YUBA CITY, California, September 8, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The founder of the national Life Chain, which is set to take place October 2nd, is urging Protestant pastors to confront the “spirit of child aversion” that was created by the embrace of contraception.
Royce Dunn, president of Please Let Me Live, issued an open letter to pastors in July urging them to take concrete measures to “end the American Holocaust” of abortion. The devoted Baptist is calling for “a new mindset” towards procreation that is open to God’s gift of fertility.
In an interview, Dunn told LifeSiteNews that the “spirit of child aversion,” the desire to avoid bearing children, is “the uppermost key to the killing of children in America.”
He said that at the bare minimum, pastors should be warning their faithful about abortifacient contraceptives, “so that women in the pews and at the pickets won’t be aborting children unaware.”
“If enhanced, [the contraceptive] desire leads to abortion, and today in our nation a holocaust endures for which the church is substantially accountable,” he writes in his letter.
“The pulpit, of necessity, must voice the word it has long avoided and perhaps feared most. The word is contraception,” he writes. While pastors avoid the subject, “year by year Christians use contraception freely because they do not desire a child or additional children in their home.”
Dunn also blames the pro-life movement itself for failing to “ably confront” contraception in past decades – a failure that “has cost numerous lives,” he says.
In a personal confession included in a pamphlet entitled ‘Contraception: The Tragic Deception’, Dunn explains that his opposition to contraception was motivated in part by regret over his “personal loss” of children through the practice.
He says that while he cherishes and rejoices in his son and daughter, “I wonder how many more [lights of the world] God wanted to originate in our family.”
“Though we yielded no ground to abortion, we fell prey to its more deceptive and senior partner,” he explains. “With passing years, an abiding sadness has settled into my spirit, and I do not want to lose it, for it has taught me the incomparable worth of procreation.”
He says in his letter to pastors that contraception is by no means a “Catholic issue,” as often thought, highlighting the fact that the Protestant churches had uniformly condemned the practice for over 400 years. It was only in 1930 at the Anglican Lambeth conference that a Protestant church opened the door, initially under strict conditions.
He observes that devoted pro-life advocates “seldom ignore the impact of child aversion and contraception,” while “Christians who defend artificial birth control may claim a pro-life position but usually lack the heart and urgency necessary for diligent pro-life work.”
“All worshippers should understand contraception’s pivotal role in abortion’s legalization,” Dunn writes, noting that the “right to privacy” that anchored the Roe v. Wade decision was first used by the Supreme Court in its 1965 decision Griswold v. Connecticut, which overturned a ban on contraceptives.
He says there’s a “strong case” that the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling “stands as divine judgment on a lukewarm church and errant nation that for decades … ignored God’s heart for procreation.”
Even the Supreme Court, in its 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, affirmed that “the abortion decision is of the same character as the decision to use contraception,” and upheld the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on the basis that “[Americans have come to rely on] the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”
Along with his strong opposition to contraception, Dunn acknowledges that there are points in a married couple’s life when avoiding pregnancy is justified. He notes that God has established a natural rhythm to the woman’s reproductive cycle so that married couples can make love during infertile periods.
But, he says, “before spouses limit pregnancy, they should consider the child (or children) whose conception they may prevent.”
“Christian spouses know about sex,” he writes. “But how many know the inestimable worth of their fertility and realize that through God’s plan they can literally create human beings, both for God’s glory and their own fulfillment.”
Find Dunn’s letter, To End the American Holocaust: The Leadership Only Pastors Can Provide, here.