The contra-life argument against contraception by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and William May maintains that contraception is always and everywhere morally wrong because it involves a contra-life choice to impede new human life. This article develops four problems that people might have with the contra-life argument and then shows that none of those problems undercut the argument. The most serious problem is that the contra-life argument seems to fail to show adequately what is wrong with impeding new human life, and this article neutralizes that problem by showing that choices to impede new human life are wrong because they involve unreasonable self-preference. Finally, this article shows that the moral character of contraceptive use for non-contraceptive reasons is often difficult to determine.
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References
1.
In The Teaching of “Humanae Vitae”: A Defense (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 35–116, reprinted from The Thomist 52 (1988): 365-426. All citations here are to the former edition. See also Joseph Boyle, “Contraception and Natural Family Planning,” in Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader, ed. Janet Smith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 407-417, and which first appeared in International Review of Natural Family Planning 44 (1980): 309-315; Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), 506-519; and John Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), ch. 4.
2.
For an interesting examination of the heuristic analogies that have been used in contra-life arguments, see MasekLawrence, “Improving the Analogies in Contralife Arguments: The Consistency of Catholic Teachings about Regulating Births,”The Heythrop Journal49 (2008): 442–452.
3.
For the opposite answer of “not much,” see LongSteven, “The False Theory Undergirding Condomitic Exceptionalism: A Response to William F. Murphy, Jr. and Rev. Martin Rhonheimer,”The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly8 (2008): 709–731; Janet Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), app. IV, 340-370; Martin Rhonheimer, “Contraception, Sexual Behavior, and Natural Law: Philosophical Foundation of the Norm of Humanae Vitae,”Linacre Quarterly 56.2 (May 1989): 20-57; R. A. Connor, “Contraception and the Contralife Will,” Linacre Quarterly 57.4 (November 1990): 78-93; and Kevin Rickert, “Is Contraception Contralife? A Critique of Grisez, et al.,” Lyceum 4 (Spring 1992): 19-37.
4.
For statistics and analysis of contraceptive use in the United States, see OhlendorfJennifer, and FehringRichard, “The Influence of Religiosity on Contraceptive Use among Roman Catholic Women in the United States,”Linacre Quarterly74 (2007): 135–144; and Richard Fehring and Andrea Matovina Schlidt, “Trends in Contraceptive Use among Catholics in the United States: 1988-1995,” Linacre Quarterly 68 (2001): 170-185.
5.
FinnisJohn, BoyleJosephJr., and GrisezGermainNuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 286. See also Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), ch. 8, questions G and H, 215-222; and John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 118-125.
6.
That is, apart from laboratories, technicians, cryopreservation, and the like.
7.
Of course, the two having sex are there, and contraception might be against the good of one, either, or both of them. But any argument against contraception that locates its wrongness in harm done to interpersonal love, virtuous sexual conduct, or something else about the couple is not a contra-life argument, and the contra-life argument is being critically analyzed here.
8.
SpoerlJoseph has convincingly argued this point as an essential premise in his argument against in vitro fertilization in “Making Laws on Making Babies: Ethics, Public Policy, and Reproductive Technology,”The American Journal of Jurisprudence45 (2000): 94–107. Compare with Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), app. G.
9.
Grisez“Every Marital Act,”61.
10.
Grisez“Every Marital Act,”66.
11.
Grisez“Every Marital Act,”66.
12.
Grisez“Every Marital Act,”62, 65-68.
13.
Grisez“Every Marital Act,”47–60.
14.
“On Doing the Best for Our Children,” in Ethics and Population, ed. BaylesMichael D. (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1976), 100–115.
15.
See, for example, Finnis, Moral Absolutes, 54–55.
16.
For more on the first-person perspective in morality, see TollefsenChristopher, “Is a Purely First Person Account of Human Action Defensible?”Ethical Theory and Moral Practice9 (2006): 441–660.
17.
Grisez“Every Marital Act,”81–92.
18.
Grisez, Boyle, Finnis and May's second argument against contra-life choices (“Every Marital Act,”, 62–63), namely, that any baby which comes about because of unsuccessful contraception would always come about unwanted and thus unjustly, would seem to be defeated so long as a person had the appropriate, and apparently coherent, conditional intention: “though I do not want the children that contraception prevents, I do want and welcome any that are brought about if contraception fails.” Such a conditional intention is different from the intention to prevent all possible babies from coming to be and to accept those that nonetheless do come to be, and the former conditional intention is not susceptible to their criticism of the latter intention.
19.
That is, actions that are morally good prior to consideration of their bad side effects but that might turn out to be morally bad when their bad side effects are taken into consideration.
20.
See my own “Boyle and the Principle of Double Effect,”The American Journal of Jurisprudence52 (2007): 259–272, and the literature cited therein for how to formulate the principle of double effect properly and for moral norms which determine the reasonableness or unreasonableness of accepting unintended consequences. See also: Joseph Boyle, “The Moral Meaning and Justification of the Doctrine of Double Effect: A Response to Robert Anderson,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence 53 (2008): 69-84.
21.
For a persuasive defense of the moral significance of this distinction, see: Grisez, Boyle, and Finnis, “Direct and Indirect: A Reply to Critics of Our Action Theory,”The Thomist65 (2001): 1–44, esp. sec. I; or Finnis, Boyle, and Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, 288-294.
22.
See my own “The Moral Permissibility of Accepting Bad Side Effects,”American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly83 (2009): 255–266, and the literature cited therein for how to make this defense.
23.
Grisez, Boyle, Finnis and May refer to this use of contraceptives at Grisez, et al., “Every Marital Act,”40–41.
24.
Grisez, Boyle, Finnis and May discuss the merits and shortcomings of abstinence at “Every Marital Act,”, 69–80.
25.
When contraceptives (condoms) are used to avoid the spread of disease, a third question arises: Is sexual intercourse that employs condoms even sexual intercourse? If not, the sexual behavior might be morally impermissible on still other grounds. See Germain Grisez, “Moral Questions on Condoms and Disease Prevention,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 8 (2008): 471-476; and SmithJanet, “The Morality of Condom Use by HIV-Infected Spouses,”The Thomist70 (2006): 27–69.
26.
For Grisez, Boyle, Finnis and May's defense of this case, see Grisez, et al., “Every Marital Act,”68–69.
27.
This is one of the three common, but unconvincing, criticisms leveled at the new natural law theory's insistence that intentionality is at the heart of moral actions. The theory, according to the first criticism, allows the disingenuous redescription of a person's intentions in such a way that the person can say she is “really doing” just about anything (see, for example, Steven Long, “The False Theory,” 714 note 10 and 724). The second criticism claims that disingenuously redescribed intentions lead to outrageous conclusions of the form “even such-and-such would be permissible” (see, for example, “Every Marital Act,”, 722 note 23, where Steven Long says it would be permissible even “to burn a human person to death because one wishes to light up the darkness”). While some concrete conclusions of the new natural law theory might indeed offend the sensibilities of critics, what offends their sensibilities is not equivalent to the morally outrageous. The new natural law theory has plenty of resources to condemn what truly is morally outrageous. However, critics are correct in pointing out that there are limits to what people can intend. Critics just misidentify those limits, thinking that intentions are necessarily limited by physical behavior, natural processes, causal structures, outcomes, and the like. Limitations on the intentions of moral agents include at least the following. First, no moral agent can intend to do what she believes is impossible to do (unless perhaps she is confused about or forgetful of her beliefs). I cannot intend to contracept by means of incantations when I believe that incantations are complete hooey. Second, no moral agent can intend to do what she believes is impossible for her to do (unless perhaps she is confused about or forgetful of her beliefs). I cannot intend to quit smoking if I believe that quitting is impossible for me. Until I think there is some possibility of my quitting and hope is rekindled, I cannot choose to quit. Third, every moral agent's intentions are limited by the demands of truthfulness. What she could intend but does not, what she (or anyone else) says she intends, how she (or anyone else) describes her intentions, or what others would be intending were they doing the same thing physically that she is doing physically does not decide what her true intentions are. What she is actually thinking and willing at the time of action decides the truth of the matter. Fourth, every moral agent's intentions are limited by the demands of sanity. If she fails to meet those demands, she is insane and fails to be a moral agent. For example, if I genuinely intend (not just imagine, daydream, or wish) that the next k which I type brings about the immediate reconstitution of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, I have lost my grip on reality, am insane, and cease to be a moral agent. Fifth, the complexity of some practical projects excludes the possibility that moral agents have certain intentions and narrows tightly the range of possible intentions. No one, for example, can build a space shuttle with the intention of building a toaster. The space shuttle has millions of parts that interrelate in critical ways. The space shuttle is the most complicated machine ever built. If someone builds a space shuttle, then she was intending to build a space shuttle or something much like a space shuttle. The third common criticism of the new natural law theory is that it fails to agree adequately with the thought of Aquinas or the Thomistic tradition. However, that criticism, even if true, is merely an appeal to authority, the weakest of philosophical reasons for anything.
28.
Obviously, some people can be badly motivated and can intend the deaths of the people ejected or abandoned. The point, though, is that other people do not intend those deaths, and the principle of double effect applies to those people and their choices.
