From abortion, to contraception, to...

Be sure to read Amelia Thomson-Deveaux's article on the emerging evangelical-Catholic alliance over contraception. I think her historical analogy is entirely fair: evangelicals haven't always been opposed to contraception, but then they weren't always galvanized against abortion, either. And I appreciate that she doesn't simply endorse one of the two standard narratives on how evangelicals came to hate abortion—that either they came around to this opposition organically as they learned about the facts OR they were cynically manipulated by political operatives. There's truth in each of those stories; they aren't mutually exclusive.

Thomson-Deveuax traces the history of evangelical engagement with the politics of sex and reproduction. She highlights a number of positions taken by evangelical leaders over the years, such as Billy Graham's 1959 statement that he could see nothing in the Bible forbidding birth control. Are we headed for a place where evangelicals are less friendly to contraception than they were in the 1950s? Perhaps, says Thomson-Deveaux:

Just as they adopted the Catholic notion of fetal personhood, evangelicals are now using Catholic rhetoric to argue that birth control is incompatible with a pro-life philosophy. Catholic doctrine teaches that sex can’t be separated from procreation through artificial means. Although the Catholic Church sanctions natural family planning, a form of birth control that works by tracking a woman’s fertility, pious couples must always be ready to accept an unplanned pregnancy.