For many families, contraception has simply become a fact of contemporary life. Despite its pervasiveness, Christians should be aware of the origins of the phenomenon. History recounts the rise of modern birth control as being one of strange associations.

In 1917, former welfare commissioner Leonora Meder spoke about the evil “fad” of contraception to the Evanston Illinois Woman’s Club: “God in his wisdom is wiser than these women of fads and whims. His plans, not theirs, are the ones to follow. He would hardly despise children when He said, ‘Suffer little children and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’”1 The leaders of Moody Bible Institute applauded her words: “May the Lord use the testimony of this fearless woman to warn any who are guilty of this crime against humanity and sin against God.”2 Crime against humanity? Sin against God? Why would they so fiercely oppose artificial birth control then, when it is so commonly accepted among biblical Christians today?

At the end of the nineteenth century, artificial birth control was much less popular than it is now.3 Most considered any attempt to restrict the birth rate to be an attack on the material prosperity of the United States (economic success was linked to population growth, especially in the years following the Civil War when so many were killed and injured). Furthermore, in March 1873 the United States Congress passed the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.4 While this legislation only outlawed the advertisement of birth control (the “Articles of Immoral Use” in question), it successfully perpetuated the notion of contraception as something illicit. If Meder and the Moody Bible Institute had spoken out against artificial birth control in the year 1900, they would have been swimming with the culture, but by 1917 contraception was increasingly accepted. What happened?

First, Americans came to view population growth as a threat. They were influenced by the argument that overpopulation leads to competition for resources, which results in disease, starvation, and eventually war. The outbreak of World War I seemed to vindicate this thesis.5 Second, the age of the “modern woman” was in full swing. The culture accepted that contraception helped women have a role beyond the home.6 However, new perceptions of population growth and feminism hardly explain the vitriol with which Meder and Moody condemned birth control. Their opposition was due to birth control’s identification with the rising eugenics movement.

Today, the word “eugenics” brings to mind the atrocities of Nazi Germany, but in the early twentieth century many Americans viewed it as a promising social policy. Eugenicists believed that it was in society’s best interest to discourage or restrict certain individuals from reproducing.7 The logic is disturbing but simple: instead of pouring resources into charity for the poor, it would be better to curb the lower-class birthrate. This explains why, between 1905 and 1922, 30 bills were passed in 18 states that allowed the sterilization of institutionalized persons.8 Yet, according to Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, the ultimate victory would be found in an acceptance of birth control which “is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit [and] of preventing the birth of defectives.”9

It is a blight on the name “Christian” that many mainline Protestants of this era defended Sanger’s reasoning.10 Thankfully, some Christian leaders, like Meder and those at Moody, saw through the lie and defended all life as God’s precious possession.11
Footnotes:
1

“Birth Control, Unnatural and Immoral,” Christian Workers Magazine, March 1917, 539. Quoted by Kathleen A. Tobin in The American Religious Debate Over Birth Control, 1907-1937 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001), 45.
2

Ibid.
3

One example is the infamous “Madam Restell.” For almost forty years, beginning in the 1840s, she operated a mail order business and “medical clinic” in the heart of New York City where she provided her clients access to both artificial birth control and abortions. Janet Farrell Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in 19th Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 229.
4

Brodie, 256.
5

Tobin, 9-10. Those arguing against population growth were known as Neo-Malthusians, after Thomas Malthus, who, in 1798, wrote “Essay on Population,” where he laid out his concerns about high birth rates. Although Malthus never promoted birth control (which is not surprising, given the time he was writing), his followers did, and they assumed that if Malthus were alive in the twentieth century he, too, would have espoused the merits of contraception.
6

The “modern woman” had an independent spirit and athletic zeal. “She rode a bicycle, played tennis or golf, showed six inches of stocking beneath her skirts, and loosened her corsets. She expected to marry and have children, but she wanted a life beyond her home—perhaps even a career.” Rosalind Rosenburg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 54. Quoted by Tobin, 5.
7

See Kairos Journal article, “Nazi Racial Cleansing: the American Link.”
8

Tobin, 16-17.
9

Ibid.
10

According to Tobin, in the early twentieth century, “[a]n increasing number of individual liberal clerics publicly supported Sanger, maintaining that they had a moral responsibility to use scientific knowledge to better society by controlling the propagation of the unfit.” Ibid., 93.
11

See Kairos Journal article, “Contraceptive Culture.”

article adopted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located at 4800 W. Pulaski Hwy., Perryville, MD