Birth Control a Sin?
There is a renewed interest in whether or not birth control is a sin. One of the most vocal opponents of its
use is the Catholic Church. A summary of their belief is noted:
Contraception is wrong because it’s a deliberate violation of the design God built into the
human race...The natural law purpose of sex is procreation...sexual pleasure within marriage
becomes unnatural, and even harmful to the spouses, when it is used in a way that
deliberately excludes the basic purpose of sex, which is procreation. (catholic.com/tracts/birthcontrol)
The thought is that if a husband and wife use birth control to prevent what would have happened naturally
from their intercourse (conception), they are violating God’s basic purpose of sex. To use sex for pleasure
alone in marriage is a sin if a contraceptive (pharmaceutical or surgical) denies what would have resulted in a
pregnancy. This is the reason some couples have 20 children; “It was God’s will” from their marital relations.
Sexual desire alone may not be sought between a husband and wife. Pregnancy must be allowed if it can
happen. There is no verse teaching this theory, of course, but that’s the belief, which is held by many others
besides Catholics. Never mind what God says about pleasure being a primary purpose of sexual relations in
marriage (“because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own
husband”, 1 Cor. 7:2-3). A man and woman have sinned if they don’t get pregnant as many times as nature will
allow.
Some will turn to Onan in Genesis 38:8-10 as evidence of God’s disapproval of birth control. Yet it is
obvious that Onan’s error was not that he emitted on the ground, but by why he did so. He was unwilling to
meet his God-given responsibilities to Tamar in marriage. If this is a testimony against birth control then every
man who has been with his wife when she was not ovulating has sinned, because like Onan he also wasted the
life that was in his seed. I don’t see that conclusion in God’s word. If “natural law” shows anything it is that not
conceiving or even preventing conception is not the same as taking human life once it is conceived, which we
all should agree is a sin (1 Pet. 4:15). If a couple sins for using contraception, so does the non-contraceptive
couple who has relations without conception. Either way the life-giving potential is not met. Nevertheless, I
believe a person should respond to this issue in ways that their conscience will allow (Rom. 14:23). 
Mike Thomas
Standing Firm,
March 2012