Contraception Is Not Immoral
The Natural Law Case for Family Planning
Before starting this Substack in January 2023, I had often desired to write some “public philosophy.” One of the times I did was a Protestant response to Catholic, natural law arguments against contraception. I wrote the following essay in August 2016 and, though sadly it was rejected by The Public Discourse, it remains true and pertinent to Christian moral theology. After discussing contraception on Notes yesterday, I publish for the first time “Contraception Is Not Immoral.”
Recently—ahem, in August 2016—on The Public Discourse, Sherif Girgis offered a defense of the Catholic Church’s stance against contraception, “The Historic Christian Teaching Against Contraception: A Defense.” As he says, not only the Catholic Church for all of its existence but also Protestant and Orthodox churches until the twentieth century condemned contraception. In maintaining this stance, the Catholic Church has stood against the sexual revolution and its contraceptive mentality, the total separation of sexual expression from family life, in a valiant show of truth to principle.
Girgis offers in defense of this continued Catholic stance a philosophical argument against contraception based on the philosophical account he and his coauthors, Robert P. George and Ryan Anderson, developed in What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, buttressed by the arguments of Elizabeth Anscombe, Germain Grisez, and Alexander Pruss. Making such a philosophical case for the Catholic position against contraception roots this conviction in the natural law. According to Girgis, not to mention Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, the Church’s condemnation of contraception is not a matter of ecclesiastical positive law, binding only on Catholics, but even of the natural moral law, binding on all people.
The question of the Catholic Church’s teaching authority aside, I dispute Girgis’s natural law argument against contraception as a matter of philosophy. My own argument proceeds from within the confines of natural law theory and, in fact, from the account of marriage given by Girgis and his coauthors in What Is Marriage?
My argument will proceed in two parts: The first section delves into the account of marriage developed by Girgis and his coauthors in What Is Marriage? in order to see in what way the content of that book provides grounds for a rebuttal of Girgis’s argument against contraception. The second section presents my actual response to Girgis’s argument and a brief suggestion of a positive account of the purpose of contraception in a moral life. In conclusion, I will consider the benefits and risks of contraceptive technology.
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Marriage and Procreative Potential
My rebuttal is heavily dependent on the account of marriage given by Girgis and his coauthors in What Is Marriage? Specifically, the response of Girgis et al. to the so-called “infertility objection” provides, I believe, grounds for a rebuttal of his argument against contraception. In this section, I will highlight for the reader the pertinent portions of that book’s argument, along with some of my own elaboration.
According to Girgis et al., marriage is a union of two people, not only spiritually, and not only physically, but comprehensively. Since only a man and a woman can unite bodily, their respective organs coordinating towards a common biological end, marriage is only possible between a man and a woman. Thus, the procreative capacity of man and woman together is essential to the very possibility of comprehensive union in marriage.
This argument does not amount to the claim that married couples must intend to have children in every act of sexual intercourse. It claims that in sexual intercourse, the couple’s bodies are inherently and naturally striving for the end of procreation, apart from the content of the couples’ wills. This argument for marriage appeals not to artificial teleology, but rather to natural teleology.
Let me take the reader on a brief detour through Aristotle, and then we will examine Girgis and coauthors’ response to the “infertility objection.” This Aristotelian detour will help clarify the relationship between procreation and marriage in a way that will shed light on both the “infertility objection” and the nature of contraception.
Aristotle argued that there are different senses of potentiality and actuality. For example, an American man has the potentiality (capacity) to speak English, and sometimes he actually does. An American infant (or any other infant) also has the potentiality (capacity) to speak English, but not in the same sense. The infant can speak English only by first learning the language; then it will be able to speak English in a second sense. Aristotle called these two levels of capacity “first potentiality” and “second potentiality.” The first potentiality (the capacity to learn to speak English) makes possible the first actuality (being an English speaker). But this first actuality is identical to the second potentiality. Being an English speaker entails having the capacity to speak English. Finally, the second potentiality makes possible a second actuality, the actual speaking of English.
In relation to marriage, these philosophical categories are quite applicable. Single men and women possess a native capacity to procreate. This is their first potentiality. But it cannot be realized unless they are coupled together. Their coupling, presumably in marriage, is the first actuality that their procreative capacity makes possible. But this first actuality, marriage, is also a second potentiality, the capacity to actually produce children. This second potentiality, possessed by married spouses, makes possible a second actuality, parenthood and children.
These categories come into play in relation to the “infertility objection.” The “infertility objection” claims that since infertile couples cannot procreate together, they cannot be married on the traditional account of marriage. Girgis and his coauthors respond to this objection that it misses the point of their argument. Their point is not that a marriage must possess the unobstructed capacity to produce children in the course of future time, but rather something more fundamental. Even the bodies of infertile couples, when the couple engages in intercourse, are striving towards the common biological end of procreation, though because of their infertility, their bodies will never reach that end. Thus, while the bodies of infertile couples cannot attain to marriage’s second actuality, they are capable of forming the union that constitutes marriage itself, the first actuality.
The first actuality entails the natural capacity to procreate, even when that capacity encounters an extrinsic obstacle. A man and woman can no more eradicate their inherent potency towards procreation than can they cease to be biologically male and female. In this way, the argument of What Is Marriage? is vindicated against the “infertility objection.”
Contraception Is Not Immoral
Now we turn to contraception. In his article, Girgis makes two arguments against contraception. The first is that the link of sexual intercourse to reproduction is essential to its function of uniting the spouses biologically. Since the union of man and woman requires that their bodies strive towards a common biological end, namely, procreation, contraception breaks this link to procreation, and so, makes bodily union impossible.
But, as Girgis’s own response to the “infertility objection” should make clear, this is not the case. Just as the sexual union of an infertile couple still constitutes a common biological striving for procreation, so, in the union of a contracepting couple, their bodies still strive towards procreation, not knowing that the way is blocked. Contraception cannot interfere with natural teleology. Girgis’s first argument is incorrect in a way made easily visible by his own account of marriage.
Girgis’s second argument is that the use of contraception during sexual intercourse entails the adoption of an intention at odds with the intention to unite maritally. According to this argument, contraception amounts to practical incoherence; while in one sense, you wish to unite bodily, in another sense you wish to rob this union of its essential character by contracepting.
This argument has much more potential than the first since it appeals to that which distinguishes contraception from infertility, its voluntariness. However, it too is mistaken, but because it depends on the truth of the first argument. How? According to the second argument, to contracept is to refuse to fully bodily unite. Thus, contraception inhibits bodily union. But as I just argued above, contraception does not inhibit bodily union. The bodies of a man and woman are themselves striving for procreation even when the man and woman themselves are also aiming to prevent procreation. Thanks to the distinction between marriage’s first actuality and second actuality, the presence of the first actuality, bodily union with a marital quality, does not require the intention of the second actuality, nor the absence of an intention to thwart the coming about of the second actuality. To contracept is not to refuse to unite bodily, but only to temporarily frustrate the fruition (not the actuality) of that bodily union. It is not irrational to desire bodily union, but to temporarily (or even indefinitely) frustrate that bodily union’s fruition. It may be wrong on other grounds, but the two intentions are not inherently at odds.
On this note, it should also be said that many married couples who choose to use contraception do so out of an intention directly related to their intention to bear children. The choice to use contraception is a prudential one, rarely among married couples an outright rejection of the procreative potential of their marriage, and much more frequently a prudential decision to align other parts of their life with the timing of their children’s births. In this, unless some novel argument can be made, non-abortifacient contraception is morally identical to natural family planning. In his article, Girgis anticipates this argument that the use of contraception may not mean that a marriage as a whole is not open to children. But his response to it depends on the adequacy of his previous arguments, so no additional rebuttal is required.
Contraception and Technology
In this essay, I have argued from within the bounds of natural law theory that contraception is not immoral. While I am sure I have not addressed all possible arguments against contraception, I have rebutted those given by Sherif Girgis recently on The Public Discourse. I hazard a guess that the rebuttals given here would at least point the way to the rebuttal of other arguments against contraception.
Now let me close with some thoughts on the value and danger of contraception. Contraception is technology. While forms of contraception have long existed, the twentieth century has seen the multiplication of its forms together with increased scientific understanding of their functioning. This historical situations puts us in the same place with regard to contraception is we are with respect to other forms of technology. The internet has its dangers, such as pornography, cyber-bullying, and cyberwarfare. But these dangers do not rob the internet of all value. Every technology brings with it new opportunities for good and for evil.
The same can be said for contraception. Contraception brings with it the possibility of committing abortion (since many so-called contraceptives are actually abortifacients or can be used abortively), as well as the temptation to artificially separate sexual expression from family life. Girgis’s article effectively details many of these dangers. But these dangers are not essential to contraception itself, which can also be used to steward a marriage’s procreative capacity for the sake of the children that may result from a couple’s union. Every technology brings with it a corresponding responsibility to use it for good and not for evil. All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial (1 Cor 6:12, 10:23).
I originally appended to this article the following bio. I’m happy that the plan I listed has been, eight years on, coming to fruition:
Joel Carini is an M.Div. student at Westminster Theological Seminary, in Philadelphia, PA. (He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy after graduation.)
I’ve also set up an option to meet with me for thirty-minutes for either academic consulting about getting into Ph.D.’s and the like or to discuss theological and philosophical matters related to the subjects I write about. Hope to talk to some of you soon!
It would be good to examine this matter from the perspective of the authority of the Church. If the document is infallible and the teaching is that contraception is intrinsically evil, all your musings are irrelevant in regard to your conclusion. So those with faith and without the ability to dialogue in the metaphysical dimensions will simply out of faith reject your argument because its origin is not sacred doctrine, which is from God, but human reasoning, dissonant with infallibility.
To engage in the actual argument itself though I’d say that temporary language reminds me of an unhelpful approach to ethics as found in the fundamental option. When discerning a particular moral act, the broader context of one’s habit is unimportant in the final assessment of the objective nature of the object of the act.
The vegetative appetite of the human soul does have an end in procreation which ought to be integrated into the rational appetite and rightly ordered. The sex act has a teleology that should not be frustrated as it is, in anyway. Any frustration that is willed goes beyond intention when considering voluntary, but also applies to the circumstances and object of the act. The principle reason contraception is wrong because the object is “intrinsically wrong.” Avoiding a pregnancy by choosing a means that accepts the design of our body is not only proper in the act, but it is also a fully human acceptance of the self since the natural law appeals to a hylomorphic notion of the body-soul composite. The procreative dimensions is and integrated dimension of the person’s identity, whereby all acts that contradict this procreative dimension as-is-natural are evils. They are moral evils when chosen in object, and they are evils when considered medically as disordered.
Christopher West offers the best response to objections in favour of the use of contraception in his book: “Good News about sex and Marriage” and he anticipates common objections.
To say that contraception is moral is like saying a magic diet pill that prevents the natural outcomes of a gluttonous life is moral. Consciously preventing the "second actuality" does not make the immoral behavior that precedes it moral. The answer is fasting, be it from food or sex. Selfishness is the root problem that needs to be faced.