Why should contraceptives not be cheap and widely available?
When it comes to personhood one can broadly categorize two positions:
- A person becomes a person at or very shortly after conception
- A person becomes a person around the time of birth
This results in two respective perspectives on abortions:
- An abortion is the intentional 'murder' of a person ("Pro-life")
- An abortion is a medical procedure removing a clump of cells from a woman's body ("Pro-choice")
Thus you have one group that would consider abortions abhorrent, whilst you have another group which basically considers them fine. However, looking at Christian groups who argue against abortions, there is a systematic tendency to also be against the wide availability of contraception, which would be a very effective way to decrease the rates of 'something abhorrent' happening... whilst in contrast it's the groups that would consider abortions 'okay' (and thus have a far smaller 'motivation') that seem to advocate in favor of wide and cheap availability of contraceptives.
Thus getting to my question: What are the main religious arguments employed by Christian 'groups' against the wide availability of contraceptives? Note that I am specifically not asking whether specific denominations are in favor or against the use of contraceptives by their own congregation (as there are some fantastic articles already discussing that).
Some perspective: Personally, I take an anti-abortion view (based on the position that we don't know when a person becomes a person, so I think we should play it safe), and I feel like it thus becomes a moral imperative to advocate in favor of the wide availability of cheap or free contraception, because regardless of whether a Christian should or shouldn't use contraception, it's far more important to decrease the rate of abortions. I always felt like this is something that should've and could've been a common ground between the different groups (pro life and pro choice), and yet the polar opposite is true. Nearly every time I express this position in a discussion with a 'pro-choice' individual I get relatively shocked reactions.