The Open Letter

Why a letter — and grace before argument

The series begins as an open letter to pastors, elders and church leaders, written by people who say plainly that they did not understand this subject themselves until recently. Most evangelical churches confess that life begins at conception; the letter asks whether we have thought through what that confession means for contraception — because some methods, in the makers’ own words, can act after a new life has begun.

Before any argument, the letter stops to speak to the reader it may wound: the person who realises they have done in ignorance a thing they would have died to prevent. To them it sets grace down first — the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin (1 John 1:7), there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and Paul, who approved the killing of the innocent, “received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13–16). The letter takes Wesley’s book against the slave trade as its model and asks only what he asked: read to the end before you decide.

Read this part in full in the letter →

The child conceived is a human being

Everything rests here, so the letter refuses to rush. It deliberately does not argue that the conceived child is a person — “person” is a word from philosophy and law, defined and redefined by people in power, and every proposed test (reason, self-awareness, being wanted) leaves somebody out. Great crimes have repeatedly been done by men who admitted their victims were human and then withdrew protection on some other ground; in Dred Scott, Chief Justice Taney did not rule that the man before him was not a man, but that he was not a citizen.

The letter stands instead on a fact: at conception a new human being exists, with his own DNA, his own sex, his own directed growth. What he lacks is not humanity but maturity. And it stands on a command: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). The Hebrew is ha’adam — the human being. The protection reaches as far as humanity reaches. Scripture traces persons to conception (Psalm 51:5; Job 3:3; Jeremiah 1:5), and Luke uses one word, brephos, for the unborn John, the newborn Jesus, and the children brought for blessing.

Read this part in full in the letter →

This is not a new teaching

The Didache — late first or early second century — commands: “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” Athenagoras, Tertullian, Basil (“with us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed”), Jerome and Chrysostom all speak the same way; Calvin calls the unborn child “already a human being”; the Westminster Larger Catechism forbids “whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any”; Bonhoeffer calls the destruction of the embryo “nothing but murder.”

The change has a date. In 1920 the Lambeth Conference warned emphatically against contraception. In 1930 the same conference allowed it, by 193 votes to 67 — and the Church of England became the first major Christian communion to permit it in any circumstance. One Methodist body in New York had moved earlier; Lambeth was the moment the wall came fully down. Most modern evangelicals hold the view formalised in 1930, not the view the church held for nearly two millennia.

Read this part in full in the letter →

Why you have never heard this

Until the 1960s, “conception” and “fertilisation” meant the same thing. In 1965 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists redefined conception as implantation — six to twelve days later — with no new science behind the change. The reason is on the record: at a 1959 Planned Parenthood symposium, Dr Bent Boving said the social advantage of a method being seen to prevent conception rather than destroy a pregnancy “could depend upon something so simple as a prudent habit of speech.”

In the UK the same line was drawn by the courts. In 2000 the Government told Parliament that emergency contraception works “before a pregnancy has been established”; in 2002 the High Court ruled in Smeaton that there is “no established pregnancy prior to implantation.” So a child lost before implantation is not, in law, a lost pregnancy — and nothing requires anyone to tell you. The letter calls this what Isaiah called it: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).

Read this part in full in the letter →

What these methods can do

Most hormonal contraceptives are designed with up to three effects: stop ovulation; thicken cervical mucus; and third, change the lining of the womb so that a child already conceived cannot implant, and dies. The first two prevent a life beginning; the third ends one that has begun. This is not a campaign claim — the NHS says the copper coil works in part by “stopping a fertilised egg from implanting,” and the makers’ own product summaries list the endometrial effect.

The clearest case is the copper coil used as emergency contraception, licensed up to five days after sex. Fertilisation happens within about a day, so in that use the coil cannot be preventing it — only one effect is left. The letter is honest about the other side too: for the levonorgestrel morning-after pill the implantation wording was removed in 2022 and regulators now say it mainly delays ovulation, so the case is not rested there. And where the odds are unknowable, the letter borrows Wesley’s logic: a man who fires into a bush, not knowing whether someone is in it, is not excused by not knowing.

Read this part in full in the letter →

The nation, the shepherds, and the way back

The letter then turns home: 277,970 abortions in England and Wales in 2023, the highest since the Abortion Act; an estimated eleven million lives since 1967; a Parliament that voted 379 to 137 in June 2025 to remove a woman’s own abortion from the criminal law. “Notwithstanding ten thousand laws, right is right, and wrong is wrong still” (Wesley). And it presses Isaiah 1:15 — spoken to the worshipping people, not the pagans: religious observance does not cover shed blood.

To shepherds it brings six requests in deliberate order: prepare confidential care before preaching; state the truth in writing; explain the methods plainly; give a better vision of family; pray; disciple the young. And it ends where it began — with repentance made safe by grace: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean” (Isaiah 1:16–17), godly grief that leads to life (2 Corinthians 7:10), and no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Read this part in full in the letter →