Suppose a couple uses contraception but conception nonetheless occurs. Then it is true that the couple have put obstacles in the way of their own child's life, indeed that they have engaged in activity directly opposed to their child's life. To stand to one's child in the relation of having directly opposed Johnny's life fits poorly with having an unconditional love for Johnny, unless one has repented of having opposed Johnny's life. But if the act of contraception was morally unproblematic and rational, then one cannot repent of it, since a part of repenting of an act is recognizing that the act was not to be done.
Therefore, contracepting couples take the risk (for surely there is always a chance of pregnancy) of standing in an inappropriate relation to their child—in the relation of having striven against that child's life.
I don't know how much this argument establishes. In the case of 100% effective contraception (e.g., complete removal of the ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus), the argument is silent. In the case of typical contraception, whose effectiveness is less than 100%, the argument either establishes that the contraception is wrong, or that at least there is a very strong moral presumption against it.
Does the argument say anything about the couple who uses natural family planning (NFP)? Well, there are two ways conception can occur despite NFP. One way is because the couple engage in marital union despite the fact that the NFP method tells them that there is a significant chance of conception. If Johnny is conceived in this way, then the couple has not done anything that hindered or opposed Johnny's conception. (One might think that by abstaining on other days they hindered Johnny's conception. But Johnny could not have been conceived on those other days—they abstained from conceiving other children then.) In fact, in this case, it is right to say that the couple wasn't using NFP on the relevant day.
The other, and apparently rarer, case is where the couple mistakenly believe that they are infertile on a given day, but in fact they are fertile (either because they incorrectly used the NFP method or because the NFP method made a mis-prediction). In this case, I do not think we can say that the couple hindered Johnny's coming into existence. But we can say that they hoped Johnny would not come into existence, and that they would have refrained from bringing Johnny into existence if they knew there was a significant risk. The relation of having hoped one's child would not come into existence, and of its being the case that one would have refrained from bringing the child into existence, is not an ideal one. Thus there is a presumption against risking being in such a position, and hence there is a presumption against using NFP (which is closely related, I suppose, to the Catholic claim that a couple needs to have serious reasons to use NFP). But this is not a relation that is as morally problematic as the relation of having actively tried to hinder one's child's coming into existence. It is one thing not to have striven to further a child's life and another to have striven to hinder it.
But could one perhaps say that the NFP-using couple in the second case was trying to abstain from the act that would have produced Johnny, and trying to abstain from conceiving is an active opposition to life? But it seems to me that if it is an opposition to life at all, it is a much lesser one than active hindrance—just as it is one thing to try to abstain from giving an extraordinarily burdensome medical treatment (this may be hard—it may require a struggle for a conscientious health professional to refrain from offering the treatment) and another to kill. And perhaps the intention in abstaining is not to prevent Johnny from existing, but to prevent oneself from acting against the virtue of prudence (by having potentially fertile marital relations when one has grave reasons to the contrary).
23 comments:
It seems to me that one must introduce a complete discussion of the question - one must also deal with the questions of onanism and marital union.
One might think that by abstaining on other days they hindered Johnny's conception. But Johnny could not have been conceived on those other days—they abstained from conceiving other children then.
A few quick points. First, you seem to be talking about inhibiting the existence of possible beings. Do you want to say that there exist possible beings whose conception contraception inhibits? Second, if instead you want to say that it is the conceived being whose conception was inhibited, then couples do nothing wrong (in contraceiving) unless conception actually occurs. Last, it is not obvious that by abstaining on other days Johnny's conception (assuming we can coherently talk this way) is not inhibited. There are certainly several days during which Johnny might have been born.
jawats:
Yes.
Mike:
Actually, I am only talking about inhibiting the existence of actual beings. That is why the argument only works in cases of contraceptive failure, because only then is there an actual being whose existence was inhibited.
Since I accept essentiality of origins in a strong sense (the whole causal history is essential), I don't think anybody could have been conceived in any different way from the way she was in fact conceived.
Suppose I grant you for the sake of argument that Johnny might have been conceived earlier. Then I will have to say that there is a difference between inhibiting someone's existence by inaction and inhibiting someone's existence by action. There is, at least, a stronger presumption against the latter.
I think that if they believe in contraception then they should have an abortion if the contraception fails and they do not want the child. However, if they choose to have the child then they simply changed their minds and no one should cast judgement on the parent or the child for that.
But if contraception fails, then they already have a child, whether or not they choose to kill that child. In neither case do they escape the argument--if they don't kill the child, then they are in a position of having hindered the child's life unsuccessfully, and if they do kill the child, then they are in a position of having successfully hindered the child's life.
I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're trying to make between (what appears to be) pharmaceutical contraception and natural family-planning. Why is the former "active" prevention but the latter is merely "hope[ful]" prevention?
It seems to me they are merely different means to the same end, which is the prevention of pregnancy. Can you elaborate more on why you're making this distinction?
In NFP, the "cause" of non-conception is abstinence, a non-action. In pharmaceutical cases, the cause is swallowing a pill, an action.
I am only talking about inhibiting the existence of actual beings. That is why the argument only works in cases of contraceptive failure, because only then is there an actual being whose existence was inhibited.
This does have a strange implication. You don't have an argument against successful contraception, only unsuccessful contraception. So successful contraception is not immoral (or not for these reasons) while unsuccessful contraception is.
Well, this is also an argument against successful contraception when there was a risk of being unsuccessful.
It's still a bit weird, but I think there are other arguments like this. For instance if I attempt to deceive a friend and I fail because the friend sees through the deception, I will lose the friend's trust. But a friend's trust is a precious thing. Thus, I should not to try to deceive a friend in cases where there is a risk of failure. This argument does not apply to cases where I know for certain the deception will be successful. Deception in those cases may still be wrong, but for different reasons.
I fail to see how a couple could have unconditional love for a child before he/she is conceived. Is there a Johnny before conception? If you believe that then your argument is valid and the couple must come to terms with those facts. However, if life does not begin before conception then "Johnny" was not opposed because he did not exist.
If we pollute the environment, we are opposing the health of future generations as yet unconceived.
In NFP, the "cause" of non-conception is abstinence, a non-action. In pharmaceutical cases, the cause is swallowing a pill, an action.
The “abstinence” distinction doesn't seem to work in the more interesting example of the couple practicing NFP who conduct NFP incorrectly (etc.)and become pregnant. In that instance, the couple engaged only after they assured themselves of the low probability of becoming pregnant (because they erroneously believed their planning was effective). In short, in the more difficult example, the couple is not abstaining at all. So doesn’t the misfeasance/nonfeasance distinction break-down in this example?
But it wasn't by having sex that they opposed Johnny's coming into existence. That only promoted his coming into existence. They opposed Johnny's coming into existence only in their abstinence. This post may help a little.
Paul:
These are good points. I would, however, qualify them by making a distinction between wanting something not to happen, and actively fighting to hinder it.
I am not claiming that one needs to have unconditional love for non-existent children. Rather, the claim was that once one has the child, if one had previously fought against the child's existence, one needs to repent of the earlier actions. There is nothing wrong with repentance, and indeed it is a common part of our lives. But repentance (in the full and rich sense of metanoia--not just in the sense of the English phrase "change of mind") is only appropriate when one had done something wrong. This means that the earlier actions--the contraceptive ones--must have been wrong.
While somewhat off topic, I think this is a good post to field my question and so to get your perspective.
There is necessarily a ceiling that limits the number of organisms that the earth can support in a minimally decent way. While different experts produce different carrying capacity figures, many think that we are near that limit, or even already past it unawares since the environmental consequences are not so immediately clear and have yet to catch up with us.
At any rate, the human population must not continue to grow exponentially. Is respect for carrying capacity a good reason to engage in NFP (or even contraception)? Consider our moral obligation in terms of responsible stewardship of the planet and of avoiding the Malthusian consequences of overpopulation. Cannot these considerations outweigh the alleged good of human procreation, or is unbridled NFP and contraception so great an evil?
But a friend's trust is a precious thing. Thus, I should not to try to deceive a friend in cases where there is a risk of failure
But it's tricky, Alex. Suppose there is some chance that the contraception is unsuccessful and therefore some chance that I inhibit the existence of some being. Why would that make it wrong? If I do not in fact inhibit the existence any being, then, at most, I possibly inhibited the existence of some non-actual being. But you don't want to talk about inhibiting the existence of possible beings. So this is not a line you can take, it seems.
Odd. How far to push this? Let's set aside contraception and consider a parent-child interaction in which mother and father strictly forbid daughter from engaging in premarital sex. They hector the girl daily on the point that it is wrong, wrong, wrong, making the strongest case they can in favor of abstinence. They call in as many allies as they can -- friends, neighbors, teachers, clergy, and so on. They share books and videos. They press the case relentlessly (but let's also stipulate lovingly, with the best possible goodwill intentions). They deploy both threats and offers of reward, etc.
Despite it all, stuff happens, and daughter turns up pregnant.
Are the parents now compromised vis-a-vis their love of the grandchild whose existence they worked so tirelessly to prevent?
Dale:
That's a good question.
In response to the precise case you give, it is one thing to oppose pre-marital sex and another to oppose the existence of the child. What the parents should be opposing is, primarily, the moral wrong of pre-marital sex. They might use the danger of pregnancy as an argument there (for instance, in this form).
A better case is where you have a adult married woman who is thinking of having a child, and her parents who thins it would be inadvisable (for economic or health reasons, say) strive to dissuade her.
In response to this modification of the case:
1. I think the presumption against damaging the grandparent-grandchild relationship is significantly weaker than in the parent-child case. Thus the conclusion of the argument in the grandparent case is going to be weaker than in the parent case.
2. My argument does, however, provide the grandparents with a reason not to be too forceful. It is one thing to try to convince one's adult married daughter to look at all the aspects of the situation and make a rational decision, and another to try to pressure her into a particular decision in what is clearly a marital matter.
3. I knew a man once who told me that his grandmother advised his mother to have an abortion. The advice that one's parent was given by the grandparent may well come out, as in this case, and surely this does not help the relationship with the grandparent.
What makes hoping against pregnancy in a marriage "non-ideal"? It's just a subjective emotion, and I'm not sure how we identify the set of ideal emotions. If it's not an emotion, but a practical plan for other goods, I also don't know how we call that non-ideal, for who follows an ideal plan? My opinion is that hoping against conception and planning for other goods are not per se defective, but only as defective as their motivating ends (i.e. disliking hospital food is an extremely cowardly and unjustified reason to use NFP, but not a contraceptive reason).
On a related note, do you think my linked argument has any cogency? Thanks for considering.
http://deadphilosopherssociety.com/contraception-and-the-doomsday-argument-5869/
I may have been thinking this: To hope against the great good of life seems to require circumstances where the great good is linked to some serious loss. But those circumstances are non-ideal.
This doesn't make the hope at all faulty. It may be the right response to the non-ideal circumstances.
Hey Alex,
It would seem that there is no true difference between the usage of NFP and contraception. In the case of contraception, the couples put into place a system by which they can engage in marital union, whereby the sperm do not reach the egg, by some mechanism or other. In the case of NFP, they engage in the same process: they plan their marital union so that sperm and egg do not unite. In both situations, the couple intends that life not result from their marital union, and have entered into marital union (presumably) under the assumption that life will not result.
While you argue that the difference here is between passive and active opposition, it is evident that abstaining from action is, at least in some cases, a moral action (See: Matt 25:41-45). Therefore it is not self-evident that passively abstaining from creating life is different from actively opposing it.
Second, on the matter of relationship: The crux of your argument is that opposing the conception of a child puts the couple into an inappropriate relation to their child. Even if we accept the argument that passive resistance is morally distinct from active opposition, does it truly follow that there is a difference in the resultant parent-child relationship? In both cases, the parents were opposed to conception, emotionally and mentally. In both cases, the parents invested significant effort into resisting conception. One might even argue that NFP would actually result in a greater mental and emotional investment, since it involves abstinence from marital union, in addition to the effort of prudence shared by both methods. Would not any disorder in relationship between parent and child result from the intentions of the parents, instead of from the mechanism of their actions?
Lastly, I believe the nature of love causes a conflict in your comparison between contraception-conception and NFP-conception. Since love is the seeking of the good of the other, it therefore requires the identification of "other" before love can said to be absent or present. If we are to consider unloving an act against Johnny's life *prior* to the existence of that life, then the action that is considered "unloving" must be identified with Johnny's status prior to his existence as well. Prior to conception, Johnny does not exist, and he belongs to the set of unwanted, theoretical children of this couple. Therefore, if the life-opposing act is transferred from the theoretical to the concrete, then it follows that in your first NFP-conception scenario, the couple have indeed opposed Johnny's conception, because they have acted to prevent the conception of the set he belonged to.
If the life-opposing act does not transfer from set of theoretical, unwanted children, to the conceived child, then the argument against contraception does not apply, because the contracepting couple has acted against the theoretical, not the conceived.
This opens up an interesting line of inquiry: to borrow your own analogy, if I pollute the environment, I am being unloving because I act against the set of people that constitute future generations. If Johnny-3000 is somehow unaffected by my pollution, say because he inherited some awesome gene from me, have I been unloving to him in particular?
Aleks:
The argument of your first paragraph would also establish that there is no difference between contraception and total abstinence.
It is true that abstaining from an action can be morally significant. But its moral significance tends to be *different*. It is one thing to refuse to take someone on board a lifeboat that would sink with an extra person and another to push a person already overboard (I am not saying that the latter would always be wrong, just that there is a difference).
I think of this in terms of particular acts. The wrong of contraception is not so much in the prevention of pregnancy, on the view I defend in my One Body book (published some years after the post you comment on), but in the engaging of an act of marital intercourse while simultaneously intending *this* act to be infertile. There is nothing that the NFP couple do to make *this* act be infertile. They may *hope* it's infertile, but hoping is not the same as intending. (I hope the weather will be nice tomorrow. But I don't intend it, since it's beyond my control.) But the contracepting couple does render this particular act infertile. By intentionally rendering this act infertile (yes, this is a different argument from the one in the post), they act against the biological telos of mating, and yet it is the biological telos that unites them. So they act against what unites them while yet uniting, and that's what makes it wrong.
I agree there are tricky issues about acts being unloving to particular individuals who don't exist at the time. I do think that if I am a malevolent polluter who wants to harm people, then I have been unloving to Johnny-3000 (just as the attempted murder is unloving to the intended victim). If I am "just" a reckless polluter, it's not so clear to me.
Alex:
First, it is most generous of you to devote time to this sort of necro-posting, thanks :)
The argument of your first paragraph would also establish that there is no difference between contraception and total abstinence.
Indeed, it would, except for the absence of the marital union itself. I'm not sure what your objective is in saying so, however, so I'm not sure how to respond to this.
But its moral significance tends to be *different*. It is one thing to refuse to take someone on board a lifeboat that would sink with an extra person and another to push a person already overboard
I am willing to entertain the idea that moral significance would be different, however since we are discussing actions against individuals who do not exist, this example does not help me much. Consider "I will prevent a person to come into existence that would cause this boat to sink."
They may *hope* it's infertile, but hoping is not the same as intending. (I hope the weather will be nice tomorrow. But I don't intend it, since it's beyond my control.) But the contracepting couple does render this particular act infertile.
I hope I don't sound contrarian, but I would argue that this example does not hold. Firstly, a more appropriate analogy would be "the forecast shows that it is going to be nice tomorrow, so I WILL go outside tomorrow". Sure, the forecast might be wrong, but your actual action is predicated on the understanding of nice weather. Since you are relying on information given, it seems like you intend to go outside in nice weather, and the "hope" is against the marginal chance of the forecast being incorrect. Second, the contracepting couple shares about the same risk of conception (depending on the method, perhaps even higher!), and even fairly radical contraception (e.g. fallopian tube screws) has some chance of conception. Thus, contracepting couples also merely "hope" that their method will function, they do not directly control the outcome. In both cases, the intention is contrary to the telos you claim (I would disagree with the idea that conception is identical with the telos of marital union, but that's another topic), and in both cases there is a chance of conception.
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