When I was a freshman at my Catholic High School I remember the Religion teacher trying to explain why the Church was against contraception. She said that, "Removing the possibility of pregnancy changes the designed nature of the sexual act and therefore interferes with G-d's plan." We all laughed at her becuase we didn't understand her point. She held firm. Time went by.
In 1990 I came to understand her point. I was listening to "Morning Edition" on NPR. They were doing a week-long series called "30 Years with The Pill." On one of those shows Bob Edwards pointed out that what The Pill had done, as no other method of birth control before it, was remove contraception from the sex act. You didn't have to be planning to have sex, and you didn't have to interrupt a passionate moment to go put on a barrier. The woman simply took a pill every morning whether she thought she might have sex or not. Contraception had been dis-connected from sex.
That Religion Teacher's point from nearly 20 years earlier hit me between the eyes so hard I almost went off the road. Just as contraception had been dis-connected from sex, so had conception. People no longer associated conception with sex. That's why people could tell you that the reason we have more unwanted pregnancies is because we don't have access to condoms or we don't have access to abortions or any reason at all except that people are having sex when they aren't ready to be parents. Obviously if you ask people where babies come from, they will tell you that it comes from heterosexual sex. But when you talk about abortions or unwed mothers or whatever, asking people to take responsibility for their sexual activity is never put on the table.
Like it or not, contraception impacts our fundamental understanding of our sexuality. And once you've made such a fundamental change, the law of unintended consequences takes its toll.
And, for the record, I'm a Protestant Christian.
Shalom.