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What do you make of surveys that report half of Americans believe life begins at conception, but 52 percent favor allowing women to get the morning-after pill without a doctor's prescription, and only 58 percent of conservative Republicans and 52 percent of white evangelicals say they oppose such access?

I think this demonstrates a lack of consistent thinking. And we are, ourselves, to blame for this as evangelical leaders, theologians and pastors. We have not been talking about an issue which is of such day-to-day consequence for Christians and Christian couples in particular. So, many are simply not drawing the necessary lines that would connect these questions. And they fail to see that an affirmation of the sanctity of human life begins with the fertilization of the egg. And once that takes place, anything thereafter is some form of an abortion—and thus is illegitimate. What we face are many evangelicals whose understanding of these things is rather superficial at best and largely influenced by the culture. And so they know how to answer the question about the sanctity of human life correctly, in the main, but they do not know how to apply that to the question of birth control.

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This article is a sidebar to "Morning-After Headache | FDA approval for Plan B does not quell criticism."

Mohler's website has several other commentaries on contraception, including:

Can Christians Use Birth Control? (Mar. 30, 2004)

Rethinking Contraception -- A Younger Generation Ponders the Question (Oct.3, 2006)

Contra-Contraception? An Article Worth Reading (May 8, 2006)

Considering The Contraceptive Culture (Audio, Sept. 25, 2006)

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October (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50