Three Approaches to Birth Control

Rev. Ernest O'Neill

So first of all, loving self-discipline which for most of us I think means not a safe period of eight or 10 days, but maybe a safe period of three or four days and maybe even then great care is needed in the light of what the woman has been doing that month.  So first of all we should look at the possibility of loving self-discipline.  Secondly, probably all of us look at the birth control pill and we probably see first of all that the birth control pill taken over a long period does suggest that there may be some dangers.  At the moment the dangers are no greater than pregnancy itself but there is some suggestion in medical circles that taken over a long period, which I take it is 10 or 15 years, that there is danger there.

So, the birth control pill presumably is an alternative for some of us over a short period of time.  May I remind you that some of us use the birth control pill and other methods, most of which we’d all agree are very questionable aren’t they and very unreliable, probably the birth control pill is the only certain method.  But many of us use birth control methods as an excuse for licentiousness.  Do you see that?  So, it would be wrong to say, “Oh, the birth control pill we can use it.”  If you use it in a licentious way, in other words, let’s have fun without the bad consequences, see if you have that kind of attitude to it, in other words, if you cast – if you use the birth control pill as an excuse for ignoring completely loving self-discipline then I think you may be missing a beautiful self-control in your relationship that God wants to bring so I’d just ask you to think of that when you think of the birth control pill.

And then thirdly, presumably, and it would be only those of us here who perhaps have long decided that we’re not to have children, presumably then some of you would consider surgical methods and would consider tubal ligation or vasectomy, and some of us I think just wouldn’t consider those at all.  But I think it’s important for me to try to voice what really a thousand of us here might see as kind of reasonable even though I may not necessarily go with every one of them.  But I would say brother that those would be three approaches to birth control.