[extropy-chat] impeccable birth control
Spike
spike66 at comcast.net
Sat Oct 30 18:18:47 UTC 2004
> > On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, Olga Bourlin wrote:
> >
> > It is almost impossible for today's women to realize how
> > reproductive life was like without the almost impeccable birth
control
> > we now have...
As a young newlywed twenty years ago, we were trying to
adjust and create habits, as newlyweds do. My bride was
a strict Seventh Day Adventist in those days. Strict
SDAs have a gentle euphamism for copulation: "thine own
pleasure." (Im not kidding). The reasoning follows that
a couple should not engage in marital relations on Sabbath,
because Isaiah 58:13 saith
"If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing
*thy pleasure* on my holy day...not doing thine own ways
nor finding *thine own pleasure*...then shalt thou delight
thyself in the lord; ...I will cause thee to ride upon
high places of the earth..."
Well, I was a sport, so I suggested a fantasy game for
Friday evening (Sabbath begins sundown Friday). We would
play 1844. (The Seventh Day Adventist church began in the
year 1844) We would imagine ourselves as a young couple in
1844 who had no access to birth control or any technology
not available to a young couple in 1844, which meant we
could have a fire in the fireplace and candles for light,
but no magazines, computer, TV, radio, newspapers, none
of that. We were to imagine we needed to postpone offspring,
for the usual reasons young couples might wish to do so:
establish the farm or business etc. We were to imagine
the young bride is at the peak of fertility in her monthly
cycle, and so for that reason they were to struggle to
avoid the newlywed thang.
OK, so the sun is down, candles are lit, the fireplace burning
cheerfully. The pioneer couple gazes at each other, making
pleasant converstion. A minute passed. Then another. They
look at the clock. It is a minute past. Then suddenly...
another minute went by. Someone bumped into someone else
in the dim candlelight, a playful rassling match took place,
and well, let your imagination fill in the rest for the young
pioneers.
How different our lives would have been without impeccable
birth control.
spike
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