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Contraception and Religion

There are many religions in this world that govern the rules by which people live by. These religions influence who we pray to, what we eat, how we dress and sadly who we love and who we loathe. Just as strongly religious attitudes govern how we look at contraception. Most religions have a similar attitude on this topic but not all. Attitudes have changed over the centuries from when religion promoted procreation to grow their numbers and make their people stronger. Those times are over for most people, but not all.

Catholics do not believe in contraception by non-natural means in any way, shape or form. The rhythm method, where a woman charts her basal body temperature, is permitted as a natural method of birth control. But is it successful only eighty one percent of the time and that leaves a lot of woman who wind up pregnant when they were not ready to be or felt they could not finically, emotionally or medically handle another child. Other Christian religions are not as staunchly supportive of this decision. Most Protestants both support and allow for the use of contraceptives because they believe that being able to plan a family makes for a healthy, and so more successful, family unit.

In the Jewish religion contraception was looked down on because sex should be for producing children, not unlike the Catholic belief. There was a need to have many children for without this Jews feared they would be wiped out. This belief has stuck with the orthodox factions of the religion but the rest believe that it is right to allow the use of contraceptives. If the woman's health was in danger, unlike the Catholics, but like most other religions, there has always been an exception to the rules of contraception.

Many early methods of contraception were developed by Muslim academics. A famous Muslim physician wrote a book detailing twenty different methods of contraception that could be used. These were later used by many Europeans. The Islamic belief is that the quality of the family, the health of the woman and the economic concerns of a family should determine the use of contraceptives. They even believe a woman has the right to use birth control to help her to remain attractive.

Hinduism, which promotes large families, also promotes small families. Their outlook is that being able to have children is a wonderful thing, but a social conscience allows for contraception so that the economic situation of a family may be taken into consideration. Buddhism also teaches that fertility is important, but allows for the couple to use contraception to make sure their lives and the lives of their children could be better by limiting the size of their family. Taoism is a religion that teaches balance and harmony. That is why they have allowed and encourages the use of contraception for thousands of years. They believe that the family must be in balance and that if too big a family upsets this balance contraception should be used.