Contraception and Family Planning

"Why does the Catholic Church forbid birth control?"

3 Scripture passages3 objections answered2 Church Father quotes

The Short Answer

Artificial contraception is intrinsically evil because it deliberately separates the unitive and procreative aspects of marital intercourse that God joined together. Natural Family Planning (NFP) is morally licit for spacing births because it respects God's design.

Quick Overview

The Church isn't against planning your family—but against how artificial contraception does it. Think of it this way: the marital act has two purposes God built in—expressing love (unitive) and being open to new life (procreative). Contraception deliberately breaks that connection. Natural Family Planning, by contrast, works with a woman's natural cycle. During fertile times, if avoiding pregnancy, couples abstain. This respects God's design while allowing responsible parenthood. It's not just a different method—it's a different mindset about sex, fertility, and trusting God.

Biblical Evidence

What the Scriptures say

Genesis 1:28

"And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth."

Why This Matters

Fertility is a blessing from God, integral to the purpose of marriage and sexuality.

Genesis 38:9-10

"He knowing that the children should not be his, when he went in to his brother's wife, spilled his seed upon the ground, lest children should be born in his brother's name. And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing."

Why This Matters

Onan's sin was deliberately frustrating the procreative purpose of the marital act—the biblical foundation for opposing contraception.

Psalm 127:3

"Behold the inheritance of the Lord are children: the reward, the fruit of the womb."

Why This Matters

Children are portrayed as gifts and blessings, not burdens to be prevented.

What the Church Teaches

Official Catholic doctrine

Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) affirms that 'each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life' (HV 11). Artificial contraception is intrinsically evil (CCC 2370).

Common Objections

Questions answered

Early Church Fathers

What the first Christians believed

St. John Chrysostom

c. 391 AD

"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth?"

— Homily 24 on Romans

St. Augustine

c. 419 AD

"Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented."

— On Marriage and Concupiscence, 1.15.17

Death Penalty

IVF

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