Contraception quite literally means against life. The prefix contra is the Latin word for against. The suffix ception refers to conception. Conception derives from the Latin word concipere which means to take in, in other words become pregnant, to take life within you. There are three ways in which contraception can go against life.
First, it is against nature and the order of God. Second, it is against the life of the child. Third, it is against the dignity of the parents and the child.
Against nature and the order of God:
God created us in a perfect design. Even those who don’t recognize God know that there are certain orders to the world. The creation of new life goes hand in hand with the union of spouses. The marital act is made for two things, an act of union between spouses, and an act of procreation.
In order for the marital act to be as it was naturally made, it must complete both of these requirements. Reproduction is a good and important role of those who are called to it, and it allows for total giving or union of one another. Man and women come together and are able to be (co) creators of life. God is the first creator; He chooses when a child is conceived. For this reason, humans do not have the final word when it comes to procreation. To use contraception to is go directly against the authority of God and nature as God intended it.
The Catechism, paragraph 2367
Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God. “Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility.”
Against the life of the child:
It is clear that contraception stops life from being possible; however, it goes further than to stop it from being possible. It can stop a child that God intended to create from being conceived. Hence, there is an unlawful and immoral taking of life when contraception is used. This child had been thought of by God to fulfill a purpose in their life on Earth. Due to contraception this purpose will never be fulfilled.
The Catechism, paragraph 2366
Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is “on the side of life,” teaches that “it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.” “This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.”
Against the dignity of the parents and child:
The dignity of the marital act and new life is something that has never been appreciated. The union of husband and wife is good and beautiful. To take away the opportunity for life in the marital act leads to each person being used for their body.
No matter how loving the marital act of spouses may be, if they are willfully causing the impossibility of pregnancy, they are using each other for their bodies. The man’s is undignified is this situation because his natural role and ability as a father is being stripped away from him. This is especially demeaning to the woman. Contraception takes away the gift of being able to form a child in her body. A woman is one of God’s most beautiful creations, and He gives her the ability to form a whole new human being with His power and guidance. As well as the mother and father, the dignity of the child is also disregarded. When a man and woman, in the marital act, while directly stopping the opportunity for life, claim that the child that may have been born was not worthy of life.
The Catechism, paragraph 2369
“By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its orientation toward man’s exalted vocation to parenthood.”
