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June 19, 2023 (Campaign Life Coalition) – A Protestant man and longtime pro-life advocate has come out strongly against contraception, arguing that it results in “child aversion” for the couples who use it, which leads to an acceptance of abortion.

Royce Dunn, founder of Please Let Me Live and Life Chain, recently published a piece titled “Who is most responsible for America’s abortion crisis?”. He puts the blame upon the acceptance of contraception.

“Few in the pulpits and pews had given thought to the intimate (bonded) relationship of abortion and contraception because the latter had become a non-issue in almost all Protestant sanctuaries in America,” he said. “Thus, the innate empowerment of contraception to obscure (hide) the detriment and loss that child aversion inflicts on family, church, and nation.”

Dunn pointed to a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made the link between contraception and abortion clear. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, said Dunn, the Court stated what he called “its clearest reason” for the necessity to retain the 1973 abortion decision Roe v. Wade.

“Its majority opinion read: ‘…the abortion decision is of the same character as the decision to use contraception’ and then followed with ‘[Americans have come to rely on] the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.’”

“Words with greater import cannot be found in U.S. Supreme Court rulings,” Dunn pointed out.

Dunn wrote at length about the history of Protestants moving to accept birth control, mentioning the 1930 watershed moment when the Anglican church, at the Lambeth Conference, became the first Christian church to officially accept contraception. From here, acceptance of contraception within Christian churches spread quickly, though not all in Christian leadership positions were in support. “The 20th century would begin and progress with Protestants numbing to contraception opponents, such as renowned Baptist evangelist Billy Sunday,” he said.

Dunn’s position on the relationship between contraception, which leads to child aversion, and abortion, the killing of preborn children, is supported by none other than the abortion industry.

Elizabeth Sully of the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute told a Canadian Federal committee last March why the West pushes abortion, especially in the developing world. “Contraceptive methods fail,” she said, adding “they all fail at some point or another. And so, we need a second line of defence – and that’s safe abortion.” Joyce Arthur, founder and executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, admitted in a 2002 article in the Pro-Choice Press that “Most abortions result from failed contraception.” Dr. Malcolm Potts, former medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, predicted in 1973 that “as people turn to contraception, there will be a rise, not a fall, in the abortion rate.” Alfred Kinsey, the discredited sexologist, stated in 1955 that “we have found the highest frequency of induced abortions in the groups which, in general, most frequently uses contraception.”

Former abortion provider Carol Everett revealed in 2014 that getting young girls hooked on contraception was part of her business model for creating a “market for abortions.” “My goal was to get them [young women] sexually active on a low dose birth control pill that we knew they would get pregnant on...That pill did not work, and we could accomplish our goal of 3-5 abortions between the ages of 13 and 18.”

Royce Dunn, in an interview with Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), said that Christians who have blocked their God-given gift of fertility by means of contraception are failing to live out God’s commandment. God told Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis to “increase and multiply,” a command that applies to all married couples.

“The ultimate issue regarding contraception is church failure to provide God the covenant offspring He has requested,” he said. “Such failure is not new. Since God blessed Adam and Eve with the fertility required to literally create additional human beings...fallen mankind, forsaken by unmastered freewill, has often rebelled against God's plan.”

“The failure to provide them [covenant offspring] has persisted throughout most of Church history, and today the sorrowful results (worsened by legal abortion and fellow evils) enfold the Western church and culture. And while the spirit of child aversion is greatly restricting the number of offspring today, it is busily blinding parents of their duty to nurture the children they have into a covenant relationship with God and His Son," he added.

Dunn shared a story in his piece about how contraception negatively affected his life personally.

“Multiple times in my writings I have addressed my ‘mountainous regret’ for limiting my family to only two precious children (and four precious grandchildren) ... The loss is unending and prompts me to share frequently a quote I received from a dear brother in Christ ... The quote: ‘When an honest man learns he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or cease being honest’ ... My loss is of indescribable regret ... My wife and I were blessed with easy conceptions and easy births ... If only we had entrusted to God the fertility He graced to us ... I have asked God not to lessen the loss we experience day by day ... It helps me convey our loss to others, in hope of saving them deep regret,” he writes.

Dunn told CLC that until God called him to pro-life ministry, he had not thought much about abortion and contraception. “In my own case, until God divinely called me to a Life ministry (similar in a number of ways to how He called the Apostle Paul) I had not spent a half-minute thinking about the cruelty of abortion, and never until then had I reflected on child aversion and contraception.”

Dunn recognizes that while the Catholic Church has always condemned the use of contraception, summarized in Pope Paul VI’s 1968 landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae, he is largely a lone voice in the Protestant world opposing contraception. “It is … essential for Protestants to view contraception as far more than a ‘private’ or ‘Catholic’ issue ... It is a fundamental Scriptural issue with early relevance in the Book of Genesis (Chapter 1, verse 28),” Dunn argues.

While the Catholic Church teaches that contraception use is wrong because it separates the unitive and procreative ends of the conjugal act, there are prominent Catholics who recognize the validity of Dunn’s argument in opposing contraception. At the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, Mother Teresa gave an address in which she outlined an argument against contraception that is very close to Dunn’s own argument.

“In destroying the power of giving life, of loving, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self.  This turns the attention to self, and so it destroys the gifts of love in him and her,” she said. “In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other, as happen[s] in Natural Family Planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception ... Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily ... That's why I never give a child to a family that has used contraception — because if the mother has destroyed the power of loving, how will she love my child?”

Dunn, when asked what is the biggest obstacle to Protestants when it comes to understanding why contraception is a problem, replied: “Rare is the Protestant, whether young or elderly, who has ever heard the word ‘contraception’ spoken in a church service ... Such silence is a powerful sustainer of spiritual darkness, as both God's Word and Church history affirm, and its power strengthens with age until church fellowships are engulfed in a numbing unawareness and a tragic disconnect with God’s plan for His sons and daughters' welfare.”

He concluded by calling for courage among Protestants who are on a path toward seeing the evil of contraception: “For the remnant to grow, it must be courageous and resolute ... It must be willing to risk condescending opposition within the church and thereby endure the loss of public favor and financial support ... It must trust God more than it fears the ominous power of Satan's wrath because the demonic powers destroying our culture hate God's valuation of covenant offspring.”

Editor’s note: CLC’s communications director Pete Baklinski contributed to this piece.