For my internet issue I decided to look into biblical interpretations regarding the use of contraception. Each of the articles I found point to the story of Onan in Genesis 38, as well as other texts in their interpretations of this issue.
This article looks at the arguments regarding contraception in the Old Testament, and comes to the conclusion that the text does not forbid the use of contraception. It points to Song of Solomon, claiming that the young man seduces the young woman with a number of plants that were used as contraceptives during that time, such as pomegranates, myrrh, and cinnamon. This supposedly would have allowed the two to have sex without the risk of pregnancy. The article also looks into the book of Esther, in which Esther intervenes through seduction to save the Jews, as well as Numbers 5, which describes a ritual “when a husband, who suspects that his wife has cheated on him, can force her to swallow a special concoction prepared by a priest.” The text says that if she has been unfaithful, the LORD will her belly swell and her thigh to fall away. In other words, this will cause her to abort her fetus if she has in fact conceived through another man.
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/05/biblical-evidence-against.html#
This article believes that the Bible prohibits contraception, pointing to the passage in Genesis 38 in which Judah commands Onan to sleep with Tamar to give his brother offspring. Onan “spills his seed on the ground” instead of obeying his father, and as a result is killed by God. The article acknowledges that this incident involved levirate law, the duty to produce offspring with the wife of a deceased brother, but states that God did not punish Onan for failing to fulfill this duty, stating that the punishment for such a crime was public humiliation, not death. Therefore, the author argues, the punishment must have been for his act of contraception. The previous article from AlterNet argues the opposite, that God’s anger resulted from Onan’s failure to carry out his duty of giving his brother offspring.
http://www.equip.org/articles/should-christians-use-birth-control/#christian-books-1
A section of this article specifically looks at birth control in biblical teaching. The author states that the Old Testament expresses God’s desire that His people not be barren (Deut. 7:4), that God rejected the common practice of sterilizing males (Deut. 23:1), as well as the sexual abstinence in Israel (Exod. 21:10). This article also touches on the story of Onan, and argues that it is not a condemnation of contraception, rather a punishment of Onan’s unwillingness to bear children for his brother. Whereas the previous two articles focused strictly on the Old Testament, this article touches briefly on the New Testament, though the author argues that nowhere in the New Testament is birth control prohibited. He cites 1 Corinthians 7:5 as a verse in which Paul cautions against refraining from sexual relations with one’s spouse except during periods of religious devotion, which may be related to the topic, but does not touch on the issue of contraception.