{"id":4729,"date":"2005-07-27T10:10:03","date_gmt":"2005-07-27T10:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html"},"modified":"2005-07-27T10:10:03","modified_gmt":"2005-07-27T10:10:03","slug":"not-rare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html","title":{"rendered":"Not Rare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Number of abortions increased by 4000 in the UK last year<\/a><\/p>\n

Recent US figures, and questions about contraception<\/a><\/p>\n

Protestants rethinking contraception?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

But the Romney decision and explanation open the door to talking about contraception. After all, the morning after pill is essentially just a high dose of the same hormones in normal oral contraceptives ("the pill"). Whether normal oral contraceptives work as abortifacients (that is, whether they prevent implantation as well as preventing fertilization) has been a matter of some debate. But it’s a debate that we may be about to see break open in the evangelical Protestant community.<\/p>\n

First, we’re seeing Protestant publishers talk more about the ethics of contraception. Baker published Jenell Williams Paris’s Birth Control for Christians<\/a> in 2003; now Zondervan recently released The Contraception Guidebook<\/a> with the Christian Medical Associations. Neither took a hard line against the pill (The Contraception Guidebook<\/em>, not surprisingly, echoes the CMA’s statement<\/a> on the subject), but the fact that evangelicals are even talking about possible post-fertilization effects of hormonal birth control is significant. (Christianity Today<\/em> in 2001 published differing<\/a> perspectives<\/a> on birth control but takes no editorial position on the pill. The next issue of Christianity Today<\/em> includes an article, "Why I Kissed the Pill Goodbye.")<\/p>\n

We’re also seeing the Protestant political and legal groups talking a lot more about birth control. They have adamantly<\/a> defended<\/a> of Catholic pharmacists who refused to fill birth-control prescriptions in a way that they have not defended other stances of conscience they do not themselves share. And lately, frustration about judicial activism has focused a lot less on 1973’s Roe v. Wade<\/em> and a lot more on 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut<\/a>, which threw out a Connecticut law banning contraceptives. (Search the websites of Family Research Council<\/a>, Focus on the Family<\/a>, Concerned Women for America<\/a>, and elsewhere.)<\/p>\n

Focus vice president for medical outreach Walter Larimore<\/a> notes that the organization moved<\/a> from opposing the abortifacient theory to a neutral position in 1999. (It’s unclear when Focus posted on its website a page<\/a> that said, "The majority of the physicians [on the Focus on your Family’s Health advisory board] feel that the pill does not have an abortifacient effect." And it’s unclear when this article was removed from the site.)<\/p>\n

Might evangelical Protestants move from opposing high doses of what’s in oral contraceptives to opposing oral contraceptives altogether? The jury is definitively out. But there are early signs of change. A new conception of the pill may be implanting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Number of abortions increased by 4000 in the UK last year Recent US figures, and questions about contraception Protestants rethinking contraception? But the Romney decision and explanation open the door to talking about contraception. After all, the morning after pill is essentially just a high dose of the same hormones in normal oral contraceptives ("the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNot Rare - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not Rare - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Number of abortions increased by 4000 in the UK last year Recent US figures, and questions about contraception Protestants rethinking contraception? But the Romney decision and explanation open the door to talking about contraception. After all, the morning after pill is essentially just a high dose of the same hormones in normal oral contraceptives ("the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-27T10:10:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Not Rare - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Not Rare - Via Media","og_description":"Number of abortions increased by 4000 in the UK last year Recent US figures, and questions about contraception Protestants rethinking contraception? But the Romney decision and explanation open the door to talking about contraception. After all, the morning after pill is essentially just a high dose of the same hormones in normal oral contraceptives ("the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-07-27T10:10:03+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html","name":"Not Rare - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-07-27T10:10:03+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-27T10:10:03+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/not-rare.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Not Rare"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}