My thoughts on Christianity and birth control

(This is another old one I thought I'd repost here.) =)

A few reasons why I personally don't think children are to be avoided (as per biblical logic):
1) A matter of trust. We claim that we are supposed to trust God with our lives. That means jobs, finances, relationships, our housing, education, futures, everything. Why then do we tell God to keep His incompetent hands off our reproduction?
*Disclaimer: If we are going to trust our childbearing to God, I believe we need to do it the way God designed it to work. That means extended, on-demand breastfeeding, tandem or even 3 at-a-time breast feeding, following God's instructions regarding sex (aka, not outside of marriage, not for the designated time following the birth of a child (40 days for a son, 80 days for a daughter as per Lev 12), not the week of nor the week after a woman’s period as per Lev 15:19-28, etc). Not using any form of birth control but not following God’s guidelines either is kinda like a person who bought a really nice computer and said “I like all the parts but not the mouse” then wondered why the computer didn’t work as beautifully as the sales person said it would. If you want to use the thing the way it was made to work, you have to use it the way it was made to function.
2) A matter of God’s competence vs. man’s competence. I have heard several people (including my own brother) say something to the effect of “It’s a good thing we’ve come up with ways to limit the amount of children we have because God sure messed that one up!”
3) God’s concept of what children are. In the Bible I have found countless verses saying that children are a blessing. I have yet to find any verses saying that we need to be careful not to let God bless us too much. In fact, just to emphasize how much we have come to despise God’s view of ‘blessings’ let us consider credit cards. The Bible calls dept a curse and children a blessing. Yet we American Christians choose to file for dept and carefully limit our number of children. My Bible says something about “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” And to be honest, I never noticed the “and you children” part till I looked it up just now to put it here. =)
4) God’s concept of how many children we should or should not have. My Bible is filled with quotes like “fill the whole earth,” “go forth and multiply,” etc. I haven’t found any that say “be careful not to over populate the earth” or “don’t have more children than you can easily support and feed” or “don’t have too many children or you won’t be able to spend time with them all.”
*Disclaimer: There are stories in the Bible of people who had dozens, even hundreds of children. However, they also had dozens (or hundreds) of wives. My Bible says that men shouldn’t have more than one wife. I think that following that advice should serious reduce the chances of a person having a couple dozen children.
5) The matter of who opens the womb. My Bible talks of God being the one who opens and closes the womb, not people. There are stories of women trying to affect their own fertility and stories of women asking God to give them children. (Guess which women had children?) If we have given God control of our lives, why don’t we think He’ll do it?
*Disclaimer: Having pregnancies involving multiple is very difficult, both the pregnancy/birth part AND the caring for several toddles at the same time. Historically, multiples were not as common as they are now since the introduction of fertility drugs, etc. Once again, if we weren’t trying to play God over our fertility, this challenge wouldn’t be so common.
*Counter Disclaimer: Biblically, people lived together in community. If a family had twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc, there were neighbors, friends, aunts, uncles, and cousins living with them to help out. Families were not left to take care of themselves by themselves. Also, the average age a child nursed to was 5. This put lots of space between children and meant that the next baby didn’t arrive until the previous baby was old enough to be a helper.

A few things I am NOT saying:
1) I do not believe that children are something to be collected like baseball cards. They are human beings who have thoughts, feelings, and deserve respect. (I am not part of the "Quiver Full" movement.)
2) I do not think that a person’s faith should be measured ONLY by whether or not they trust God with their fertility. Everyone has their own struggles. If you struggle in an area I don’t, there’s a good chance I struggle in an area you don’t.
3) I’m not advising all Christians to hop off what ever form of birth control they are currently using. I am advising Christians to take a long look at what they are doing to control their reproduction and to ask themselves: “Why am I doing this? What do I believe about God’s role here? What do I believe about myself and the abilities God has given me?” etc…
4) I am not telling anyone who is not a Christian to follow Christian principles. I do not expect anyone to follow the dictates of a religion they do not believe in. That would be silly. =)

Abortion and Personhood

(I wrote this years ago but since this is now my "opinion" blog I figured I'd post it here too.) :)

A few thoughts related to abortion: When does one person have the right to harm another?

• Personhood

  1. Most people supporting abortion do not base their definition of “personhood” on whether or not a fetus is human. Their definition depends on a human’s stage of development.

     1. I have heard pro-choice individuals argue that the product of a human womb is not actually human but is in fact a maggot or fish, etc. (Yes I have actually heard this argument used.) I take the liberty of assuming that anyone replying to this post does, in fact believe that the contents of a human womb, those contents that eventually grown into people, are, even in their not-so-human looking forms, still genetically human. If you disagree, please say so up front so as to avoid confusion.

  2. Most people opposing abortion base their definition of a “person” on the species that the fetus/zygote/etc is. In this case, a human is a “person” from the moment that that human has its own unique DNA, aka, conception.

  3. Personhood is a concept, or label, not a scientific definition or developmental stage. Thus far, there is not a test or procedure currently employed to discover the “personhood” of an individual. There are merely opinions based on beliefs. (These beliefs may or may not have supporting evidence to back their stand and that applies to beliefs on both sides of the argument.)

• Rights of a person

  1. Most people agree that one person’s rights stop when another person’s rights are infringed upon.

  2. The debate over terminating a pregnancy rages on because “personhood” has not culturally been accredited to humans pre-birth. (I use the term “pre-birth” to mean any and every stage between conception and birth. I am aware that there is some debate among pro-choice individuals as to when abortions should be preformed, ie: not after quickening, not once gestation has reached the third trimester, not once a fetus reaches viability, etc. I am lumping all those people into one group since they all share the belief that there is a developmental point prior to which humans are not “people” and should not be afforded rights.)

  3. If I were to advocate the right of a mother to terminate her offspring post-birth, I doubt I would be taken seriously by the majority of the population in the US since we, culturally, have given post-birth humans the status of “personhood.”

  4. “My body, my choice” makes sense as long as there are no other bodies (people) involved. Men in our country do not have the right to use their bodies to rape. This would be their choice infringing on another person. As long as the “personhood” of pre-birth humans is debated, there will be doubt as to whether or not a woman’s choice to abort her offspring pre-birth involves another person. (As per argument #1, I believe we all agree that the contents of a human womb are human, we disagree as to whether or not that human is a “person.”)

• Consequences of denying personhood to specific groups of humans: (I know we are a far cry from most of these, but it’s a slippery slope, denying person hood.)

  1. Slavery denied the personhood of blacks claiming that while they were human, they were a lesser form of humanity.

     1. Many people who are against abortion think this sounds remarkably similar to denying rights to pre-birth humans.

  2. The holocaust began by denying personhood to the “undesirable” members of society. They began by removing individuals that were a burden to society and did not contribute, ie the handicapped, the mentally retarded, etc and from there moved on to other “undesirable” people groups.

     1. Currently American doctors are already pressuring parents whose pregnancy involves a human with down syndrome to abort.

Any thoughts, comments, concerns? Brilliant insights are welcome! ;-)