Protestants and the pill: How US Christians helped make contraception mainstream

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, many Christians have celebrated the prospect of an America where abortion is someday banned entirely.

Meanwhile, other conservative Christians have been working on a related goal: limiting access to some contraceptives.

In July 2020, when the Supreme Court ruled that organizations with “sincerely held religious or moral objection” will not be obligated to supply contraceptive coverage to their employees, many conservative Christians applauded. Six years before, the evangelical owners of crafting chain Hobby Lobby took their objections to covering the IUD of their medical insurance plans all of the approach to the Supreme Court. Hobby Lobby argued – incorrectly, in accordance with most medical authorities – that it was a type of abortion, and subsequently they shouldn’t should cover employees’ medical insurance for it. The justices sided with the chain’s owners.

Yet as access to each abortion and contraception comes under threat, the overwhelming majority of Protestants use or have used some type of contraception. Their actions are supported by almost 100 years of pastoral advocacy on the problem. In my work as a scholar of religous studies, gender and sexuality, I actually have researched the Protestant leaders who campaigned to make contraception respectable, and subsequently widely acceptable, within the mid-Twentieth century.

History, I actually have found, provides a special story in regards to the relationship between Protestants and contraception.

‘Responsible parenthood’

As recent contraceptive options emerged in the primary two-thirds of the Twentieth century, from the diaphragm to the contraception pill, Christian leaders wrestled with what to think. Many got here to see contraception as an ethical good that will allow married couples to have satisfying sex lives, while protecting women from the health risks of frequent pregnancies. They hoped it could make sure that couples wouldn’t have more children than they may look after, emotionally and economically.

They looked inward, considering the results of contraception for their very own communities, and hoped that “planned” or “responsible” sex would create healthy families and reduce divorce. They also looked outward, interested by contraception’s wider implications, at a time of widespread concern that the worldwide population was rising too quickly to handle.

By the time the pill got here in the marketplace within the Nineteen Sixties, liberal and even some conservative Protestants were advocating for contraception using recent theological ideas about “responsible parenthood.”

“Responsible parenthood” reframed debates about family size around “Christian duty.” To be responsible in parenting was not only to avoid having more children than you might afford, nurture and educate. It also meant considering responsibilities outside the house toward churches, society and humanity.

Protestant leaders supporting contraception argued that the perfect form of family was a father with a gentle job and a homemaker mother, and that contraception could encourage this model, because smaller families could maintain a snug lifestyle on one income. They also hoped that contraception would help couples stay together by allowing them to have satisfying sex lives.

Multiple denominations endorsed contraception. In 1958, for instance, the Anglican Communion stated that family planning was a “primary obligation of Christian marriage,” and chastised parents “who carelessly and improvidently bring children into the world, trusting in an unknown future or a generous society to look after them.”

The big picture

Religious leaders’ support for “responsible parenthood” was not nearly deliberately creating the form of Christian families they approved of. It was also about heading off the horrors of population explosion – a fear very much front of mind in mid-century America.

In the center of the Twentieth century, with increased access to vaccines and antibiotics, more children were living to maturity and life expectancies were rising. Protestant leaders feared this so-called population bomb would outstrip the Earth’s food supply, resulting in famine and war.

In 1954, when the worldwide population stood at about 2.5 billion, Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the crucial distinguished Protestant voices of the age, framed overpopulation as certainly one of the world’s “basic problems,” and the contraception pill, which was then being developed, as the perfect potential solution.

Richard Fagley, a minister who served on the World Council of Church’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, argued that in family planning, science had provided Christians with a recent venue for moral responsibility. Medical knowledge, Fagley wrote, is “a liberating gift from God, for use to the glory of God, in accordance together with his will for men.”

These “responsible parenthood” ideas held that religious couples had a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth by not having more children than the planet could support. In the context of marriage, contraception was viewed as moral, shoring up a selected type of Christian values.

Yesterday’s arguments

These ideas about “good” and “bad” families often rested on assumptions about race and gender that reproductive rights advocates find troubling today.

Early within the Twentieth century, predominantly white, Protestant clergy were very enthusiastic about increasing access to contraception for the poor, who were often Catholic or Jewish immigrants or people of color. Some scholars have argued that early support for contraception was predominantly about eugenics, particularly before World War II. Among some white leaders, there was concern about so-called race suicide: the racist fear that “they” could be overwhelmed.

Apart from some eugenicists, nevertheless, most of those clergy wanted to offer people access to contraception with a view to create “healthy” families, no matter income level. Yet many were unable or unwilling to see how they were promoting a narrow view of the perfect family, and the way that marginalized poor communities and other people of color – themes I’m studying in my current book project.

Moreover, many proponents were advocating for girls’s health, but not reproductive freedom. Their priority was setting women up for success to achieve their ideal of the middle-class, Christian motherhood. With fewer children, some hoped, families would have the opportunity to get by on only a husband’s salary, meaning more women at home raising children.

A battle won – and lost?

Over the a long time, Protestant leaders have, largely, disappeared from pro-birth control arguments.

There are many reasons. Mid-century agricultural technologies reduced fears of overpopulation – which have only recently been reawoken by the climate crisis. Meanwhile, mainline Protestant churches, and their public influence, are shrinking. Conservative leaders eventually grew concerned that contraception would result in more working women, not fewer. And for the reason that Seventies, evangelicals have grown increasingly opposed to abortion, which was increasingly linked to contraception through the broad term “family planning.”

In other words, for the reason that “population bomb” was not ticking, contraception not gave the look of such an urgent necessity – and a few of its other implications troubled conservatives, breaking an almost pan-Protestant alliance.

Meanwhile, liberal Protestants had so embraced contraception that they not viewed it as turf that needed defending. Today, 99% of American women and girls between the ages of 15 and 44 who’ve ever had sex use or have used a contraceptive method. Reproductive rights advocates turned their attention to abortion rights – largely leaving religious views on contraception to their opponents.