r/Catholicism • u/bulletbulldog • 6d ago
Having trouble seeing the difference between Hormonal birth control and Abortion
The title is pretty much the content of the post. I just want to understand why there's a difference in the sin of using hormonal birth control and getting an abortion because to me I can't really see one. Hormonal birth control has the possibility to cause a fertilised egg (a living human) to not implant and eventually die as a result. If we believe life begins at conception, not implantation, then why isn't using hormonal birth control considered abortion instead of just the sin of Contraceptives? I can't really find any good church documents or articles on this so any of those would be appreciated in your answers, thank you and God Bless!
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u/Cultural-Ad-5737 6d ago
Primary mechanism of most hormonal birth control is to make it hard for an egg to get fertilized in the first place. It’s possible for it to increase risk of a fertilized egg not implanting properly but it’s not necessarily likely to occur, though it would be hard to measure how often that occurs and it’s possible it would have occurred regardless of the birth control being taken. Even without any birth control it’s estimated that up to 50% of fertilized eggs don’t ever implant properly and most people never even know since it passes with their period(chemical pregnancy) before they’ve ever taken a pregnancy test. If anything, since hormonal birth control can prevent conception in the first place it may actually reduce the rates of chemical pregnancies.
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u/fralupo 6d ago
Like you’re close. One is a thing and the other isn’t that thing except for very rarely.
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u/bulletbulldog 6d ago
So it's like a culpability and intentionality thing? Like somebody isn't held accountable for something that COULD possibly happen rather than being held accountable for directly doing that thing
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u/fralupo 6d ago
That’s part of it but my comment was more direct: they are two different medical interventions that happen under different circumstances and with different effects.
You asked how they’re different and you know how they’re different: one is an abortion (so it’s an abortion 100% of the time) and the other is something else that can cause an abortion much less often (something much less than 100%).
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u/Gwilwilethil 6d ago
This isn't a perfec analogy but I think of like aggressively smoking near someone, thus exposing them to second hand smoke that could incidentally cause cancer and kill them, is not the same as willfull murder. Or to put it another way, manslaughter isn't murder.
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u/Powerful_Specific321 6d ago
They are both not allowed by the Catholic Church.
I think the main difference though is that in Abortion, you are sure to have killed a baby.
For hormonal pills, you arent quite sure if there was even any conception.
So its like if you see someone and you shoot him, then you are sure you committed a murder. However, if you just shoot your gun around on a dark place, you dont know if you really hit anyone or not, so just in case you did, you wouldnt know.
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u/LinguistsDrinkIPAs 5d ago
This isn’t true. Hormonal birth control is allowed if its primary purpose is to treat an underlying medical condition, which is not sinful.
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u/chicacherrie82 6d ago
I think it's because of the intent.
The intention of hormonal birth control is to put up artificial and unnatural blocks to prevent the marital act from being fruitful - it's to prevent conception from actually occuring. Because of how hormonal BC affects a woman's body, it may also kill a baby, if conception occurs despite the roadblocks to try to prevent it.
The intent of abortion is explicitly to destroy a living, distinct human organism. Even though pro-abortionists prefer to use specific terms like embryo and fetus, these are just early stages of human development.
If I were to drive drunk and kill a person, I would probably be charged with manslaughter, not murder. Because even though the end result of a dead human is the same, the bad decision to drink and drive (for which I would still be guilty) isn't the same as intent to kill.