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I vividly remember crying in the kitchen with my wife, Lauren. I was doing some dishes when Lauren put a pregnancy test on the counter next to me. That moment was totally unlike the others, where there was waiting, joy, and celebration. This one felt like a punishment and a total surprise. We already had three rambunctious boys under the age of 5. What’s more, the pregnancies had been hard on Lauren’s health. Her midwives had recommended against having another pregnancy for a while.
A year later, two things were true. First, we did what many faithful people of God have done before us when faced with unexpected children. We wrestled with God. We fought with each other. We talked with friends. And we changed. We made our peace with God’s plan. That fourth boy is now 7, and we love him with that indescribable love that is the blessing of parenting. He is a gift unlike any other.
The second truth is I got a vasectomy. Lauren scheduled it for me. We didn’t need to talk about it. It never occurred to me to pray about it. I never consulted a friend about it. I did not research it. I just tied off my ability to reproduce. But that way of making such a morally fraught decision was a mistake.
T. S. Eliot called contraception the suicide of civilization. Theodore Roosevelt called it “the one sin for which the penalty is national death.” G. K. Chesterton was even more blunt: “I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing.” Birth control did change the world. Contraception pulled the plug, and American sexual ethics fell swiftly down the drain. The right to privacy emerged from access to contraception; Roe v. Wade and the sexual revolution followed closely behind, including a rampant pornography industry.
When I ran to the doctor to get a vasectomy in my mid-30s, I had no idea I was standing in a world created by such chaos. I was just trying to care for my family. Having now learned much more about the history of sex ethics and a theology of the body, here is what I would recommend as a primer:
First, I have come to believe that Christians should have a strong preference for natural family planning. Even my Catholic brothers and sisters admit and allow for natural family planning through abstinence at certain times of the month. I used to find their arguments cheeky: Don’t ever separate the unitive and procreative aspects of sex (unless you want to separate them by natural family planning, wink, wink). But I give it much greater respect now.
Submitting to the natural rhythms of our bodies is a far healthier—and far less ethically fraught—means of family planning. Natural family planning requires we adjust our lives to our bodies, not our bodies to our lives. A century ago, there was relative consensus in the church that our culture should be very cautious of birth control.
Second, male contraception should be cautiously permissible. While natural family planning seems the wisest and safest choice, I find condoms or vasectomies permissible for a few reasons.
To start, they put the burden on the male and require him to take initiative to control himself and alter his life when it comes to sex. This is healthy for men. When sex is offered to men with no responsibilities or restrictions attached, men, women, and children suffer. When men are required to be responsible for sex, men, women, and children benefit.
Male contraception also helps a man care for his family by allowing good and beautiful intimacy to flourish while stewarding his family’s stage of life. But it should not be encouraged outside marriage, since according to Scripture there is no place for sex outside of marriage. I also believe this should not be used lightly to delay children for a long period of time or to create a culture where children are optional in marriage.
But when you are in a committed marriage with children and having more would create unwise health or mental health issues, I stand by the idea of male contraception as a possibly wise option for a man to care for his wife and family.
These are admittedly narrow circumstances for male contraception to be used discerningly. This is why I believe the church should move from a default posture of “What is wrong with this?” to asking instead, “What is right about this?”
It is not a simple answer. The industry of contraception almost inevitably leads to a culture that is interested in not family planning but untethered sex. So I admit that making exceptions for wise use in marriage is a very difficult ethical dilemma. Evangelicals can and should put much more theological work into these questions.
Third, female contraception should be strongly avoided. It is simply wrong for men to put the burden of family planning on altering more complex female biology. It may even be evil when it is driven largely by a willingness to complicate or damage the female body to simplify and increase the pleasures of the male body.
The world of pill-based birth control and intrauterine devices (IUDs) has created a world where women are almost expected to put their bodies through wild hormonal changes for the sake of sex without consequence.
Of course, some women use birth control for medical, hormonal, and health reasons. But the default assumption that women should be altering their bodies to give men sex with no side effects puts the burden in the wrong place. Men and women are better off when men are held to the very highest responsibility for sex.
Further, some IUDs and birth control pills work as abortifacients, since they don’t allow an already-created embryo to implant and grow. In vitro fertilization, too, often leads to discarded or forgotten embryos. As Christians, we must challenge our consciences and advocate on these personal topics as much as we speak out on abortion.
If I could go back seven years ago, I would make the same choice, but for entirely different reasons. And I would do it in an entirely different way. I would weigh the fact that I would be taking a step of incredible moral and physical significance. I would ask for counsel and prayer. I would read and think. I would act the same, probably, but with sobriety and reverence.
But I did not. I simply got a vasectomy. That puts me in a long line of modern men and women who casually use all kinds of birth control with no serious consideration.
We must reckon with our conscience, with church history, with the devastating impact of sterilization’s common use, and with the hard ethical choices that accompany reproductive technologies. If we cannot find better practical ethics, then we may have to admit the historical church was right.
Justin Whitmel Earley is a lawyer, speaker, and author of numerous best-selling books, including Habits of the Household and, most recently, The Body Teaches the Soul.
This article appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "What Is A Man's Responsibility in Contraception?".
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