Compulsion and Contraception

I usually make something of a point of not commenting about political issues, as most of them do not concern Church teaching and therefore are a matter on which Christians can quite legitimately take differing opinions. However, every now and again we hit something that has moral as well as political implications, and it becomes neccessary for a Bishop to make some sort of statement to uphold the doctrinal or moral teaching of the Church. One such issues is the Contraception Mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services. I am reproducing here a letter that I circulated in my capacity as Archbishop of the United Episcopal Church:

February 13 2012

A STATEMENT FROM THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS OF THE UNITED EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF NORTH AMERICA CONCERNING THE HHS CONTRACEPTION MANDATE

The Bishops of the United Episcopal Church of North America would like to express their whole-hearted support of their brethren in the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Conference, and other religious groups who have expressed their opposition to the HHS Mandate requiring religioius institutions to provide contraceptive devices, inclusing abortifacients, as part of their employee health insurance.

The HHS Mandate is problematical as it fails to take account of the Church's moral teaching concerning abortifacients and contraception. It also constitutes a thinly veiled attack on religious institutions within the United States and an infringement of the principle that the Federal Government shall not intervene in the religious lives of its citizens.

The new healthcare mandate may also have serious unforeseen consequences for the poorest and most vulnerable in our society if it forces religious institutions to withdraw from the provision of education, health and social services.

The Bishops of the United Episcopal Church of North America would also like to express the opinion that the "compromise" proposed by the President and the HHS shifting responsibility for paying for those services from the employer to the insurer does nothing to resolve the issue.

+Peter D. Robinson, Archbishop
United Episcopal Church of North America

Six weeks on there is still no sign of any further movement on this issue. The Churches are still expressing their opposition to the Mandate, but the news cycle has moved on, and their protests are not being covered by the mainstream media. For the time being it seems that the so called "compromise" offered by the President and Secretary Sibelius will remain the last word on this issue leaving the Government and the Church in something of a "Mexican Stand-off" as neither side wants to conceed its point. From the Church's point of view, the compromise is no compromise because the universality of contraception coverage is maintained irrespective of the moral teaching of the Church providing the coverage via its insurer. In essence, the Administration is asking the Churches to be complicit in allowing the contravention of Church teaching by Church employees. On the other hand, the present administration seems to regard contraception and abortions as beneficial to society and seems to want to avoid opt outs wherever possible.


Unfortunately, the current 'stand-off' about contraception is only the first in a series which are going to occur as "Obamacare" goes into effect. There are going to be further spats over stem cell derived therapies as they become available, and, of course, over the big two moral issues in healthcare - abortion and euthanasia. One thing that is quite clear from this initial skirmish is that the HHS has little patience with outright religious opposition, and no understanding of nuanced theological and moral positions such as that taken by the 1930 Lambeth Conference on Birth Control, which did not to institute a contraceptive free for all, but acknowledged that there were certain very limited circumstances in which artificial forms contraception were admissible as, for want of a better term, the lesser of two evils.


A further difficulty with the HHS Mandate comes through its assumption that the Constitutional principle of 'freedom of religion' actually constitutes nothing more than 'freedom of worship' and that religion is something that only exists behind church walls. God forbid that it should actually be allowed to influence the morals and politics of the country. This interpretation of 'religious freedom' smacks rather more of Joe Stalin trying to make Soviet Russia acceptable in the West when trying to gain our help against Hitler than of the American tradition of religious liberty. Certainly, it is another demonstration, as if one were needed, that the secularists in the American political scene wish to make Christianity irrelevant and precipitate its collapse by confining it behind Church walls. This may seem a harsh assessment, but there are chilling parallels in their attitude towards religion between those of the political elites in the USA, and those of Stalin's Russia or Hitler Germany.


Remember - it is better to raise the alarm now than to wear chains later!


Lastly, it was something of a disappointment to me that the Continuing Anglican Churches were not able to make a joint statement on the HHS Contraception Mandate. I am sure that the opposition that has already been registered by many of our bishops would have carried more weight with the politicians had a single statement been issued over the signatures of several archbishops and a dozen or two diocesan and suffragan bishops. It demonstrates the need for a standing conference of Continuing Anglican leaders in the USA to act as an orthodox counterpoise to the liberal views espoused by TEC, and, from time to time, by the ACNA.

Contraception epilogue

This was originally a comment that I affixed to the third part of the series. But, it seems to me that it can get buried there.

Perhaps, for discussion we can look a bit closer at the question of what practical difference there is between Natural Family Planning (NFP) and contraception; or, as it has been put, what distinction may rightly be made between "natural" and "artificial." My analysis of Resolution 15 (Lambeth Conference 1930) was based on the assumption made by almost everyone, then as now, that the distinction is self-evident, and that the distinction is a moral one.

But, is it really? Can NFP be used the same way, or rather for the same purpose, as contraception? Consider that in terms of the second part of Resolution 15 itself:

"The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience."

The Roman Catholics consider the matter to be decided; but they would also have to accept the teaching that prolonged use of NFP to avoid having children cannot be justified anymore than use of contraceptives for the same purpose. I have, in my previous essays, simply put the matter in perspective, explained the reasoning made for the distinction, in many ways letting my "inner historian" guide the course of writing. But, it is only right to see this question in light of moral theology, and open the floor to discussion. Is method the only issue, or is intent every bit as important?

In addition

For further consideration, what has happened to human nature itself? The modern extreme version of feminism has been used by the current President of the United States as a reason to defend the Roe vs. Wade ruling. That is, abortion only makes the world fair for women, so that they have the same opportunities as men. In a very real way, this is evidence of how right Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon was in his now somewhat famous 2003 editorial, which was republished here as part one of the Contraception series. Contraception, for the modern feminist, plays very much the same role as abortion, which is its chief "back up".

The problem is, this is not a correction of man-made societal evolution, something in addition to human nature. The fact that the world is fundamentally unfair, in that men and women simply cannot trade roles, is a good thing. It is part of the creation, and essential to what we are as human beings. Every attempt to correct God's "mistakes" in the design of nature, or to even the playing field, is destructive of morals, and even of human personality. The psychological need of a man is fulfilled, generally, by being the provider, protector and leader. The pyschological need of the woman, generally speaking, is to be so valued and loved by the man that she is provided for, protected and (yes) led. This frees her to give in to her nature, and be a mother. By "mother" I do not mean simply that she bears children, brings them to birth, and then hands them off while she takes on the world as her primary occupation. Most women simply cannot "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let Johnny forget he's a man." No one can be in two places at a time, and no one can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I say "generally speaking," because select individuals have callings that appear to be exceptions to many general rules, and the purpose of this essay is not to call for a restriction on freedom, or to eliminate opportunities for women who really might do better to have careers. But, the real problem today is not that women are barred from the professions; it is, rather, that the high calling of motherhood is not treated with the respect it deserves; and also that men are discouraged from taking their role. This thinking has created many single mother households that can never escape poverty, and in which innocent, helpless bastard children are in danger of abuse from men who are not their fathers at all.

In the name of human nature, as God made it, it is time for a new "women's liberation" movement; one that treats the traditional family and traditional sex roles with the respect they deserve, for the happiness they bring, and for the good of the next generation.

Contraception third in a series

At this point, I am not planning another installment. I do suggest reading the links provided, with gratitude to Project Canterbury for the hard work of making many historic Anglican documents available at the click of a mouse.

After the Lambeth Conference of 1930 it was taken for granted that the Anglican Communion now allowed contraception, even though the one resolution on which this assumption was based is easily given to another interpretation. Even if some of the bishops meant to open this door (no doubt, some did), they meant at most to open it only a crack for "hard cases" in rare situations. The debate over the resolution, it seems, was not about contraception itself (which was generally considered to be sinful by all Christians everywhere), but about the danger that this resolution might become a Pandora's box. That is exactly what happened, inasmuch as some new liberty was proclaimed by people who had never once read Resolution 15. A whole generation grew up with this assumption, and after a while many had thought that it was simply a fact that they were allowed by their church to do as they pleased.

After the Lambeth Conference, Francis Hall wrote an essay almost immediately, in which he blamed the bishops who voted for the resolution, no matter what they intended: "Some at least of the bishops who had voted for the Resolution were plainly taken aback at the interpretation placed upon it, complaining that the general context in which the Resolution appears had been disregarded." He went on, "The language I have quoted, as it stands, sanctions under exceptional circumstances a practice which Christians have hitherto regarded as necessarily impure and unholy." The first line shows that some bishops were surprised that a new liberty had been perceived from reading the resolution. As I have argued in the second of this series, the resolution does not, in its exact words, grant any such liberty; as the phrase "other methods" in context most likely was intended to clarify the generally accepted use of the "safe period" against the idea that every sexual act must be for the purpose of procreation; an idea that the context of the resolution might otherwise have implied heavily. The fact that some of the bishops later objected to the general interpretation of the resolution proves, in and of itself, that even some of those who voted for it did not mean to approve contraception.

Therefore, I disagree with Hall on this one point: "The language I have quoted, as it stands, sanctions..." With all due respect to Francis Hall, it is not the language or its plain meaning that was the problem. The problem was the culture into which those words were thrown, and the times that shaped how that culture thought. The bishops who voted against the resolution were right, for the public at large was not willing to read it in context, or to place much weight on the actual words. In fact, to this day most of the people who want to speak about 1930 as the year when the Anglican Communion began to slide downhill to the point of crisis, have not read the resolution, certainly not in context.

The question for Continuing Anglicans is not really about what the Anglican Communion did in that year, but about whether or not we should Continue the Anglicanism that made a clear sound ten years earlier in the Lambeth Conference of 1920:

The Conference, while declining to lay down rules which will meet the needs of every abnormal case, regards with grave concern the spread in modern society of theories and practices hostile to the family. We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers—physical, moral, and religious—thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. In opposition to the teaching which, under the name of science and religion, encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists—namely the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control. We desire solemnly to commend what we have said to Christian people and to all who will hear.

The question cannot be answered by arguments from hard case questions, which is why they would not consider rules for "every abnormal case." The teaching of the Church on moral issues must be clear and universal in its meaning. The question can be answered only from trying to perceive the mind of God as revealed in Scripture and as understood by the Church with her authority in what we call the Tradition.

In 1977 the Affirmation of St. Louis was written because the situation had already forced a separation from the Episcopal Church and the Church of Canada, which crisis soon forced separation from the official Anglican Communion altogether. This means that the latest symptoms we encounter now are not the whole disease, but neither were the most pressing symptoms of 1977. The disease had already advanced by that time, namely failure to teach and practice plain orthodox Christianity. Then as now, in some churches of the official Canterbury Communion, orthodoxy was tolerated as an option; and that was the problem. It cannot be an option, for it must be the teaching of the whole Church.

Only on that basis can we discuss the matter of contraception, or anything else that requires correct moral theology. Sociology and modern science may be called on as witnesses to provide information; but, neither these things nor the influence of the culture at large, can sit as judges of moral theology. Neither can the subjective concept of "what would Jesus do?", inasmuch as we are better off considering what he told us to do.

For further reading, in addition to Hall's essay, are two by Bishop Charles Gore, one before Lambeth 1930, and one after.

Contraception second in a series

What really happened in 1930?

It is commonly touted that Anglicanism went wrong in 1930 when the Lambeth Conference approved the practice of contraception. This is one of those things that everybody knows, just as it was once true that everybody knew that the earth is flat. The things that everybody knows cannot be numbered, just as surely as the correction of such common knowledge often reverses public opinion.

In fact, the Lambeth Conference of 1930 was typically conservative, when conservatism was a trademark of Anglicanism. Much stress was laid on orthodoxy, indeed to the further strengthening of relations with, well, Orthodoxy. Theological statements about the sacrament of Holy Communion, for example, and other doctrinal matters, received excellent clarification. Nonetheless, what everybody "remembers" about 1930 is that thing that everybody knows.

The reason that a common perception of license for contraception exists at all, is due to very unfortunate wording in one resolution among many about sexuality and marriage. To give you that resolution (number 15) in its original context, I will here post all of the resolutions about the subject, and then comment more. Afterward, the next posting in this series will be an essay by Francis Hall written that same year, and his understanding of the Black Resolution (if I may give it a label) will show that I am not alone in resisting what everybody knows.

Resolution 9
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

The Conference believes that the conditions of modern life call for a fresh statement from the Christian Church on the subject of sex. It declares that the functions of sex as a God-given factor in human life are essentially noble and creative. Responsibility in regard to their right use needs the greater emphasis in view of widespread laxity of thought and conduct in all these matters.

Resolution 10
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

The Conference believes that in the exalted view of marriage taught by our Lord is to be found the solution of the problems with which we are faced. His teaching is reinforced by certain elements which have found a new emphasis in modern life, particularly the sacredness of personality, the more equal partnership of men and women, and the biological importance of monogamy.

Resolution 11
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

The Conference believes that it is with this ideal in view that the Church must deal with questions of divorce and with whatever threatens the security of women and the stability of the home. Mindful of our Lord's words, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," it reaffirms "as our Lord's principle and standard of marriage a life-long and indissoluble union, for better or worse, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, and calls on all Christian people to maintain and bear witness to this standard."* In cases of divorce:

The Conference, while passing no judgement on the practice of regional or national Churches within our Communion, recommends that the marriage of one, whose former partner is still living, should not be celebrated according to the rites of the Church.

Where an innocent person has remarried under civil sanction and desires to receive the Holy Communion, it recommends that the case should be referred for consideration to the bishop, subject to provincial regulations.

Finally, it would call attention to the Church's unceasing responsibility for the spiritual welfare of all her members who have come short of her standard in this as in any other respect, and to the fact that the Church's aim, individually and socially, is reconciliation to God and redemption from sin. It therefore urges all bishops and clergy to keep this aim before them.

Resolution 12
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

In all questions of marriage and sex the Conference emphasises the need of education. It is important that before the child's emotional reaction to sex is awakened, definite information should be given in an atmosphere of simplicity and beauty. The persons directly responsible for this are the parents, who in the exercise of this responsibility will themselves need the best guidance that the Church can supply.

During childhood and youth the boy or the girl should thus be prepared for the responsibilities of adult life; but the Conference urges the need of some further preparation for those members of the Church who are about to marry.

To this end the Conference is convinced that steps ought to be taken:

to secure a better education for the clergy in moral theology;

to establish, where they do not exist, in the various branches of the Anglican Communion central councils which would study the problems of sex from the Christian standpoint and give advice to the responsible authorities in diocese or parish of theological college as to methods of approach and lines of instruction;

to review the available literature and to take steps for its improvement and its circulation.

Resolution 13
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

The Conference emphasises the truth that sexual instinct is a holy thing implanted by God in human nature. It acknowledges that intercourse between husband and wife as the consummation of marriage has a value of its own within that sacrament, and that thereby married love is enhanced and its character strengthened. Further, seeing that the primary purpose for which marriage exists is the procreation of children, it believes that this purpose as well as the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control should be the governing considerations in that intercourse.

Resolution 14
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

The Conference affirms:

the duty of parenthood as the glory of married life;

the benefit of a family as a joy in itself, as a vital contribution to the nation's welfare, and as a means of character-building for both parents and children;

the privilege of discipline and sacrifice to this end.

Resolution 15

The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.

Voting: For 193; Against 67.

Resolution 16
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

The Conference further records its abhorrence of the sinful practice of abortion.

Resolution 17
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

While the Conference admits that economic conditions are a serious factor in the situation, it condemns the propaganda which treats conception control as a way of meeting those unsatisfactory social and economic conditions which ought to be changed by the influence of Christian public opinion.

Resolution 18
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

Sexual intercourse between persons who are not legally married is a grievous sin. The use of contraceptives does not remove the sin. In view of the widespread and increasing use of contraceptives among the unmarried and the extention of irregular unions owing to the diminution of any fear of consequences, the Conference presses for legislation forbidding the exposure for sale and the unrestricted advertisement of contraceptives, and placing definite restrictions upon their purchase.

Resolution 19
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

Fear of consequences can never, for the Christian, be the ultimately effective motive for the maintenance of chastity before marriage. This can only be found in the love of God and reverence for his laws. The Conference emphasises the need of strong and wise teaching to make clear the Christian standpoint in this matter. That standpoint is that all illicit and irregular unions are wrong in that they offend against the true nature of love, they compromise the future happiness of married life, they are antagonistic to the welfare of the community, and, above all, they are contrary to the revealed will of God.

Resolution 20
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

The Conference desires to express the debt which the Church owes to the devotion of those who in constantly changing conditions and in the face of increasing difficulties have maintained and carried forward the preventive and rescue work of the Church. Such devotion calls for greatly increased interest and support from all the members of the Church.
The removal of the causes which lead to the necessity for such work must first and foremost be sought in the creation of that healthier atmosphere and in the more thorough giving of sex instruction which are recommended in the preceding Resolutions. And this is recognised to the full by the leaders in the work. There is, however, at the present time urgent need for:

much greater financial support, so that the workers may be adequately trained and adequately paid,

more regular interest on the part of church people generally in them and in their work,

the help which men of the Church can give in technical and legal matters, as also in personal service.

The Conference further desires in this connection to place on record its appreciation of the work done by women police in Great Britain, in the British dominions and in the United States of America, and by those many social workers, in different parts of the world, who give themselves to the same difficult task.

In the context of these resolutions, it is quite apparent that the words "other methods" in Resolution 15 was not intended to place a stamp of approval on the use of contraception. All of the bishops present were men born and raised in the nineteenth century, men who no doubt embraced the "women and children first" morality that came with an appreciation of man's responsibility. They were not creatures of the 20th century; perhaps creators of it in some ways, but not people whose emotional and intellectual reflexes worked as carelessly as those of our own contemporaries.

The words "other methods" in the resolution are placed against the phrase "complete abstinence." To men well-educated, the contrast was obvious: Partial abstinence. They were permitting partial abstinence for this purpose, or to this end (the purpose being of issue), not contraception. No doubt, partial abstinence was, in the minds of the learned sons of the 19th century, the "safe period." Concerning this, for once I find it useful to quote the outspoken apologist for the Roman Magisterium, Diane, with whom I am often in disagreement. Nonetheless, in a recent comment she explained well the thinking that prevails now, and that prevailed then, on the moral distinction to be made between artificial methods that violate human nature, and the one method that respects the nature God has given to the woman's body.

Diane wrote: "Women can only conceive one day out of every 28 days. That fact alone has to show that God didn't intend for us to have an unmanageable number of children. Avoiding pregnancy while engaging in the marital embrace is acceptable...and the proof is that God gave us a built-in way to achieve this end...women are both fertile and infertile over the course of 28 days."

This is useful for understanding what most Christians have thought for decades, even if some may wish to criticize the idea. It may be argued that this is simply disguising birth control under another name; but, the consensus of Christians in earlier generations to properly interpret the resolution is our concern for the moment.

Remember, this resolution came on the heels of Resolution 13, and 14 ("Further, seeing that the primary purpose for which marriage exists is the procreation of children, it believes that this purpose as well as the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control should be the governing considerations in that intercourse...the duty of parenthood as the glory of married life..."), and the bishops were thinking to make room for married couples to come together even if for other purposes. For example, the purpose once stated by St. Paul:

"The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency." I Corinthians 7:4,5

Here the Apostle himself encouraged the married couple to come together again in order to avoid temptation to sin by unnecessary abstinence that creates both emotional and physical deprivation. The purpose, in such a case, is not to conceive a child, even though the possibility of conception is present. Indeed, at a certain age these desires continue to exist when conception is unlikely or impossible. However, recalling Abraham and Sarah, and Zecharias and Elizabeth, even then a couple is not ruling out the possibility of procreation if God wills to perform a miracle. In fact, the "safe period" method, called today Natural Family Planning, does allow God to work if he intends to make a child. Still, we may debate whether or not this is a difference without a distinction; but it was commonly accepted as a difference with a distinction in 1930, as indeed the majority considers it today.

Furthermore, Resolution 15 condemns the use of contraception "from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience." Contrasting "complete abstinence" against partial abstinence, and then following it with Resolutions 16 and 17, it is likely that most of the bishops believed they had made a very strong case against both abortion and contraception.

Nonetheless, this is the only resolution that records a vote, as if to say that several of the bishops (67) were better able to see the danger of how this resolution would be perceived. The contraception movement of Margaret Sanger was a noisy influence for evil in that period, and the movement was gaining ground all the time. The crusade of the movement had as its adversary all of the mainstream churches, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestants of all stripes and the Orthodox. The consensus of Christians in all of the various denominations was the same: Contraception is sinful in and of itself.

Whether with genuine outrage, or as a subterfuge to further the Birth Control movement, it was The Washington Post, in a critical editorial, that "informed" the world that Anglican bishops had given the green light to contraception. Thus the myth was born, and from then on everybody knew.

Contraception first in a series

Below I am posting an editorial by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon. “The Roots of Roe v. Wade” first appeared in the January/February, 2003 issue of Touchstone.

Over the next few days I will post more on the issue of contraception, and the particular problem we have inherited from the modern corrupt version of Anglicanism, that version we need to repudiate in favor of the real thing. Contraception is one area where we need to ask ourselves, what are we Continuing? This is especially so, inasmuch as any justification for approval of contraception that anyone may think to put forth, cannot be drawn from Scripture and the Tradition of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
-Fr. Robert Hart

The Roots of Roe v. Wade

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon

During this month, as in every January for the past thirty years, those Americans left with even the meanest vestige of moral instinct will reflect with disgust on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. Some of these citizens will also comment, as they should, that that 1973 judicial determination was an affront to humanity, a legal travesty, a distortion of the Constitution surpassing in sheer injustice even the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Some, recalling that the Dred Scott ruling itself set the stage for the Civil War, may wonder—if it was true in yesteryear that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword”—whether some yet worse retribution will be exacted of our country by a righteous God righteously stirred at the murder of unborn children in their millions. And wonder they should. Still others, more stalwart of heart, will fortify their resolve to toil for the overthrow of Roe v. Wade, whether by constitutional amendment or by wise judicial appointments to restore the Court’s good sense and moral integrity. All such things will sane Americans think, of course, for these are still the right responses to the most extreme miscarriage of justice ever perpetrated by any court in this nation.

It is not to slight the propriety of any of those responses, therefore, that we declare Roe v. Wade to be more a symptom of our crisis than its cause. It appears to us, as it does to William B. Wichterman in a recent essay (“The Culture: ‘Upstream’ from Politics,” in Don Eberly, ed., Building a Healthy Culture), that “the Court was simply joining the cultural revolution already well underway.” Indeed, it is very arguable that Roe v. Wade did rather little to increase the number of legal abortions in this country. Wichtermann himself contends that “the abortion rate probably would have climbed to at least one million per year even without Roe, and more likely higher still.”

By January of 1973, what now goes by the abhorrent euphemism “reproductive freedom” was already a movement robustly on the march, as Gerald N. Rosenberg demonstrated in the study he published eighteen years later, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? When various state legislatures began removing statutory restrictions against abortion toward the end of the sixties, the frequency of the procedure jumped dramatically. Between 1968 and 1973, eighteen states had loosened their anti-abortion laws. In the large states of New York and California there was almost unlimited legal access to abortion chambers, and over a half-million legal abortions were performed in this country during the twelve months preceding the Supreme Court’s ruling. Indeed, before the first line of Roe was composed, 70 percent of all American citizens lived within two hours’ drive of a state where abortions were legal. The pro-choice lobby was definitely in the ascendant, and, according to a Gallup poll published just seven months before Roe, 64 percent of Americans believed that abortion was a matter to be decided entirely by a woman and her physician. Alas, some of us pro-lifers can still remember that it was ourselves, back in those days, not the pro-choice folks, who were counting on vindication by the Supreme Court.

We are not convinced, therefore, that a judicial reversal of Roe v. Wade, though it remains a favor much to be craved, would necessarily diminish the number of legal abortions performed in this country. More likely, such a development would simply shift the pertinent political agitation back to the state legislatures, where, we suspect, the pro-life cause would lose more battles than its proponents contemplate. Law and politics, we contend, lie downstream from culture, and the current cultural state of our nation, particularly with respect to abortion, seems to us not one whit better than it was during the years leading up to 1973. Between 1967 and 1972, a large number of major national groups and alliances passed various resolutions and endorsements to repeal all legal restrictions on abortion. Among those groups were 21 medical organizations and 28 religious bodies, including the YMCA. The political activities of those organizations were mainly directed, not at the Supreme Court, but at state legislatures, where they won more battles than they lost. There is every reason to believe that this would be the case once again if Roe were overturned.

Politics and law, we said, lie downstream from culture. Therefore, the real and deeper dilemma, the dilemma arguably as disturbing as abortion itself, is cultural. Our current culture, to say it plainly, has largely stopped thinking of children as gifts from God and firstfruits of the future. The dominant mentality today is manifestly what Irving Babbitt (if memory serves) called “presentism.” It is concentrated almost overwhelmingly on the present because men right now are living increasingly without hope, and they are living without hope because they are not providing for the future. Their cultural despondency is, in this sense, justified. Our culture, compulsively and even morbidly preoccupied with the here-and-now, is deliberately moribund, depriving itself of anything to look forward to. This truth is lucidly indicated by the disastrously low birthrates in this country (and in the West generally).

We submit, therefore, that children are now being aborted in the flesh, because they have already been, in large measure, aborted from the mind. We deprive unborn infants of a future because they are inconveniences intruding on our chosen pursuits in the present. Why should we let those infants live, after all, if they are but the by-products of sexual activity, rather than the properly intended purpose of that activity? In short, our current cultural crisis has to do with sex regarded in terms of present “fulfillment” rather than in terms of future family. The progressive severance of sex from the proper structures and duties of family is, moreover, a concern that most religious bodies in this nation have hardly begun to address at a deep level.

The most obvious manifestation of this severance, of course, is homosexuality. We are content here, however, merely to mention that the matter is obvious; we are not disposed to argue much with those who disagree. Indeed, some of us hardly know where to begin a serious moral conversation with individuals incapable of distinguishing between sexual organs and . . . well, other parts of the body.

Another manifestation of the current severance of sexuality from family, we believe, is recourse to artificial contraception. The pill, the patch, and the condom have become—once again to cite Wichtermann—our culture’s “first defense against childbirth,” abortion serving only as a socially distasteful back-up. Pregnancy is now widely regarded as something that married couples are expected to prevent until they, not God, decide that they are ready to have children. Husbands and wives are expected to control, that is, not their sexual behavior, but their incidence of pregnancy. Man, not God, is thereby authorized to decide when and how the creation of human beings takes place. It is no small indication of our cultural decline that we now speak, not of procreation, but of reproduction.

This utterly rebellious attitude, the “contraceptive mentality,” is surely a serious moral failing characteristic of the present culture. The relationship of this “contraceptive culture” to abortion itself lies much deeper than a first comparison of the two things might suggest, nor is there any logic, we think, in opposing the terrible sin of abortion while in other respects promoting the selfishness and materialism that give rise to it.

An illustration of the subterranean tunnel joining the ethics of abortion and contraception was provided in the events leading up to Roe v. Wade. It appears obvious to us that the public support for abortion that led to the Supreme Court’s decision in 1973 was not unrelated to the public rage and outcry that greeted the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. When Pope Paul VI asserted that the primary and formal purpose of human sexual intercourse is the conception of children and, thus, the assembling of a family, he said no more about artificial contraception than the Bible and traditional Christian doctrine would oblige any Christian pastor to say—namely, that a serious moral flaw adheres to any sexual act that is deliberately closed off to God’s using that act for the creation of a human being. It is our persuasion that if Americans were to take seriously the traditional Christian perspective contained in Humanae Vitae, Roe v. Wade would disappear very quickly.

It is our hope, then, that this thirtieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling will be the occasion not only for lamenting the ongoing political climate that permits that odious dictum yet to stand, but also for pondering more deeply the grace and mystery of human sexuality itself, especially the manifest purpose for which God gave it to us. We all know there is a tribunal far higher than our Supreme Court. It is important to recall, in addition, that we too will gather before it, to render an account of our stewardship. The present growing separation of sexuality from the formation of family, we suggest, raises some serious questions about that stewardship.