The Life Challenges Podcast
The Life Challenges Podcast
2 Week Birth Control Series: Week 2 Methods: Faith-Based Approaches to Birth Control
Birth control methods seem straightforward on the surface—just find what works, right? But for Christians seeking to honor God's design for life, the decision requires deeper consideration than our convenience-focused culture suggests.
Let's unpack the critical distinction between "safe" and "risky" birth control methods from a biblical perspective. This isn't primarily about medical risks to the user, but about whether certain methods might endanger an already conceived human life—a crucial distinction for believers who affirm that life begins at conception.
The conversation takes a thorough look at barrier methods, sterilization, natural family planning, and hormonal options, examining not just how they work but whether they align with a Christian worldview that values all human life. Particularly eye-opening is the discussion of hormonal birth control's three mechanisms, including its potential to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg—essentially functioning as an early abortion in some cases.
"Everything in our society is constantly fighting with you to only think about the here and now," Pastor Fleischmann observes. Yet Christians are called to an eternal perspective in all decisions, including family planning. This countercultural approach means sometimes choosing methods that require more effort or planning but better protect the sanctity of human life.
Whether you're newly married, reconsidering your approach to family planning, or simply wanting to understand these issues from a faith perspective, this episode offers compassionate, scientifically-informed guidance without judgment. The hosts acknowledge that many Christians use hormonal methods without understanding the potential risks to conceived life, emphasizing that new knowledge should inform future choices.
Have you considered how your birth control choices align with your beliefs about when life begins? Join us for this thoughtful exploration of how faith shapes even our most private decisions.
Would you like to learn more about different birth control methods? You can purchase a copy of our book, "The Christian and Birth Control" here: https://christianliferesources.com/product/the-christian-and-birth-control-book-second-edition/
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on today's episode.
Bob Fleischmann:Everything in our society is constantly fighting with you to only think about the here and now. It just is. It's just everything Watch television and nothing's gearing you towards eternity and glorifying God and so forth. Why do you think? Sometimes you get frustrated when you go to church and you feel that the pastor was being so unrealistic. Maybe he's the realistic one and everything else around you is being unrealistic.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson, and today we're going to be talking about birth control methods. On our last episode we had talked about birth control motives and so we wanted to follow that up talking about different methods today. But first we wanted to talk about maybe why we talk about motives before methods and just the importance of really laying that groundwork before we talk about the different types of methods.
Bob Fleischmann:We tend, in our culture especially, we tend to be very focused on just what works Can I be sexually active and avoid a pregnancy? And we're not even going to talk about our reasons for avoiding it and so forth right this moment. But what we do need to keep thinking about is motive, is the challenging questions you ask yourself as to why I want to use birth control, and motive really comes up in all facets of life. We got to be talking motive. Why do I drive the speed limit? Why do I not steal? Why do I not gossip? Why do I? What drives you to do it?
Bob Fleischmann:And everything about our culture seems to drive us to basically always look for just what works. Will it prevent a pregnancy? Will it keep me out of trouble? Will I be able to keep peace in the family? Those kinds of things. At its heart, the motive stands on faith Hebrews 11.1,. Faith is being sure of what is hoped for, certain of what is not seen. It's that supernatural activity in your life that just basically drives you to say my focus is first towards how do I adore God, how do I glorify God in what I say and what I do, and when you start from that. That's where motive is, and then with a presumption that our motive is correct in other words, we feel we have a reason, a justifiable reason, which is what we talked about in the last episode, a justifiable reason that we might need to practice birth control. Then we have to look at what do we do, because they're not all the same.
Jeff Samelson:They may all prevent a birth, but it's how they prevent a birth that raises the questions, yeah, and what Bob was saying about, we tend to look at things in terms of what works.
Jeff Samelson:It's illustrated a bit by the history of this.
Jeff Samelson:When birth control first became a real big thing, it was argued for on the basis of married couples should have the right to decide, you know, whether they're going to have children and when and such, and it was always talked about in terms of helping married couples plan their families.
Jeff Samelson:I think if you were to just survey people today, most of the talk about birth control it's going to be well, what's going to work to keep unmarried people from conceiving children, and it's not much about the married people at all. I mean, yeah, married people still use it a lot, but the focus has changed because it was all about, well, what works, we're doing this thing, so what can we do to prevent the other thing from happening as a result of that? And just looking at that shift says there is something wrong here in terms of what was motivating people to use birth control in the first place, which is why we had to go back first and discuss okay, why are we going to use this? What's the reason for this going to be, before we start talking about okay, what works and what's appropriate.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I think that's really interesting because, especially to like with us sitting here and talking about birth control for our listeners, I mean the hope is right, people are married. I mean, you know, we're not really trying to give advice to people that aren't married or, you know, going out of God's design for this, and so you know, I mean that's just really a good point too.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, and what Jeff was saying is really accented by the fact that the government there's a federal mandate that counties have to provide birth control services for indigent women. I mean, it's yeah, they have to provide it. And I remember 40 years ago trying to get Planned Parenthood defunded in the county where I was serving a congregation and the problem we had is that we didn't have an alternative If the county pulled Planned Parenthood from their selection list to provide these services for the county, they had nobody to do it. There was no nurses association or anything like that, and I realized I was arguing without providing the county an alternative. And those services are very much geared towards unmarried people.
Bob Fleischmann:We had a great conversation about this on the National Board of CLR many years ago in which our board chairman at the time said essentially, when know, when you counsel unmarried people on this topic, you're counseling them on safe sinning.
Bob Fleischmann:In other words, how can you avoid venereal disease, how you can avoid pregnancy and so forth and at the same time be sexually active outside of marriage? And that's a topic all of its own. But I mean it gets twisted and one of the things I was just talking with somebody this morning I had just said to them. You know, one of the first things you realize when you connect with CLR is, if you walked into any conversation in any of our podcasts, including this one, and you think it's a simple topic, you're just not listening, you're not paying attention, because sin has an incredible way of having this really peculiar way of forming a web so that cutting one string creates a problem in another area and so forth, and so it does here. So when we get out of motive, we're presuming your motive is correct. You've got a reason that we talked about earlier. Now we have to talk about methods.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, so what is the important life issue, though, that needs to be addressed with birth control methods, regardless of motives?
Jeff Samelson:Surprisingly for a podcast like this. It's about life. Is human life respected and protected with the method that you're using, or is it not? This is primary importance. Some of the most effective methods of birth control don't distinguish between preventing conception and preventing an already conceived child, which is a living human being, from successfully implanting in the mother's womb. We're talking about abortion, and so we need to have that distinction made, because the most important issue is life at this point.
Bob Fleischmann:And that's a critical point because a lot of times when I have presented on this topic on the road or people have written me about it, it's amazing how many people will say I don't believe that. I mean it's like how can a blob of cells be life or something? You have to understand that because your motive is rooted or built on the foundation of faith. Faith is the ability to believe all sorts of things that you know your sinful nature wants to challenge all the time. And it even says you know it's by faith, we believe that things were created. Ultimately it's by faith. You know we've even had an episode on the science behind creation and so forth, but really in the end you believe it because God says it. So when Psalm 51.5 says I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me, just understand.
Bob Fleischmann:They understood what conception was back then. In fact, it's interesting when you read the writings of Plato and Aristotle. They used to debate over how long after conception they wanted to consider it to be a human life. And I remember the Aristotelian approach was someplace between 50 and 70 days. And if you want to be offended, you know Aristotle thought it was 50 days for a male embryo, but it was 70 days for a female embryo, but I mean that was— and how were they?
Bob Fleischmann:supposed to tell the difference? Well, that's—yeah.
Bob Fleischmann:I mean that's really kind of a predicament they would have had. But I mean they talked about this stuff, they understood it. Serenus of Ephesus gave instructions for women on how to not carry a pregnancy through. You know how to abort a child and why? Because they understood life has begun, and so it's important for those of you who are listening to this podcast wanting to understand is it really a big deal about method? The real question is, is it a big deal about faith? Do I accept God at his word? Do I accept that the Hebrew understood what conception was? And if you go on the CLR website, you know we've got a document there where we talk about what does the Hebrew understand about conception? And we talked about it in a previous podcast, about why conception. Is conception? The point of fertilization?
Christa Potratz:We hear different terms too. When we're talking about birth control methods, we hear sometimes like when we're talking about birth control methods, we hear sometimes like risky and safe. What does that really mean, when we're differentiating between safe and risky methods?
Jeff Samelson:Well, safe are basically all those methods that do not put already conceived children in a position where their lives and their chances at survival are in danger, whether those are embryos that formed before the birth control method was used, or whether it was because the birth control method was not effective and the conception happened anyway. Risky are basically the opposite. Risky are the methods that do put those children who are conceived in danger, and there are those even like what's called Plan B. That's actually a feature, not a bug, that even if you already have conceived, this will take care of that as well. Yeah, you know, if you already have a child within you, this method might remove that. You might abort it. The safe ones are the ones that are not going to have that risk.
Bob Fleischmann:Plus, they also do talk about risky and safe with regard to the mother, and so it can be a little bit tricky when you're listening to. What do they mean? Who are you talking about? Anything that stands the risk of destroying an unborn child, in our view, is risky. Why? Because a life can be lost. Sometimes people in the heat of debate on this topic will talk about well, there's risk to the mother. You've got to understand that. The FDA does not generally allow you to distribute birth control that is risky for someone. I mean it's just so somebody might be splitting hairs talking about a percentage of a percentage point difference between one form or another as to whether it be harmful.
Christa Potratz:Can we expand a little bit on what we mean by safe birth control?
Bob Fleischmann:Well, safe would be anything that prevents if we're talking about effective, safe, effective birth control, anything that prevents fertilization, so what we would genuinely call contraception. You know it prevents conception. The real, obvious one would be a barrier method. Barrier methods, diaphragm, condom those kinds of methods are considered to be safe for an unborn child. There are, there are some exploratory things being done, primarily and I don't want to get too far ahead but experimental methods that are down the road, that claim to shut down ovulation completely or shut down sperm production completely. Then, hypothetically, anything that would prevent the meeting of a sperm and an egg is what we would call safe. Now, is it safe for the mother or safe in other ways? You know that stuff that they're still trying to sort out.
Jeff Samelson:And of course what you would call natural family planning, which technically is not birth control in the same sense. But that's basically timing things so that you know, in theory at least, the conception is not possible. So that you know, in theory at least, the conception is not possible. That you know. We do also consider safe, because it's not. You know, there's nothing interfering there in the normal process. It's just a matter of timing.
Bob Fleischmann:Yeah, the statistics on NFP natural family planning are remarkable for their effectiveness. You know, when people take it seriously nowadays with the apps that monitor a woman's you know cycle and so forth, they I mean they boast like right near the top.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, and yeah, just like what you were saying, bob. I mean the numbers really over the years have really improved and what they're able to do now, and you can go to specific doctors too that really know their stuff and know there's no different things about the cycle I mean, even if you're trying to get pregnant too like they could really help people that maybe are having difficulties in doing things outside of chemicals and things too. What would just throwing it out there but sterilization? What would just throwing it out there but sterilization? Is that risky or not?
Jeff Samelson:The risk there is, it's going to be to the man or the woman undergoing the procedure. I don't know the statistics quite so well, but anything that is more about, shall we say, surgical, they have pretty much experience with that. So, just like any kind of surgical procedure, sometimes things go wrong, but most of the time it doesn't. So that sense it's not going to put much of a risk to the health, or I should say to the physical health, of the man or the woman. It's a bit more involved with women, so I'd say there's probably a greater chance of something going wrong with that. When you're talking about chemical sterilization, that's an entirely different thing, because that's changing your body chemistry, that's attempting to do damage with some kind of medical chemical procedure, and there are always risks involved with that because not everybody is going to respond to things in the same way.
Bob Fleischmann:I remember making a mistake early in my ministry. I happened to be calling on two patients, members of mine, and one was a young man who was in a really horrible motorcycle accident and just had a crushed leg and the whole bit. And then the other one was a fellow who was having hernia surgery. And I made the mistake of saying because I just visited the young man and I said to the guy with the hernia surgery oh well, that's relatively minor surgery and he said minor surgery is what other people have and I thought, well, touche.
Bob Fleischmann:I deserve that, but what Jeff's saying is true is that it is possible and they tell you that. Why do you think you get all those phone calls and everything prior to even an outpatient surgery about? There's always risk, if there's anesthesia involved or not involved, that there's other things. There is a risk. Ironically, there are accounts of surgical sterilization being reversed, where they've untied the tubes if you know what I mean or stitched together again the tubing so that they could be fertile again. So you don't walk into it. You walk into sterilization like this is it and we're not going to have more.
Bob Fleischmann:I think there's other issues that come into play with sterilization that a lot of people don't talk about. They're more social issues. I mean, we have a declining population now they're projecting population implosion here coming and I probably feel differently. I grew up during the time when the whole world was crying in fear that we were going to outlive our food sources and everything, and now you know all the data is showing that there's been a pendulum swing too far now and we're going to start losing countries and everything from low population. I think I would I think differently about it, but in and of itself, the risk is even though I'm talking about other people having it. The risk is minor, but there is always a risk.
Jeff Samelson:With my answer previously, I was speaking mainly of the medical risk and physical things, but we should also address the fact that there is an emotional and particularly a spiritual aspect to the choice of sterilization as well.
Jeff Samelson:You know, the same issue is with other things, with birth control. Why are you doing it? And we should always, you know, just as with you know, like transgender surgery, type of things like that when you are deliberately choosing to do permanent damage to your body so that it no longer does the thing that God designed it to do, that's a big deal. You need to think long and hard about the reasons why you're doing that, whether you're going to be okay with it long-term or whether you're just looking at it as a short-term solution to a situation you're facing right now to deliberately change your body in such a way. I mean, we're not talking about a tattoo. We're talking about something much more serious that goes really right to the source of a lot of your identity as a woman or as a man. It's something to think long and hard about and I certainly would never advise that any Christian go ahead with something like that without a good long talk with his or her pastor.
Christa Potratz:Well, I want to make sure too, we do talk about the topic of chemical or hormonal birth control.
Bob Fleischmann:Do we put that in the risky category and if so, why? Absolutely right, absolutely wrong, absolutely dangerous, absolutely not dangerous. Risk is risk, which means there's a potential there that probably isn't there with other things. For example, hormonal birth control works with three mechanisms. Primarily, mechanism number one is it's supposed to interrupt the ovulation. It's supposed to literally, and it's hard to explain in a broadcast like this, but it literally. It just basically stops a woman's menstrual cycle from creating aches in the ovaries. It slows them, they're not released, and that's how it's supposed to work. They call that the ovaries. It slows them, they're not released, and that's how it's supposed to work. They call that the primary mechanism. Secondary mechanism is to slow mobility or inhibit mobility of sperm to be able to enter through the cervix and then up the fallopian tubes. And what it primarily does is it creates a thickened amount of mucus around a woman's cervix. Because when we talk hormonal birth control right now, in this context, we're talking about something that the woman takes, and so it thickens the mucus around the cervix that's supposed to impede or prevent passage of the sperm. Now, if both of those methods work, are operative, we don't have a problem, you know, because we don't have a problem with that, with it functioning as a birth control because it doesn't destroy a developing human life. But it's the third mechanism that, no matter how many times you get into arguments with people about birth control, you know the FDA is refusing to remove it from the warning list. It still remains on all the pharmaceutical guides for hormonal birth control. And that is the third mechanism is that it changes the lining of the endometrium wall to make it more difficult for a developing embryo to implant and, depending on dosage and so forth, it could also work in such a way that it would loosen a developing embryo that is already implanted so that it would spontaneously abort. So the idea is that it creates an unfriendly environment for developing human life and of course that is where we have the problem.
Bob Fleischmann:Now people get all worked up over how often is that a problem? Can you give me statistics and so forth? And it's interesting because when we have talked about this stuff at the national board level, where I have medical professionals that have sat and are sitting on the national board, you get into kind of almost a game like well, how safe is it for me to drive my car? How safe? Is it for me to walk along a sidewalk? A car could jump the curve and hit me. There's a chance for that, which is why I want to go back to what I said originally, and that is remember, we're talking about a risk.
Bob Fleischmann:Now I want to frame it a little bit different and think about it this way the whole arena of birth control birth control or contraception, birth control that whole arena provides choices. You can go with natural family planning. There is sterilization, and those right there do not present a risk to a developing child. But then you get into hormonal birth control. That does develop a risk.
Bob Fleischmann:Does it mean, if you've been using hormonal birth control all of your life, that you have in fact aborted a child? Maybe, maybe not, we don't know. And, of course, the companies that make hormonal birth control have no incentive for exploring how often it works that way. Why? Because they already have FDA approval. Why open up a Pandora's box? Society generally is accepting of the fact that we can abort children. We can terminate the lives of unborn children. So why is that a big deal? So you're not going to get them to explore it, and research dollars are quite honestly being steered towards cancer treatments and so forth. And so a Christian then has to wrestle with how far am I willing to take a risk when I have other alternatives?
Jeff Samelson:And I would just add to Bob's comments there you know, when you're talking about risk, if you're comparing, okay, well, when I'm walking down the street, the car might jump the curb and hit me, or every time I get behind the wheel and drive or get in a plane, I'm taking a risk. Well, an important, important difference there is that that's a risk you're choosing to take for yourself. When you're talking about the risk of an unborn child in the womb, that's somebody else's life you're risking or you're talking about in terms of risk. It's an entirely different moral calculation and we need to keep that straight.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, in Philippians, when you're told to think more of others or think of others ahead of yourself, that comes into play. And it's funny because that's a very conflicting thought in our culture. Because in our culture, why are people looking at this? You know, like Jeff outlined at the beginning, you know we just don't want a birth, we don't want a baby, and if you're single you don't want to be tied down with that kind of commitment. You didn't even want to be committed to being married. So you're trying to avoid all those things and that's the way society is thinking. But a Christian thinks different, because they're motivated by a supernatural power called faith chemical birth control is.
Christa Potratz:I mean, it's relatively easy to use and it does just seem like, okay, I mean I'll just take this pill, and you know every I don't know the different days you have to, and stuff too. And then I think, you know, it's just very accepted in our society too. Right, like this is just what you do. And I would say too, it's pretty seems pretty accepted in our society too. Right, like this is just what you do. And I would say too, it's pretty seems pretty accepted in our Christian culture as well. And so I think, like for me, you know, when I got married, it was just like, oh yeah, we're not, you know, maybe thinking kids right now we're still in school, yada, yada, this is just like what you do.
Christa Potratz:But my husband and I both have science backgrounds and we really like, I mean and it's kind of sad to say, we didn't really look at it too much in detail before we started, but then we really started looking at it and maybe a year or two into our marriage, we just both felt like we weren't comfortable with that risk, like this isn't something we want to do, and that is. It seemed like harder too and it also seemed, you know, I mean I'll just say like personally it seemed like kind of one of those like ignorance is bliss type of things. You know all the other people that seemed to be okay with it. It just seemed like maybe hadn't looked at all the details that we had looked at. And I mean, again, you know, kind of like what Bob said too, I mean everybody does kind of have to make choices and look at things and stuff too.
Christa Potratz:But I am just kind of sharing what we did just to really I mean I do really think it is important when you're talking about matters of life to really do the research and look into it. And, like you know Jeff was saying too before, there is a lot more information out there with natural family planning methods and there's a lot more research too on just the chemical effects of what birth control does to the woman too, because you are messing with hormones and especially in our age now of everybody's organic or you know, no one is wanting to put gluten in their bodies or just you know, just all these different things I mean to be using chemical, hormonal birth control is something that even just from kind of like that natural side is something that you know is being explored more and stuff too, and so I mean just to kind of throw out that really doing the research is an important part with when we're talking about birth control and we're talking about life.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, just to accent one of the points you just made about hormonal birth control it's changing your body chemistry. You know it's an artificial way of doing that and if it changes your body chemistry it's changing your body, which means it's changing you. And I don't think I'm stepping into dangerous ground by saying most people are aware that hormones can affect your personality, both male and female, but we tend to notice it more with the females. But we're talking about relatively well, not necessarily permanent but lasting significant changes here. And just as a point of reference, think about it People who decide that they're going to have a sex change what do they do? They go on hormone therapy. They're changing the hormonal makeup of their bodies deliberately in order to make big changes. It's a different degree, but it's still the same kind of thing.
Jeff Samelson:And again, this is not saying absolute blanket. You should never do this as a Christian. But it is another thing to think about that you can't have this just relaxed while everybody's doing it kind of attitude that you were describing, krista. But you realize that this is something really significant that I am choosing to do to my body and even probably to my personality. And as I was thinking about this earlier. I was just wondering, I wonder, if our society had never adopted hormonal birth control to the extent that it had. Our society had never adopted hormonal birth control to the extent that it had no-transcript, but it was an interesting thought experiment.
Christa Potratz:And there's a lot we could talk about with hormonal birth control too and, you know, maybe for kind of a future episode as well. We're kind of wrapping up here on time Any just maybe final thoughts, just from a Christian perspective, when we are thinking about birth control and methods.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, whenever I've sat down with a couple looking to get married and I would devote part of the pre-marriage counseling to talking about contraception and birth control when I get into the hormonal methods and so forth, oftentimes it's a little bit like watching a flower wilt, because society is so oriented towards instant gratification and everything. The number one advantage of hormonal birth control is you take a shot or you take a pill and you can have sexual relations whenever you want and it's going to work. That's the hope or the dream, or the marketing of it and kind of like so many other things in life, you do take a moment to think about it, take a moment to explore and, as Christians, your attention. Everything in our society is constantly fighting with you to only think about the here and now. It just is. It's just everything Watch television and nothing's gearing you towards eternity and glorifying God and so forth. Why do you think? Sometimes you get frustrated when you go to church and you feel that the pastor was being so unrealistic. Maybe he's the realistic one and everything else around you is being unrealistic.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, everything that you're seeing and hearing nowadays about birth control methods very much buys into the. You're living for the here and now, living for the moment, and Christians don't. You're living for eternity, and so you take the time, you do the research. And if you're listening to this and you've been on hormonal birth control and you're saying to yourself I never knew this or anything like that, I can tell you already, depending on where your doctor is, on how he feels about unborn life, you're going to get different flavors of this.
Bob Fleischmann:But Scripture teaches life exists at conception. It starts at fertilization. Biologically it works that way. And if we get into long discussion in another episode on hormonal birth control, if you study the history of the development of hormonal birth control, you'll know how that does mess with the body it does. But the point is is that all of life is trying to discover the will of God and many times all of us will trip over it and all of a sudden realize I've been doing it wrong up until now. Well, now you know. So now what do you do?
Christa Potratz:Well, thank you both for this discussion today on birth control methods, and we thank all of our listeners for joining us today too. And if you like this podcast episode, please share it with people. We're encouraging people to subscribe to this podcast. We are thankful that this podcast has grown to be what it is and it continues to grow, and the more that we can share this, the more that we can continue to reach people with this information. So thank you for listening and we'll see you back next time. Bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLifeResourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
