Table 4.

Participants discuss resistance of belief that contraception is a sin

Grounds for resistance of idea that contraception as a sin	Participants comments
Having more children than one can care for is also a sin	As my father in law says, one part is that [family] planning is a sin, but as my husband was saying, a greater sin is having children that […] we don’t have enough to give them the things that children should be given, so we decided to plan, yes. According to what I’ve heard all methods are a sin, because they say that’s what God sends, one has to receive, but, at times one does not have the possibility to provide for all of them. Well the Bible says it is good, but thinking about it, living it, well one can’t, because one is of scarce resources and can’t manage with so many children. They say you can’t do anything because in their mind it’s a sin and the Bible says that God created man and woman to have a family. Well yes, but it also says in the Bible that you’re not going to give your child a stone if he asks for bread, so there it talks about the family. But as they don’t understand, they are closed-minded that it’s not good, so for this reason they don’t use a method.
Using contraception is not a sin compared to abortion	According to what they say, they’ve told me that it’s a sin, but I say it’s a sin when you’re pregnant and you think about aborting; there yes, because you have a human in your belly, but not if you take care of yourself from the beginning. I say this is not a sin; that’s what I’ve understood.
Contraception is not a sin if you know you are not pregnant when you start using it	With natural methods one can’t, can’t abort. And with contraceptives one can cause an abortion. Or someone who has not used contraceptives, and without realizing it, is expecting, and then they plan or use methods. This is the risk of using contraceptive methods. With natural methods you can’t abort. But if one knows she isn’t pregnant she can use contraceptive methods, uhum, to not become pregnant.
Approval from a community leader	The priest says one has to plan naturally, take care of oneself, but sometimes this doesn’t work. Because, for example, I can’t because my period is not consistent.
Cannot plan family naturally because menstrual cycle is inconsistent	You’re a ‘one-a-year’er’ [Añera] people said, since I would get pregnant very quickly… [In church] they told us that it’s a sin to use [contraception] … abort or anything else is a sin … but one time the pastor’s wife asked me, ‘are you taking care of yourself?’ Yes, I told her, yes because my daughter is still very little and another one will be so hard. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘better that way so when she’s bigger you can have another one. There’s no problem,’ she said. That’s why I was using it.