unfortunate. These girls should have been not discouraged from using borth control, nor encouraged to marry men who might not be good husbands just because they were pregnant with their children.

as their guide. In that book,for many the literal word of a god, women are treated like chattels and property. They want it to stay that way because their fear of change, their fear of women, is justified in having a black and white commandement by any number of biblical personalities. The Bible is riff with condemnation of women.

In these times, science has given women power and that is what is so threatening to these males. As a result, silliness has taken over--ie a fertilized egg is a human being and has a soul and a woman must be forced, in this day and age, to bow to the will of men and the state, and be pregnant, continually until she drops dead of exhaustion.

Some people believe that since birth control pills can prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the wall of the uterus, it's just like abortion. There are people who don't believe in birth control pills that have no problems with other methods of birth control.

I should throw in that for as long as we see fit to fabricate right-wing opinions, people who go around saying the left wing is dangerous or based on lies will be able to earn credibility with others, like they have with people of faith. This is because when you make up someone's opinion, they're the first to know that you're lying.

I don't agree at all with their stance against birth control (accent on CONTROL), but I do understand it.

Oral contraceptives don't always prevent ovulation, and in cases like that, it works to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. Those who are against oral contraceptives believe it is an abortifacient.

I disagree with them, as there is no pregnancy UNTIL the fertilized egg implants. What's happening is the prevention of a pregnancy, not the termination of one.

But you are correct. That's the problem they have with BCPs.

Hosea.

http://www.postfun.com/pfp/blasphemy.html

Hosea 9:14.

Give them, O Lord: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb (an abortion) and dry breasts.

And later,

...yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.

more "good Christians" as they possibly can so as to increase their numbers exponentially! too bad most of these "good Christan's" haven't figured out the size of their families is why they are on welfare and have no food! Notice the OTHER "good Christan" practice of not allowing priests and nuns to marry so that the church doesn't have to support all those hungry little Catholic mouths and you'll understand how accurate that assessment is!

And then refuse to buy or sell stock to people who aren't employees of the companies they want shares of.

Or how about this: Environmentalists should become Hummer dealers and refuse to sell anything but hybrids.

Or maybe even: Rabid Zero Population Growth fanatics should become doctors and refuse to treat any person who is the third or later born in the family (for the record I'm a fourth born).

But wait! There's more!

As an atheist, I should become a priest and refuse to grant absolution to those who I don't think are contrite enough.

As a former IT worker, I could get a job selling and repairing computers and refuse to sell/fix for people I think are too stupid to own a computer.

As an avid reader, I could become an airline pilot and refuse to fly the plane to anywhere with an average literacy rate under 85%.

This is fun. Add your own.

I will repeat that first part. NO PROTESTANT CHURCH IS AGAINST BIRTH CONTROL. Those posters who are saying that fundamentalists are trying to outlaw BC are either very poorly informed, or they are deliberately lying.

FWIW - Here is why the Catholic Church is so strongly against BC. They believe that everyone is born with "Original Sin". That means that each of us is personally guilty of the sin of Adam of eating of the forbidden fruit. The method of which the guilt of original sin is transmitted is the element of lust that is present in each sex act. By that they mean that there is no such thing as a sex act that is a totally giving act, and that in each sex act there is an element of wanting one's own pleasure first. (They make an exception for Mary. They believe that she was born without the guilt of original sin. That is the doctrine of The Immaculate Conception.)However, since sex is needed for the human species to continue, and since humans are commanded to multiply, then the sex act is redeemed if it open to the possibility of the transmission of life. If that possibility is closed then there is left only the lust and it becomes sinful.

Protestants reject that whole mess. They believe that sex is a gift of God and is to be used responsibly. Birth Control is OK with even the most fundamentalist protestants. Abortion they do not view as BC, but as the killing of a human.

do not believe a woman should have control of her own body.
They are organizing and trying to set their agenda in place.

As I said in another post, I am old enough to have done local volunteer work for Kennedy's 1960 campaign. I have been a Christian since around 1957. I have never encountered anybody that is against BC. I do know many that are against abortion. In fact, for a long time, I was too.

And I have never, outside of some posters here at DU, ever heard of Dominionism or of Christian Reconstructionism.

:)

However, the more fundamentalist churches do. They even have their own term for those selfish married couples who choose to use birth control- "deliberate childlessness". And it has been on their radar for several years now, just not as vocally or out front as the CC.

And their concerns are the same as the CC- as a percentage of population, Christians are decreasing in numbers.

After all, we speak in tongues, and believe in the rapture. Both of those beliefs are heavily ridiculed here on DU. And we do not oppose birth control. There may be some extremist group somewhere that does, but don't try to say that they are typical of fundamentalists. It is not.

1. He does NOT set doctrine for any church.

2. Although he is against abortion, he is not against BC.

Do you think that only single people use BC? Do you think that only single young people have sex? I hope you aren't that poorly informed.

Since most adults are married, it is safe to say that most BC pills are used by married women. No major protestant denomination holds that to be a sin, nor does Bush. His position is that abstinence should be encouraged and taught as the most safe option.

All major protestant churches hold that sex should wait until marriage. None hold that BC is a sin, even if done outside of marriage.

If you are going to try to argue about someone's position, please try to be accurate about what that position actually is.

Yes, he is. If you don't think everyone at or after puberty should be told about condoms or have the option to use them, you are anti-BC. Most people encourage teens not to have sex, but many will also stress condom use if they do. Bush doesn't. He said condom distribution didn't help reduce teen pregnancy, which is wrong.

No one can. They can be purchased over the counter and via machines. Nothing new there. Easy to get.

And I honestly think that how-to-use-condoms classes are about as silly as you can get. Their use is kind of obvious. You don't need detailed classes for that. No one had to give me classes on how-to-put-them-on when I was younger. If someone does need a class in how to do that, they are so dumb that the class won't be worth anything to them anyway.

And he is NOT trying to outlaw BC.

If I tell you about abstenence, you still have all of your other options - none were removed.

to teens about condom effectiveness. There was a major story about it last year. Scaring teens into not using them.

so there must be local parishes that find ways around this. But she did try to take the classes when she was engaged and they wouldn't let her enroll until she was married.

at times when a family can't handle having a child for whatever reason (finances, ill health, whatever, privided it's an unselfish reason.) It isn't meant to be used throughout a marriage or to keep a family small for the sake of convenience.

BTW, unless your friend is rather old, the class should have been a Natural Family Planning course, using the Billings method or or a sympto-thermal method, such as Creighton or the CCLI method. Rythym is something else entirely, relying only past cycle history to predict present fertility, where NFP focuses of physiological signs, and unlike rythym, works well for people with fertility problems or variable cycles .

BTW, if any practicing Catholics have any corrections, please let me know. I was raised Catholic but I know more about this issue from books about NFP (which rocks, BTW) than I do from my Catholic upbringing.

We were given ALL of the pertinent info about birth control. How to use. Failure rates. How to make more effective. How it works. Oh by the way, the Church doesn't want you using it.

Excellent teacher, the class was called Science and Religion and I learned a hell of a lot.

The teacher went over Natural Family Planning and the Rhythm Method in great detail. The Catholic Church likes these methods. Natural Family Planning is OK because you are supposed to use it to get pregnant, not avoid pregnancy. Needless to say in the real world....

And then there's Rhythm Method, and in HS we had a joke: What do you call people who use the Rhythm Method? Parents.

According to the Catholic Church, all sex acts are to be within marriage and open to pregnancy. I wish I'd have asked whether post-menopausal women are sinning every time they have sex, since they're not women of childbearing age anymore.

All in all that was an excellent class with a great teacher who lived in the real world and did teach the party line she was required to.

everybody seems to make up their own definition of it as they go along. :shrug:

There was no prohibition against birth control by the Church before 1861. Yes, it was that late in the history of Christianity before it was made dogma. It was believed that when men doctors in the Middle Ages, who were ususally clerics, started taking over the job of the mid-wives that they started splitting hairs on the birth control issue from some selected biblical references.

Women use birth control for problems like PCOS and it's none of their business anyways. Even if you are married and don't want a family yet you should be able to decide. I think these people probably think that birth control would stop the natural flow of life and all that nonsense. But then again they turn around and try to "save" someone when if they were without what's keeping them a live they'd die anyways. :eyes:

NT!

It defines women only in sexual relation to men--man's wife, mother. In this context, women do not have rights. The man necessarily dominates. If a man views women as a sex objects, housewives, and never sees women as persons defining themselves, attempting to ban birth control promotes his agenda. Some men use things like religion to keep women in subservient positions. Blocking a woman's reproductive freedom is an attempt to exercise dominance.

In modern America, most Christians are not Bible literalists. In the 21st century, if an American man points to religion as an argument against birth control, he is manipulating religion to maintain his power and control.

Which seems to be their primary principle in all this.

And for the far right it means not only more people to control but more laborers.

My daughter is getting married in May as part of the pre cana they teach about natural birth control aka Catholic Roulette.

that's what a priest friend of my family calls it too! he's a Jesuit (no surprise there). :-)

He'll be 4 in a few weeks. He has no younger siblings, although we're talking about trying soon.

If only the pill had served me so well. All I got was bloated, cramped up, bitchy, :hurts: and then pregnant (at that point a relief, being pregnant was easier on me than the stupid pill for the most part.)

are called "parents".

For a very secular book about NFP (I think it only mentions religion in the context of nideah, the Orthodox Jewish practice of avoiding sex for a certain period after a woman's cycle making conception difficult for women with very short cycles) I'd recommend taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. I've used her method for three years with no problems, and it's one of the best books on the subject.

A very Catholic book on the subject (talks about the evils of birth control and abortion, but that's all toward the begining and one can skip the philosophy and head straght to the "how-to" section) that still has enough useful information to be useful (the section of NFP postpartum and throughout lactation is much better than Weschler's IMO) I'd recommend the Art of Natural Family Planning by John and Sheila Kippley.

I really get tired of the "Vatican Roulette" cracks from people who don't know a thing about NFP.

Rhythm is nowhere near as reliable as Natural Family Planning, but NFP is not right for everyone. Even the Pill isn't right for everyone. My mother couldn't use the Pill, and everything else she tried failed.

Even tubal ligations can fail, resulting in ectopic pregnancies.

Natural Family Planning can be an excellent method if you have reasonably regular periods (I don't) and are diligent about keeping track. Friends of mine were successful at planning their family using this method, including using it to increase the chances of pregnancy.

I think people are referring to the Rhythm Method, people who don't know probably think they're one and the same.

Christians like to pick and choose what parts of the Bible apply and to what degree, thus there are as many varieties of Christianity as there are viruses, with more evolving every day. Non-Christians are sometimes confused by this, and assume there is some single unified belief other than identifying with the term "Christian." In reality, there are none other than Jesus has something to do with it.

The pope was a gay basher pure and simple and I will not excuse him. That would be suicide.

that the church is anti-birth control is not to keep women pregnant, but because, in the eyes of the church, the act of sex should only be performed when attempting to procreate. The church feels that to have sex for pleasure is a sin of the flesh. This also explains their position on homosexuals. It is also why priests are celibate. I hope that maybe knowing it is not an affront to you may make it a little more understandable.

In the Catholic Church the act of sex must be open to the possibility of procreation, but it does not need to be an attempt to procreate. Sex for pleasure is OK, if it is open to that possibility.

Protestants don't care, and sex for fun between married couples is blessed even with BC.

" Every Sperm is Precious! "

Anybody who is opposed to birth control and claims to be anti-abortion is PHONY on the abortion issue!

I think a lot of people use that to substantiate their views against birth control. I think the human race is destroying this planet fast...6 billion and counting. Incessant breeding