More than 50 years ago, the Vatican, led by Pope Paul VI – a thoughtful and conscientious man – deliberated over the newly invented contraceptive Pill for women. Could it be regarded as a legitimate method of regulating fertility? Many Catholic scholars thought it could. The Pill had been pioneered by a Catholic doctor, John Rock, and he had done much of his field research in Puerto Rico, among Catholic mothers who were anxious to limit their families.
It was a rabbi who explained to me why the contraceptive Pill was the most acceptable form of birth control – as far as he was concerned, for orthodox Jews. Barrier methods were frowned upon precisely because they placed an impediment between a couple who should be “two in one flesh”, whereas the contraceptive Pill was a medication which placed no obstruction to conjugality. From this rabbinical lesson, I could see why the contraceptive Pill came so near to getting papal approval back in 1968.
