It did involve lots of children, miscarriages and death during childbirth though. Whatever risks we might face to our health due to birth control pills or condoms, they are much less significant than the hazards involved with a pregnancy and delivery.
Visits to old family cemeteries are eye-opening views to past grief and tragedy--stone upon stone marking the graves of babies who did not live to be a year old, or the graves of wives, worn out in turn by the demands of hard work and childbearing.
Sometimes a dose of reality is called for when nostalgia for the past sets in.