HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ATTITUDES TO FERTILITY – CONTRACEPTIVE ROULETTE
Thus to use contraception requires at some level a grieving for all the possible loved babies that could be born. We are all too aware of the terrible irony of couples assiduously and conscientiously using contraception for years, only to discover that one or other or both of them are infertile. An awareness of these often unspoken feelings may explain some of the enormous fear of the reliable methods of contraception that can underlie some contraceptive difficulties. Such methods are too powerful and will damage fertility. There is a fear of retribution, the woman will be unable to have children, and hence some will play contraceptive roulette in order to ‘placate the gods’.
The reality, of course, has been that human beings from earliest historical times have tried to control their fertility when it was inconvenient to have a child. The sin of Onan in the Old Testament exemplifies this. Onan should under Hebraic law have impregnated his dead brother’s wife. Instead he ‘cast his seed upon the ground’ angering God. This story has been used as evidence that all forms of non-reproductive sex and the use of contraception are against God’s will. The ancient Egyptians used a vaginal pessary made of crocodile dung to prevent conception, and instruments to procure abortion were used in Roman times. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, advocated violent exercises. Thus powerful opposing forces are present in our psyches, both the urge to reproduce but also the urge to abort. All this may seem a far cry from the ordinary contraceptive consultation but every now and then these forces will be evident.
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