Following Vatican Council II, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae. All Christian Churches had embraced artificial contraception and Catholics around the world fully expected that the pope would now follow suit. Some priests, in anticipation of this, had already begun the 'wink' and 'nod' in the confessionals, hoping to reassure their congregation that more than likely, it would no longer be a sin to practice artificial birth control. You can imagine the surprise, and even some tantrums, from the pews.
Given what we have witnessed of the slippery slope down which artificial birth control has taken us as a society, the encyclical of Paul VI, written in 1968, is actually prophetic.
“Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general.”
Right on. And Humanae Vitae was absolutely the beginning of the conversation, from our perspective, that is, the truly pro life perspective.