As a veterinarian, Travis said his interest in wildlife conservation got him into reproductive biology and research aimed at fighting infertility and exploring birth control methods.

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The bottom line is that the use of reliable birth control is the best way to prevent an unintended pregnancy, but the fact is that unprotected sex does occur and sometimes birth control methods do fail.

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Not all methods of birth control will qualify for the deduction.

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The Vatican has over recent decades issued blanket condemnations of artificial methods of birth control, in-vitro fertilization, therapeutic and reproductive cloning, and human embryonic stem cell research.

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Women of childbearing age, for example, would probably be ineligible unless they happened to have been sterilised, or unless they routinely used two methods of birth control simultaneously and regularly had pregnancy tests.

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Evangelicals generally permit the use of birth control, but they object to specific methods such as the morning-after contraceptive pill, which they argue is tantamount to abortion.

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