Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortion?

jessie

What you’re really asking is if Christians should take the pill. It was my question a couple of years ago and all I wanted was a web-page or pamphlet that put it in layman’s terms for me: yes or no. I was (and still am) avidly pro-life and I did not want to accidentally participate in something I believed was wrong.

Short answer: the pill can cause abortion.

Long answer: the pill was created with one objective and that was to stop the woman from ovulating. There were two side effects to these hormones:

So what’s the big deal? Doesn’t sound like an abortion to me. There is a 1% chance (according to the pill, but 10% according to some gynecologists) that you could get pregnant. Which means that the hormones that were supposed to stop you from ovulating failed. The sperm made it through the cervical mucus, and the lining of the uterus was thick enough to support life. But what if only one or two of these effects failed? What if the pill failed in its ability to stop you from ovulating but still thinned the uterus lining? We know that you can still ovulate, even while taking the pill perfectly. What we don’t know is how many times women on the pill have ovulated by accident, the egg was fertilized, but the lining of the uterus was too thin to support life? Maybe it’s none, maybe it’s 100%. No research has been done. Unfortunately because the thinning of the uterus lining is a side effect you cannot have a pill that simply stops the woman from ovulating. I’ve looked. But the important part is that if you ovulate and the uterus lining is thinned, then the fertilized egg, which I’m going to assume you believe is a tiny life, has died.

So what’s this mean?

I know it’s not as black and white as we would like but if you are pro-life the phrase “can cause abortion” should be enough. “Well,” you say, “I’ll just believe that God wouldn’t allow that to happen. God could prevent that.” Yes, He could, but why are you so sure to test your faith on death rather than life? If you have enough faith to believe that God would stop the egg from being fertilized when the uterus lining couldn’t support it, then you have enough faith to believe that God wouldn’t allow you to get pregnant if it wasn’t His timing. He’s the author of life! We somehow bought into this idea that God throws life around like it’s nothing. “Oh, she got pregnant AGAIN? Oh, geez. Here, let me give it a spirit and soul real quic- oh, no! Another one?! They’re acting like rabbits!” I’m not against birth control, but I just feel that in an effort to feel more in control we’ve compromised for the sake of convenience. It is easier to take a pill, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

I leave it up to your conscience- you now know the facts and are therefore without excuse.

“So what kind of birth control can I use?”

Any kind of barrier (male condoms, female condoms, etc.) will not cause an abortion. Anything that works by wiping the uterus (and therefore killing any life that was attached) is an abortifacet. Many people who are against this method are o.k. with the pill but in reality they do the same thing. The difference is that the pill’s main goal is stop you from ovulating while something like the Nuva Ring’s main goal is to wipe the uterus clean. But they both inhibit the uterus from supporting life if they succeed.

My preferred method is the Natural Family Planning method in which a woman learns how to identify when she is ovulating (3-4 days out of the month) and then can either refrain from having intercourse or using a barrier method during those days.

For more information Mark Driscoll did a great sermon on the different types of birth control here.

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