Abortion, contraception and Christian tradition

It is traditional Christian teaching, as far back as we can trace it, that:

1. Abortion is always wrong.

Nonetheless, historically many Christian theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, accepted the best science and philosophy of the day (Aristotle!) which held that:

2. Human existence starts about a month and a half after conception.

Our science no longer teaches (2), of course: it is scientifically clear that we have the same organism at conception—or at very latest at implantation—as at birth.

However, for those of us who think that Christian tradition carries significant epistemic weight, it is interesting to ask why it was that historically Christian teaching stalwartly affirmed (1) despite many Christian thinkers accepting (2). I see two hypotheses each of which may explain this puzzle. Both hypotheses may be true (and indeed I think they are).

The first hypothesis is that (1) is simply a datum of the apostolic teaching of the early Church (it is after all found in the first-century Didache). The Church’s stalwart acceptance of the prohibition of abortion notwithstanding the tension between this prohibition and the best science of the day is a sign that the prohibition of abortion was grounded in divine revelation rather than philosophical speculation.

The second hypothesis is that the reasons for the traditional prohibition of abortion are logically independent of the moral status of the embryo or early fetus. We also know that the early Church forbade contraception. If the embryo or early fetus is not a human being, the an early abortion may not be morally very different from contraception. But the Church was opposed to contraception. Via this second hypothesis, the apparent tension between the blanket prohibition on abortion and the philosophical and scientific views on the beginning of human life is further evidence for an apostolic prohibition of contraception.

The unknown mechanism of action of the IUD

A fellow philosopher just sent me this very interesting quote from an article in a reputable medical journal:

[I]f it was conclusively shown that the sole or principal mode of action [of the IUD] was to prevent the embryo from implanting, then this method, as in the case with emergency contraception, would be considered by the Roman Catholic church as causing an early abortion. As a result many agencies involved in the research, development or delivery of contraception prefer to leave the mechanism of action issue unresolved, which may explain why research into the contraceptive mechanisms of IUDs has been sparse in the last 20 years.

The quote’s invocation of politics fits with vague suspicions I had.

But in any case, I wonder whether leaving the “the mechanism of action issue unresolved” helps all that much morally. Suppose that prevention of implantation is morally on par with paradigmatic cases of killing an adult human. Now consider this story. You are a doctor on board a spaceship marooned on an alien planet. All your drugs have been destroyed but one of your patients is suffering severe pain. The aliens have a callous attitude to human life, but in exchange for a piece of fine art they offer you a drug. The aliens always tell the truth and they guarantee that the drug “terminates the pain.” But when you ask them about the mechanism by which it does so, they say: “Trade secret. It terminates the pain.” You try asking more general questions like: “Does it suppress pain signals in the brain?” They just say: “That would terminate the pain. It terminates the pain. Why ask more?” Then someone else in your crew asks: “Does it terminate the patient?” And the aliens say: “That would terminate the pain. It terminates the pain. Why ask more?”

The end result is that you have no idea whether the drug terminates the pain by suppressing the pain as such or by killing the patient. It is clear that in that case we should not use the drug, except as a last-ditch hope for a patient who is already dying. (I am not saying it is acceptable to kill someone who is already dying. But if someone is already dying, then one can tolerate a greater risk of unintended death.)

I am not saying, of course, that we need to find evidence against every crazy hypothesis. There is, after all, the hypothesis that ibuprofen works by annihilating the patient and calling in aliens that replace the patient with a pain-free simulacrum. The tiny but non-zero probability of that hypothesis should not keep us from using ibuprofen. But when we do not know how some drug or procedure works, and one of the serious hypotheses is that it works by killing someone, then that’s a problem.

Given the callousness of the aliens, the hypothesis that they are offering a euthanasia drug is a serious hypothesis. Likewise, the hypothesis that the IUD works primarily by preventing implantation is a serious hypothesis (see the suggestive evidence in the above-quoted paper). In both cases, then, unless we can find significant evidence against this serious hypothesis, the use of the drug or method is wrong (except perhaps in exceptional cases).

We rightly have a guilty-until-proved-innocent approach to medical interventions. Apart perhaps from exceptional cases (e.g., terminal ones), a medical intervention must be tested for its effects on the directly affected parties. The manufacturer's failure to gather data on the effects of the IUD on some of the directly affected parties, namely the embryos, means that the IUD has not been tested up to the morally required standards of testing medical interventions, and hence cannot be licitly used (apart perhaps from some exceptional cases), even absent the data that we have that is suggestive of fatal effects on those parties.

Abortifacient effects of contraception and the Principle of Double Effect

Suppose that a contraceptive has the following properties:

• Fewer than 1% of users have a pregnancy annually.

• At least 5% of users annually experience a cycle where the contraceptive fails to prevent fertilization but does prevent implantation.

I think there is good empirical reason to think there are such contraceptives on the market. But that’s a matter for another post. Here I want to look at just the ethics question. So let’s suppose that the above stipulated properties obtain, and in fact that they are known to obtain.

The cases where the contraceptive prevents implantation are cases where the contraceptive kills an early embryo: in short, they are cases where the contraceptive is being abortifacient. The question I want to address in this post is this: Could someone who thinks early embryos have whatever property (personhood, membership in the human race, the imago dei, the possession of the soul, etc.) that makes it paradigmatically wrong to kill adult human beings nonetheless defend the contraceptive on the grounds that the deaths due to implantation-prevention are just an unintended and unfortunate side-effect?

Basically, the defense being envisioned would invoke some version of the Principle of Double Effect, which allows for some actions that have a bad side-effect that isn’t intended as a means or as an end. Of course, Double Effect requires that there not be other reasons why the action is wrong. But let’s bracket the question—which I address at length in my One Body book—whether there are other reasons the contraceptive could be wrong to use, and just focus on the abortifacient effect.

We can ask the question from two points of view:

1. Can the manufacturer justify the production of the contraceptive on the grounds that failures of implantation are just an unfortunate side-effect?

2. Can the user justify the use on those grounds?

Regarding 1, here’s a thought. For the contraceptive to be competitive, it has to be highly effective. If one does not count the 5% of annual cases where fertilization occurs but implantation is prevented as part of the contraceptive’s effectiveness, then one can at most claim 95% effectiveness for the contraceptive. And that effectiveness would put the contraceptive significantly behind the most effective formulations of the pill. In fact, it will put it somewhat behind the results that can be achieved by Natural Family Planning by a well-prepared and well-motivated couple. So for commercial purposes, the manufacturer will have to be advertising 99% effectiveness. But one cannot with moral consistency claim 99% effectiveness while holding that 5% of that is an unfortunate side-effect. By claiming 99% effectiveness, one is putting oneself behind the mechanisms that one knows are being used to achieve that effectiveness.

Suppose that a manufacturer advertises an analgesic that is guaranteed to be 99% effective at pain relief. But suppose that 5% of the time, the analgesic kills the patient and 94% of the time it relieves pain non-fatally. Then indeed the analgesic relieves pain 99% of the time, since killing the patient stops the pain. But by holding out 99% effectiveness, the manufacturer is showing that that it is really intending this to be a pain-relief-cum-euthanasia drug rather than a mere pain-relief drug.

What about 2? As we saw from the case of the manufacturer, the user cannot intend 99% effectiveness while saying that the deaths of early embryos are unfortunate side-effects. But the user, unlike the manufacturer, can say: “From my point of view, this is about 94% effective, with a 5% likelihood of a fatal side-effect, which side-effect I don’t intend.”

There are two points I want to make here. First, Double Effect requires there to be no reasonable alternatives to the course of action. But there are methods of fertility control that do not cause implantation-failure, for instance Natural Family Planning, and some of these methods are not less effective when compared against the 94% figure. And one cannot with moral consistency compare these method against the 99% effectivness figure while holding out that 5% of that is an unfortunate side-effect one would like to avoid.

Finally, imagine a hypothetical male contraceptive pill that works by releasing genetically engineered sperm-eating viruses that has the following annual properties:

• Fewer than 1% of female partners get pregnant.

• But 5% of female partners get a fatal viral infection from it.

• No men die.

Clearly, nobody would tolerate such a product. Both the manufacturer and the men using it would be accused of murder. Technically, it might not be murder if the deaths of the women were not intended, but the act would be closely akin to vehicular homicide through criminal negligence. Any Double Effect justification would have no hope of succeeding, because Double Effect requires that the unintended bads not be disproportionate to the intended goods. But a 5% annual chance of death is just not worth the contraceptive effect, especially when there are alternatives present. Indeed, even if the only alternative to using this nasty contraceptive were abstinence, which isn’t the case, surely total abstinence would typically be preferable to inducing a 5% annual chance of death (unless perhaps the woman were already suffering from a terminal disease).

Of course, my arguments are predicated on the assumption that killing an early embryo is morally on par with killing an adult. That's another argument.

Contraception, liturgy and self-giving

Alice has a paper due the day after Thanksgiving. She’s already gotten all the extensions she can, and she can’t get it done except by working through Thanksgiving. She is thinking of not going to the big Thanksgiving dinner that her grandfather organizes every year, even though it brings together relatives she hasn’t heard from for a long time, has much warm family fellowship, and great food. But then she has an idea: “It’s better to attend distractedly than not at all. The table is big and my laptop is small, so I can easily put my laptop beside a plate, and then I can write all the way through dinner and finish my paper. And I’m good at multitasking, so I can still have an ear out for interesting bits of conversation, and occasionally I can put a forkful of food in my mouth or make a friendly remark to someone. It would be permissible for me to skip the dinner completely, and this is better than skipping it.”

Bob has a major exam on Wednesday. It is his habit to attend Mass daily, both for the spiritual benefits and because there is an incredible organist. He could skip Tuesday Mass, but reasons much as Alice does: “If I skip Mass, I get none of the spiritual and musical benefits. I’ll just bring my tablet, sit in the back pew so the bright screen doesn’t disturb anybody, study hard and I’ll at least get some of the benefits of Mass. After all, there is nothing wrong with my skipping Tuesday Mass, and this is better.”

Alice is being obtuse about human relationships and Bob doesn’t understand the kind of participation the Mass requires. There are some activities that one should give oneself pretty completely to—or not do them at all.

What if Bob says something like this? “But I go to Mass on many days when I’ve already spent hours working hard, and I’m really exhausted, and barely able to pay any attention to what the priest says. There is nothing morally wrong with attending Mass on days like that. But today I’m still fresh, and multitasking today I can participate at least as well as singletasking on a bad day.” And Alice can say something very similar—after all, very tired people can go to Thanksgiving dinner, too.

But that’s still not an excuse. For when one goes to Thanksgiving dinner or Mass, one should give oneself to it as much as one can (within some reasonable limit of what counts as “enough”). Both Alice and Bob are going to be deliberately withholding themselves from participation. But on the days when they attended while really tired, they weren’t doing that—they were giving what they could (it would be different if Bob ran a marathon in order to be too tired to follow the Gospel reading!).

Now, consider a common response to John Paul II’s argument that contraception is wrong because it deliberately blocks the total self-giving in sex. “Granted, contraception blocks an aspect of the union as one body. But a partial union is better than no union at all, and a couple is morally permitted to refrain from union for good reasons.” But that’s like Alice’s and Bob’s initial argument. And there is a case that can be made that sex is a liturgical kind of act, akin to Thanksgiving dinner or the Mass, and that in these kinds of liturgical acts one can’t participate while blocking an aspect of one’s participation—one needs to give one’s all, or not at all. It is better not to have sex at all than to have it while blocking one’s participation.

And then there is the riposte: “But the Catholic Church says it’s permissible to have sex while infertile. And contracepted sex has in it everything that infertile sex does.” But that riposte is just like Bob’s suggestion that studying at Mass with his tablet still leaves him as much (or more!) function as attending Mass on the days when he is really tired. Yes, that’s true, but it misses the liturgical meaning of deliberately distracting oneself with the tablet.

If it is objected that sex isn’t analogous to Thanksgiving dinner or the Mass (though I think it is), we could think about the case of Carl who is a professional movie reviewer. His wife would like to have sex with him, but he needs to watch and review a boring movie by tomorrow. So he sets up a laptop by the bed, and unites with his wife while watching the movie. Ugh! It would be better not to have sex at all.

A (paradoxical?) argument that intentional reproduction is wrong

Consider:

1. We cannot permissibly intend to produce a person for reasons that do not include the specific person's own good.
2. We cannot intend to produce a person for reasons that include the specific person's own good.
3. We cannot permissibly intend to produce a person without reasons.
4. Necessarily, if we intend to produce a person, we do so for no reason, or for reasons that include the person's own good, or for reasons that do not include the person's own good.
5. We cannot permissibly intend to produce a person. (1-4)

Premise (1) is due to Kantian considerations: persons are ends not means. I will argue for premise (2) shortly. Perhaps the easiest way to argue for premise (3) is that we simply cannot intend—permissibly or not—without reasons. We intend things because they are good, either as means or as ends, and in either case we have reasons. But one might also argue that if it is wrong to produce persons for reasons that do not include the person's own good, it is a fortiori wrong to produce them wantonly, for no reason at all, as it were on a whim. Or one might think that being rational animals, it is wrong for us to intentionally act in a non-reasnable way, and to act intentionally but without reasons is to do that.

Now on its face, premise (2) is false. Surely people do procreate for the child's own good. But I don't think so. They may be acting for the good of whatever child results from the reproduction, but there is no specific child for whose good they are acting. And when they act for the good of whatever child results, the specific child's good ends up being a constitutive means to the good they are seeking, so they do not escape from the Kantian criticism. The good of a person is an incommunicable good: it is that specific person's good. But the existence and identity of the child depends on the couple's decision in a way that the couple is unable to figure out beforehand. Thus the couple cannot be deciding in light of the identity of the child, and hence cannot be acting for the good of that specific person.

Note that God does not suffer from the cognitive limitations that give rise to (2): he can know our identity before he decides to create us, and can decide to create us for our own good.

Now, when a couple engages in the marital act, they have a reason to engage in that act apart from reproduction: the act is good in itself, being an embodiment of marital union. Thus they can act so as to unite, and accept the child as a gift from God that goes beyond their intention. Note that even given my argument they can permissibly rationally consider the reproduction in their decision whether to make love, for instance as a defeater to various defeaters (being tired, etc.) to the marital reasons for lovemaking. On the other hand, in non-coital methods of reproduction like IVF the couple is specifically intending reproduction, and that is wrong if the argument succeeds.

I am not myself entirely convinced of (1), because I am not entirely convinced of the Kantian autonomy framework. We aren't ends in ourselves: we exist as constitutive glorifications of God. Thus it does not seem contrary to the dignity of a person to be produced for the greater glory of God. Kantianism is what you get when you remove God from the story. If that's right, then we get the surprising result that only theists can permissibly intend to produce a child. Atheists, to be consistent, will need to have the Kantian attitude, and while they can permissibly reproduce, they cannot do so with the intention of reproducing, if everything else in the argument works.

HHS contraception mandate

I am one of the signatories of an amicus brief by Catholic theologians and ethicists in the Gilardi case against the HHS contraception mandate. The DC Circuit Court recently ruled against the HHS in this case. The main line of thought in our brief was that a Catholic employer's providing coverage for contraception makes the employer cooperate in the employee's use of contraception. Now, Catholic moral thought not only takes (marital) contraception to be wrong, but also takes cooperation in someone else's sin to be morally problematic. Whether the cooperation is not just problematic but wrong depends on questions about the degree and kind of cooperation involved.

Reflecting on these issues makes me think there is a second really crucial thing going on, besides making employers complicit in employees' sin (and we touch on this in the brief, though I think it can be developed). One of the reasons for the HHS mandate is precisely to encourage women to use contraception (this is certainly not denied). But this means that the employer is made complicit in what the employer conscientiously takes to be the government's morally wrongful promotion of wrongdoing. And this cooperation is even closer, and thus far even more morally problematic, than cooperation with the employee's use of contraception. For the employer here acts as the government's instrument in its policy of promotion of contraception. Note that promotion does not require success: in this case, governmental promotion of contraception occurs whether or not any employees actually use the contraception.

Sexual ethics and moral epistemology

Let A be the set of all the sexual activities that our society takes to be wrong. For instance, A will include rape, voyeurism, adultery, bestiality, incest, polygamy, sex involving animals, sex betweeen adults and youth, etc. Let B be the set of all the sexual activities that our society takes to be permissible. For instance, B will include marital sex, contracepted marital sex, premarital sex, etc.

Now there is no plausible philosophical comprehensive unified explanatory theory of sexuality that rules all the actions in A wrong and all the actions in B permissible. There are comprehensive unified explanatory theories of sexuality that rule all the actions in A wrong but that also rule some of the actions in B wrong—the various Catholic theories do this—as well as ruling same-sex sexual activity wrong (which isn't in B at this point). There are also comprehensive unified explanatory theories of sexuality that rule all the actions in B permissible but that also rule a number of the actions in A permissible—for instance, theories that treat sex in a basically consequentialist way do this.

If this is right, then unless a completely new kind of theory can be found, it looks like we need to choose between three broad options:

1. Take all the actions in A to be forbidden, and revise social opinion on a number of the actions in B.
2. Take all the actions in B to be permissible, and revise social opinion on a number of the actions in A.
3. Revise social opinion on some but not all of the actions in A and on some but not all of the actions in B.

Moreover, the best theories we have fall into (1) or (2) rather than (3). So given our current philosophical theories, our choice is probably between (1) and (2).

It is an interesting question how one would choose between (1) and (2) if one had to. I would, and do, choose (1) on the grounds that typically we can be more confident of prohibitions than of permissibles, moral progress being more a matter of discovery of new prohibitions (e.g., against slavery, against duelling, against most cases of the death penalty) than of discovery of new permissions.

It is somewhat easier to overlook a prohibition that is there than to imagine a prohibition that isn't there. An action is permissible if and only if there are no decisive moral reasons against the action. Generally speaking, we are more likely to err by not noticing something that is there than by "noticing" something that isn't there: overlooking is more common than hallucination. If this is true in the moral sphere, then we are more likely to overlook a decisive moral reason against an action than to "notice" a decisive moral reason that isn't there. After all, some kinds of moral reason require significant training in virtue for us to come to be cognizant of them.

If this is right, then prima facie we should prefer (1) to (2): we should be more confident of the prohibition of the actions in A than of the permission of the actions in B.

It would be interesting to study empirically how people's opinions fall on the question whether to trust intuitions of impermissibility or to trust intuitions of permissibility. It may be domain-specific. Thus a stereotypical conservative might take intuitions of impermissibility to be more reliable than intuitions of permissibility when it comes to matters of sex, but when it comes to matters of private property may take intuitions of permissibility to be more reliable, and a liberal might have the opposite view. But I think one should in general tend to go with intuitions of impermissibility.

Consolidating evidence

Here's something that surprised me when I noticed it, though it probably shouldn't have surprised me. The following can happen: My evidence favors p. Your evidence disfavors p. I know you are rational and competent. After talking with you, and consolidating evidence, I rationally increase my evidence for p.

Here's a case. Suppose we have a coin which is either biased 3:1 in favor of heads or biased 3:1 in favor of tails. We don't know which. I have observed a few coin tosses, and they included four tails and seven heads. My evidence supports the hypothesis that the coin is biased in favor of heads. You have observed a few coin tosses, and they were four tails and two heads. Your evidence supports the hypothesis that the coin is biased in favor of tails. Intuitively, I should lower my credence in the heads-bias hypothesis when I learn of your evidence.

But imagine further that the four tail tosses you observed are the same four tail tosses that I observed, but the two heads tosses you observed were not among the seven heads tosses I observed. Then consolidating our evidence, we get four tails and nine heads, which supports the heads-bias hypothesis.

This is humdrum: When we consolidate evidence, we need to watch out for double counting in either direction. The above case makes this striking, because when we eliminate double counting, we get confirmation in the opposite direction to what we would initially have expected.

There is a very practical moral of the above story. It is important not only to remember one's credence in the propositions one believes and cares about, but also the evidence that gave rise to this credence. For if one does not remember this evidence, it will be difficult to avoid double counting (or subtler failures of independence).

By the way, I think it is helpful to think of the disagreement literature as well as discussions about the nature of arguments and other social epistemology stuff as interpersonal data consolidation problems. Getting clear on what we are aiming at should help. You have data, I have data, we all have data. What we are aiming for are methods (algorithms, virtues, etc.) that help us consolidate data across persons to get a better picture of reality than we are likely to have individually.

Moreover, I think that morally speaking it is very important when engaging in argumentation to remember what we are doing: the telos of arguing is to consolidate data across persons in order to get to truth and understanding. This telos is social, as befits social animals. It is not the telos of an argument that I convince you of the argument's conclusion. Rather it is that I convince you of the truth or show you how truth hangs together. If instead of convincing you of the argument's conclusion I convince you by modus tollens of the falsity of one of the premises, and in fact the conclusion is false and so is that premise, then the point of arguing has perhaps been fulfilled. And if in a case where the conclusion is false my argument convinces you of that conclusion, then the argument is a failure qua argument.

Hormonal contraception and informed consent

In a 2000 article in the Archives of Family Medicine, Larimore argued that because the extremely high effectiveness rate of hormonal contraception is much higher than what one would expect on the basis of its often not very high rate of ovulation suppression, there is very good reason to think a significant portion of the high effectiveness rate is due to preventing implantation of the early embryo. But many women believe that the early embryo is a human being, and hence would take this effect to be a morally unacceptable abortion (and I expect there are additional women who do not take the effect to be utterly morally unacceptable, but for whom such an effect is nonetheless a significant reason against the use of the contraceptive method). Since patient autonomy requires that the patient be informed of those aspects of treatment that are salient given the patient's values and moral beliefs, the physician's duty in the case of such women is to inform the women of the risks of prevention of implantation. Because a physician may not know whether a particular woman consider this factor relevant, Larimore suggests that a physician can say something like: "Most of the time, the pill acts by preventing an egg from forming. This prevents pregnancy. However, women on the pill can still sometimes get pregnant. Some doctors think that the pill may cause the loss of some of these pregnancies very early in the pregnancy, before you would even know you were pregnant. Would knowing more about this possibility be important to you in your decision about whether to use the pill?"

Even bracketing the question whether contraception and abortion are morally permissible, Larimore is right about what is required what the current consensus on patient autonomy and informed consent. I've had a look at the titles and often abstracts of the 55 papers listed as citing Larimore's, and surprisingly none of them appears to be an argument to the contrary (though maybe some contain such an argument in their body). One interesting recent study of women in Western and Eastern Europe found that only 2% can correctly identify all the mechanisms of oral contraceptives and the IUD (for which the postfertilization effect is probably even greater), but that 73% said that their healthcare provider should inform them about effects that occur after fertilization even when these effects are before implantation. So not only is the information salient to many women, it is information that many women want.

It seems to me that pro-choice physicians should be impressed by the need to obtain informed consent for such postfertilization effects insofar as a significant part of the reasoning for the pro-choice position involves considerations of women's autonomy.

The sacramentality of assertion

Some Catholic thinking about sexuality goes something like this:  There is a sacramentality to the marital act.  The giving of self to another, and the seeking of the other's receiving and reciprocation, is a symbol of the union between God and his people, and maybe even has a Trinitarian significance of imaging the self-giving and generative nature of God.  This, in turn, suggests that mixes up holding-back with self-giving and expresses love in a context in which one is fighting against one's generative striving, producing a parody rather than image of Trinitarian love.

I think it is worth thinking about the sacramentality in assertion as well.  In assertion, one reaches out to offer one's testimony, inviting the other to receive one's testimony in trust.  This is some sort of an image of the Father's sending his Word to us in time, to offer his truth to sinners, some of whom will accept him with trust and some of whom will reject him.  It is even an image of the Father's eternal generative speaking of his Word.  There is a kind of sacrilege, then, when one knowingly asserts falsely.  One is parodying the life of the Trinity rather than imaging it.  One is being faithless to those whose faith one is inviting by one's testimony.

It does not matter that the end for which one contracepts or lies is good.  To do something that parodies the life of the Trinity is wrong regardless of what further end it subserves.

Of course, in both the case of marriage and speech prudence is called for.  One can legitimately refrain from marital union or from assertion when it would be imprudent to generate children or communicate truth.  To do that does not image, in the relevant respect, the life of the Trinity, but also does not parody it.  We cannot image the life of the Trinity in all its respects anyway--we are but finite.  And when refraining for the sake of a virtue V, say, the virtue of prudence, from imaging the life of the Trinity in one respect, we are thereby imaging the life of the Trinity in a respect shown by V.  And even when cannot image the life of the Trinity in some respect, we can and must refrain from parodying it.

There is a cost to doing the right thing here, and the tragic cases are where the cost will be borne by others.  But that is how it is in our world.  The cost of Christ's birth was borne by many a newborn and his family.  Yet we honor them as the Holy Innocents, for they have received the salvation that came through Christ's incarnation.  And likewise the benefit of the Christian's imaging in truthfulness and sexual integrity the life of the Trinity extends mysteriously to all by the communion of the saints.

This is some sort of a reply to Janet Smith's article on lying in First Things, which saddened me much as I greatly respect her work in sexual ethics.

A heuristic about contraceptive policy

Here is a quick heuristic about social policy. Suppose it is in the social interest to decrease pregnancy rates in some population of teenagers. Then my quick heuristic is this:

• One cannot expect the promotion of a contraceptive to lower the pregnancy rate very much below the typical-use failure rate of that contraceptive for that population.

For instance, one set of estimates pegs the typical failure rate of condoms for the first year of use at 15% and the pill's failure rate for the first year of use at 9%. In the case of condoms, failure rates decrease with use, and I've seen 5% cited elsewhere for the pill.

What is the reason for the heuristic? It is obviously difficult to simultaneously provide contraception, and instruction on their use, while promoting abstinence. Intuitively (and I'm just giving a heuristic) we do not expect mixed messages to work well. But the only way we're going to get a pregnancy rate below the typical-use failure rate of the contraceptive is by having some people abstain totally or to decrease their sexual frequency significantly below the number used in the typical-use failure rate calculations. But we would expect, for rational choice reasons, the availability of contraception to decrease the rate of total abstinence by reducing the costs of intercourse, and we would also expect it to increase sexual frequency. Here is a rough estimate. Suppose Sally disvalues pregnancy in her circumstances at somewhere between 1.2 and 20 times the value of a year of sex (very roughly: she'd be willing to abstain about 1.2 years to avoid a pregnancy in her circumstances but she wouldn't be willing to abstain 20 years to avoid it). It seems intuitively right to me that many teens will fall in this range. Then if pregnancy is the only consideration, it is decision theoretically rational for Sally to max out her sexual activity if she is on the pill but to abstain totally if she is not using any contraceptive (this is a pretty easy calculation using an 85% no-contraceptive annual conception rate).

The U.S. teen pregnancy rate in 2006 was 7%. Promotion of the pill could imaginably lower that somewhat, if the 5% figure is correct, but not if the 9% figure is. However, unless these teenagers use both the pill and condoms, there will be significant health risks for sexually transmitted infections. Because of these, any contraceptive-based policy would likely involve condoms as well. But intuitively one does not expect all that many teens to double up and use both the pill and condoms. If condoms are promoted, we'd expect a significant percentage of the sexually active population to use only condoms. If we have a half-and-half mix between condoms and the pill, and no overlap, there'll be a failure rate around 10-12%. Which is significantly higher than the pregnancy rate, at least with 2006 data.

Can it be instrumentally rational for a parent to object to a child's receiving contraception?

Let's bracket all moral concerns, and simply suppose that the parent does not count sexual activity by her minor children as having positive utility (or at least counts it as of such low utility as to be negligible), but does count a pregnancy (in the child or caused by the child) as a significantly negative outcome. Rhetoric from those advocating greater availability of contraception to children suggests that such a parent would be instrumentally irrational to object to the child's receiving contraception.

However, this is mistaken. Typically, children also consider a pregnancy a significantly negative outcome. Therefore, in a large enough population, there will be children who would be very unlikely to engage in sexual activity if there is a significant danger of pregnancy, but if that danger were significantly reduced, would engage in sexual activity. In the case of such children, it may very well be the case that the availability of contraception increases the risk of pregnancy. For instance, suppose that without contraception, over the period of a year the child would have a probability of 0.98 of not engaging in sexual relations at all. But if the pill is made available, the child has a probability of 0.50 of using it and having an average sexual frequency for sexually active persons.

Now, if contraception is not made available, the likelihood of a pregnancy is (0.02)(0.85)=0.017, where I shall suppose 0.85 is the probability of conception without contraceptives at an average sexual frequency for a sexually active person. This is actually an overestimate of the likelihood of a pregnancy, since if the child is afraid of a pregnancy outcome, the frequency is likely to be significantly lower. If the pill is made available, the likelihood of a pregnancy then will be (0.50)(0.05)=0.025, where the 0.05 is permthe typical-use failure rate for oral contraceptives.

Therefore, a parent who knows with a sufficiently high probability that her child satisfies the above assumptions and seeks to prevent the child's pregnancy will be instrumentally rational in refusing contraception for that child.

Moreover, since there surely are such children in the population (there is, obviously, a broad distribution in the attribute of caution in teenagers, and there are teenagers who are very cautious), it follows that even if making contraception available to all teenagers were to reduce the overall pregnancy rate (and I am not aware of any data that it would), there would be some individuals the risks for whom would be increased by the availability of contraception. And, of course, there will be individuals the risks for whom would be decreased by the availability of contraception—namely, those who would have a sufficiently large sexual frequency even without contraception. Therefore, making contraception available to all teenagers results in a redistribution of risks—some come to be better off pregnancy-wise and some come to be worse off.

Now, while it can be licit to have a public health initiative that redistributes risks, increasing those of some and decreasing those of others, significant gathering of empirical data is needed before any such policy is put into place, to ensure not only that the overall risk is decreased, but also that no subgroup's risk is increased in a way that is morally unacceptable. For instance, if a chemical added to the water were to improve the dental health of a majority ethnic group but decrease the dental health of a minority ethnic group, the introduction of that chemical would be morally problematic—significant amount of information-gathering would need to be done, and attempts to limit the application of the initiative to the minority might well need to be made (e.g., not adding the chemical in the areas where members of the minority group are more likely to be found).

In particular, the following empirical outcome is imaginable. It could be that the availability of contraceptives significantly increases the likelihood of pregnancy among religiously conservative teenagers, because without the availability of contraceptives they have two reasons to avoid sex: (a) religion and (b) pregnancy (and disease, but what I say about pregnancy applies to STIs mutatis mutandis), which two reasons may result in a high probability of abstinence and hence a close to zero pregnancy rate (rape can happen despite abstinence, so it's not exactly zero), while with the availability of contraceptives the second reason largely drops out, and the abstinence rate may significantly decrease. If that were so, then there would be an identifiable group for whom the risk of pregnancy would be increased by the availability of contraception. I do not know if it is so or not—that is an empirical question, and either answer is possible depending on how the probabilities work out. But it is not irrational for parents of religiously conservative children to worry that the availability of contraception might increase the risks of pregnancy for these children, and it might well be irrational to be confident that it does not increase these risks unless one has significant empirical data (of which I am not aware).

Boccaccio's argument for the Catholic faith

In the second story of the first day of the Decameron, we have the story of how Giannotto tried to convince a Jewish friend named Abraham to become a Christian. Giannotto is a fairly ignorant merchant, but his arguments have sincerity. Abraham, on the other hand, is a theologically well-educated Jew. But instead of making mincemeat of his friend's arguments, out of friendship and perhaps a movement by the Holy Spirit (so the narrator suggests), he resolves he'll go to Rome to see what the alleged vicar of Christ is like, in order to decide which faith is correct. Giannotto thinks all is lost:

if he goes to the court of Rome and sees the wicked and filthy lives of the clergy, not only will he not change from a Jew to a Christian, but if if he had already become a Christian before, he would, no doubt, return to being a Jew.

Nonetheless, he sends his friend with his blessing. Abraham goes to Rome and sees all the sin among "the Pope, the cardinals, and the other prelates and courtiers". Abraham returns, and Giannotto is sure that there is no longer a chance of conversion. He asks Abraham what he thought of the Papal court. Abraham responds:

I don't like them a bit, and may God condemn them all; and I tell you think because as far as I was able to determine, I saw there no holiness, no devotion, no good work or exemplary life, or anything else among the clergy; instead, lust, avarice, gluttony, fraud, envy, pride, and the like and even worse (if worse than this is possible) were so completely in charge there that I believe that city is more of a forge for the Devil's work than for God's: in my opinion, that Shepherd of yours and, as a result, all of the others as well are trying as quickly as possible and with all the talent and skill they have to reduce the Christian religion to nothing and to drive it from the face of the earth when they really should act as its support and foundation. And since I have observed that in spite of all this, they do not succeed but, on the contrary, that your religion continuously grows and becomes brighter and more illustrious, I am justly of the opinion that it has the Holy Spirit as its foundation and support, and that it is truer and holier than any other religion.... So, let us go to church, and there, according to the custom of your holy faith, I shall be baptised.[note 1]

Now, while over the past century we've been blessed by popes of exemplary holiness (though of course there has been much wickedness elsewhere among the clergy and laity), the argument does not require present papal wickedness. What it requires is the surprising way that despite all the wickedness, the Church survives and grows. One might object: but if the Catholic faith were the true faith, wouldn't we expect that the hierarchy would be holy in the first place? While the analogy is not perfect, this is similar to asking, in the case of someone who was apparently miraculously healed, why God would have permitted the illness in the first place. The question is a good and tough one, but it does not make the healing (in the case of the cancer) or the survival and growth (in the case of the Church) less wonderful.

We might enhance the above by recalling another argument. The Catholic Church's formal teaching is coherent, despite having been developed over twenty centuries. The teachings are not only coherent at one time, but are coherent over time (and cohere with Scripture as well, but I don't want to rely on this if the argument is to be convincing to Protestants). The best explanation of this coherence is that it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Arguments along these lines have been developed by Menssen and Sullivan. Observe, too, how this consistency is not observed in most other Christian bodies—sexual ethics is a nice example, with contraception once condemned by all theologians (including Luther and Calvin) and now widely accepted by non-Catholic bodies (with the notable exception of some individual Protestants and some Orthodox bodies—though even in the latter, there is a reluctant acceptance of remarriage after divorce). But now combine this argument with Boccaccio's. The consistency over time is amazing enough—but when one notes that the consistency includes popes who were, apparently, quite wicked, but who, nonetheless, did not formally teach the Church anything contrary to the earlier faith, the argument becomes even stronger.

Early embryos

It is often argued that the early (pre-implantation, human) embryo does not have a right to life because it is capable of twinning. The question is important, because if such an embryo does have a right to life, then embryo-destructive research (such as stem cell extraction) at this stage is wrong, and forms of birth control that can prevent implantation (e.g., the IUD, and perhaps hormonal contraception) are problematic.

I am going to try to reconstruct the best argument for this position, and then shoot it down. As an initial attempt, consider this:

1. Early embryos can split in two.
2. Something that can split in two lacks a definite identity.
3. Something that lacks a definite identity lacks a right to life.
4. Therefore, early embryos lack a right to life.

This argument is unsound. Each of us can split in two, for instance if we find ourselves victims of the guillotine. Yet we have a definite identity. So (2) is false. (It wouldn't help to add "naturally" to "split in two". First, we don't know that the embryo's splitting is "natural"—it might be an accident of some sort. Second, we can easily imagine critters that have a definite identity, but die by breaking up into two pieces.)

To fix the argument, we need to improve on premise (1) by saying something more about how early embryos can split in two. They do simply split in two: they twin. One way to formulate this is by saying that an embryo can split into two "entities" (I will use the term "entity" very widely, to include non-substances, heaps, etc.) of the same kind as it. But that won't be enough. For suppose that George is a member of a species that reproduces by growing a new member of the species as a bud on the shoulder. Then George can twin, but the ability to bud in this way is no threat to his definite identity or his right to life (if it's a species of persons). The issue, rather, seems to be with symmetric splitting.

So now our first premise is:

5. Early embryos can symmetrically split into two entities of the same kind as themselves.

This premise, however, is ambiguous. To see that, consider the following argument: "Human beings can lactate; only female mammals can lactate; therefore, human beings are female mammals." The issue is that phrases like "Human beings can" and "Early embryos can" are ambiguous between a "some" and an "all" reading. Let's first try the "some" reading. Then the claim is that some early embryos have a capability for the right kind of symmetric splitting. But then the rest of the argument only leads to the conclusion that those early embryos that have a capability for splitting lack a definite identity and hence lack a right to life. One might try to paper over the difficulty by strengthening (2) to:

6. Anything of the same kind as an entity that can symmetrically split into two entities of the same kind lacks a definite identity

and adding the auxiliary premise:

7. All early embryos are of the same kind.

However, it is not clear what argument can be given for (7) if one thinks that the capability for splitting is of such great importance as the defender of this argument thinks. So I think this is a non-starter.

Thus, the quantification in our initial premise needs to be over all early embryos. Or, maybe, all "normal" early embryos, allowing for the possibility that some early embryos might suffer from a splitting-disability. The argument now is:

8. Every normal early embryo can symmetrically split into two entities of the same kind as itself.
9. Something that can split into two entities of the same kind as itself lacks a definite identity.
10. Something that lacks a definite identity lacks a right to life.
11. Therefore, a normal early embryo lacks a right to life.

Indeed, (11) follows logically from (8)-(10). So the question is whether (8)-(10) are true.

Now, a glaring problem is that we do not at present know (8) to be true. There are two parts of this problem. The first part is that, last time I checked, we did not actually know that embryonic splitting is in fact symmetric. If it turns out that embryonic splitting proceeds by budding, the argument falls flat. Thus, the argument rests on an empirical hypothesis which is merely speculative. This is a problem: obviously, if the case for the lack of a right to life on the part of some organism is based on a merely speculative hypothesis, we should treat the organism as if it had a right to life until that speculative hypothesis is checked.

The second part of the problem with (8) is that we do not in fact know that all normal early embryos have the capability for splitting. The alternative view is that only some early embryos have a special characteristic in virtue of which they are capable of splitting (and there is no particular reason to think that this subclass of early embryos exhausts all the normal ones). As far as I know, we do not at present have enough empirical information to decide this issue. So, once again, (8) is up in the air empirically, and if this is what the case against the right to life of an early embryo is based on, we should treat the early embryo as if it had a right to life.

One might think that (8) could be defended by saying that even if naturally splitting isn't symmetric, or if only some early embryos can naturally split, still all early embryos could be surgically split. Maybe. But then (9) must be understood in a way that includes artificial splitting as well. And I think (9) understood in this way, conjoined with (10), is implausible. For it seems likely that one day it will be possible to destroy all of your body outside of your brain, so that you would be reduced to a functioning brain in a vat. If you were thus reduced to a functioning brain in a vat (say, as a radical treatment for an otherwise untreatable cancer—a rest-of-body amputation), you would surely still have a right to life. But a brain in a vat could, probably, be artificially split into two hemispheres in their own separate vats. And the split versions would seem to be the same kind of entity at the original, namely persons. So this would be a symmetric splitting of a person into two persons. But the mere possibility of such splitting surely neither threatens your identity nor removes your right to life, whether it is remote (as it is now, when you are not yet a brain in a vat) or near (as it would be were you to have the misfortune of being a brain in a vat).

So if (8) is understood to be only about natural splitting, our empirical knowledge does not give us (8). And if (8) is understood to be about artificial splitting, we should deny the conjunction of (9) and (10) under the appropriate interpretation of (9).

But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that in fact (8) is true, and even true as regards natural splitting. Why should we believe (9)? It is tempting to say something like this:

12. If x symmetrically splits into y and z which are of the same kind as x, then either: (a) x=y and not x=z; or (b) x=z and not x=y; or (c) x=y=z; or (d) x ceases to exist and y and z are new entities; or (e) x lacks a definite identity.
13. Options (a)-(d) are absurd.
14. Therefore, x lacks a definite identity.

But there are several problems with this form of argument. First of all, there is a serious technical problem. The argument as it stands only shows that those early embryos that in fact are going to split are lacking in a definite identity. But that is only a very small minority of early embryos, and so the argument at most establishes that some very small minority of early embryos lacks a right to life. To get around this, one needs to add something like the following premise:

15. If x is capable of doing something such that, were it to do it, it would lack a definite identity, then x lacks a definite identity.

Now (with a bit of modal work) we can probably show that (9) follows from (15) and a version of the subargument (12)-(14).

But is (15) plausible? Suppose I am able to split my brain in half, through programming a robot to do it, or maybe through a feat of auto-neurosurgery. Perhaps a split brain patient lacks a definite identity. But even if it were true that a split brain patient lacks a definite identity, it would not follow that my capability of turning myself into a split brain patient makes me already lack a definite identity. So I think (15) is very much problematic.

Moreover, I reject (13). First of all, if dualism is true, then the kind of symmetry we are dealing with is only physical symmetry. It is quite possible that the physical facts are symmetric but the facts about the soul are asymmetric. Thus, (a) or (b) might be true. There might be some law specifying which of y and z gets x's soul, either in terms of some minor asymmetry (nobody thinks the asymmetry is total, with each half having the exact same number of molecules, in exactly the same positions) or stochastically (maybe it's random where the soul goes), with the other output entity getting a new soul. Or it might be that God decides where x's soul goes. So if dualism is true, (a) and (b) are not absurd.

Moreover, whether or not dualism is true, (d) is not absurd. It seems very plausible that this is the right thing to say about an amoeba's splitting: the old amoeba perishes in the act of reproducing into two new ones. If I cut a sculpture in half, symmetrically, I have very plausibly made two new sculptures out of the one old one, which perished in the cutting. And, of course, the fact that something has a capability of perishing does not imply it lacks a definite identity, since all the non-human organisms on earth have a capability of perishing.

In fact, the case of the amoeba shows directly that we should deny (9). An amoeba has the capability of splitting into two amoebae. But surely it exhibits a perfectly definite identity at least when it is not actually splitting. If the amoeba in my microscope slide hadn't split over the last 12 hours, and hasn't yet started splitting, then I now have the same amoeba I had 12 hours ago. That seems perfectly definite.

Moreover, it would be very surprising if there couldn't be intelligent aliens who reproduce like amoebae. And if there were such aliens, they would be a counterexample to the conjunction of (9) and (10): for they would be capable of symmetric splitting, but would, nonetheless, have a right to life.

Perhaps, though, the conclusion of the argument should be more modest. Instead of concluding that normal early embryos lack a right to life, maybe the argument should only conclude something like this: Don Marquis' argument against abortion does not apply to normal early embryos. For, Don Marquis' argument requires an identity between an embryo or fetus and an adult, so that killing the embryo or fetus is depriving it of a future like ours. I am not sure Marquis actually requires identity here (what he says about sperms and eggs suggests that he is talking of a relation weaker than identity). But nevermind—suppose he requires identity. Then one might argue that if the early embryo is capable of splitting in the near future, then it is not identical with a future adult. More precisely:

16. If x is capable of symmetrically splitting into two entities of the same kind in the near future, then x is not identical with any far-future entity.

But I think (16) is clearly false. If x in fact is going to symmetrically split in the near future, then maybe x is not identical with any far-future entity (but see my discussion of (12a) and (12b), above). But the mere capability of such splitting is surely irrelevant. Imagine Fred, an amoeba-like critter that every day, at noon, has a 2% chance of splitting symmetrically. Suppose that Fred in fact hasn't split during the past week (quite likely). Then Fred is the very same entity that he was a week ago. If he were to have split, we would perhaps be uncertain as to what we should say about his identity. But if he hasn't split, surely we should say that we have been dealing all along with the same entity. The mere possibility of symmetric splitting is not a threat to diachronic identity.

The pill

I will use the phrase "using oral contraception" (and cognates) to abbreviate the complex state of affairs of being a woman of normal fertility and using standard contemporary (not the older higher dose pill) oral contraception as the only form of contraception for the period of at least a year while being sexually active at an average sexual frequency. The following argument is sound when implicitly conditionalized on the present state of medical knowledge and technology:

1. Someone who prevents the implantation of an embryo that he or she is a parent of causes the death of his or her innocent child. (Premise)
2. It is wrong to act in a way that carries a significant risk of one's causing the death of one's innocent child without very grave reason. (Premise)
3. Using oral contraception carries a significant risk of one's causing the death of an embryo that one is a parent of. (Premise)
4. It is wrong to use oral contraception without very grave reason. (By (1)-(3))
5. Very grave reason to use oral contraception is exceedingly rare if it ever occurs. (Premise)
6. It is wrong to use oral contraception except perhaps in exceedingly rare cases. (By (4) and (5))

The same goes for the IUD. I do not know if the argument holds for implantable or injectable hormonal contraception, but at least unless one has very good reason to think that it does not, one has good reason to avoid that, too. I should add that I think marital direct contraception is always wrong, but the present conclusions are is controversial enough.

The argument has a formal feature that complicates things. The terms "significant risk" and "grave reason" are not defined explicitly. Rather, they must be taken to be partially interdefined by (2).[note 1] Thus, in defending (5), one needs to argue that what is exceedingly rare is the sort of reason that would fit into the exception in (2), where "significant risk" is the risk we get from the medical literature supporting (1).

I will not argue for (1) and (2). I think (2) is uncontroversial, and (1) will generally be accepted by pro-life folks.

We do not know exactly how often the use of oral contraception causes a failure to implant. A survey of data is given by Larimore and Stanford (2000). Hormonal contraception has three main modes of operation according to references (including product inserts in at least some cases): (a) prevention of ovulation, (b) modification of uterine environment that makes it inhospitable, and (c) modification of cervical mucus to make it harder for sperm to reach the ovum. The data in Wildt, et al. (1998) strongly suggests that sperm can travel through thick mucus. So (c) isn't a very effective method. Studies show that ovulation still occurs in 1.7-65% of cycles (see Larimore and Stanford, 2000; unfortunately, I don't know if this is for perfect use or typical use). Assume, conservatively, a not unrealistic fertilization rate of about 10% per cycle in which ovulation occurs.[note 2] Assuming independence (which isn't exactly right, admittedly), this gives us an annual fertilization rate of 2%-55% (assuming 12 cycles per year). But the established pregnancy rate for oral contraception is significantly lower than most of this range (the perfect use pregnancy rate is 1% or lower; the typical use pregnancy rates are higher), where an established pregnancy is one where implantation has occurred. So there is good reason to think that there are probably significantly more fertilizations than established pregnancies, and hence there is good reason to think that using oral contraception carries approximately a 1% to 50% chance (this will be a combined epistemic and nomic probability) per year of preventing a fertilization, and thereby causing the death of the embryo.

This will yield (3), assuming 1% to 50% counts as "significant risk" in the sense used in (2). But I think it clearly does count. A quick way to see this is to imagine that the risk is not to one's child, but to the user. The FDA would not approve a form of contraception which had a 1% to 50% annualized chance of resulting in the death of the user, and medication with that fatality rate would only be approved if the condition it treated was very grave indeed. If such a risk to the user would be unacceptable absent a very grave reason, a fortiori it would be unacceptable when the risk was to another party.[note 3] In fact, I doubt that we would approve of life-saving medication that had a 1% to 50% chance of causing the death of a bystander (imagine that it gives off noxious fumes or something).

That leaves (5) to be argued for. But that's easy. Given that the "very grave reason" would have to be one that would justify taking an annualized 1% to 50% risk of being the cause of one's innocent child's death, it seems clearly that only extreme circumstances will yield such a reason. If using oral contraception is needed to save someone's life, a case might be made (though note the caution at the end of the previous paragraph). But remember that I defined "using oral contraception" as including sex at a normal sexual frequency and with no other contraception being used. So that would have to be a case where having sex at a normal sexual frequency was needed to save a life and no other contraception was possible. Maybe if a woman had to have sex with a dictator for a year or he else he would kill her (or someone else), and if pregnancy would result in the woman's death, and if the use of non-abortifacient contraception were impossible, this could be argued to be a case like that (in the end I deny it, because it is wrong to commit adultery even to save a life). But such cases are, indeed, exceedingly rare. Perhaps saving someone from serious disability would qualify. Could "saving a marriage" qualify? I doubt it. Would it be permissible for a couple to undergo a "marriage saving treatment" that had a 1% to 50% chance of killing one of their children? And the case would have to be such that the consequences of pregnancy would be very grave, and that no other contraception was possible. (And even then it would be wrong if, as I think, marital direct contraception is always wrong—but that requires a different argument.) So I think (5) is very plausible.

An argument against contraception

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).

Sex and reproduction

In my previous post I suggested, using amateur astronomy as an example, that an engagement in an activity can have a value over and beyond the value of the activity's goal, even though the value of the activity derives from the value of that goal.

An interesting instance of this is the following view of sex. Sex gets its value from being an activity naturally directed at offspring, offspring having great value. But the activity naturally directed at offspring has a value over and beyond that of offspring. Thus, even sex that does not result in reproduction, say because the couple is infertile (temporarily or permanently) has value. This value does not derive from the value of offspring in the particular case—there are none in the particular case—but from the fact that it is an instance of a type of activity that is directed at a good.

We can also see that there is something at least problematic in contraception. Contracepted sex is an engagement in a sexual activity while one is trying to ensure that that goal from which the activity derives its value is not attained. Imagine an amateur astronomer who, while engaging in the skilled activity of amateur astronomy (collimating telescope, choosing eyepieces, pointing telescope, etc.), just before looking in the eyepiece at the chosen object puts the lens cap back on. There, one's deliberate choices are contradicting that from which the activity derives its meaning.

Natural Family Planning versus contraception

Patricia and Marcus are a married couple. Each day, they prudently decide whether or not to engage in marital union. To make that decision, they weigh all the relevant factors they can, gathering information relevant to the decision ahead of time when appropriate. They do nothing to intentionally decrease the fertility of their bodies, and when they decide to unite maritally, they do nothing to intentionally decrease the likelihood of conception.

What I have described is not a contracepting couple. What may not be immediately obvious is that I have described a couple practicing Natural Family Planning (NFP). One way to look at NFP is precisely as the gathering of some of the information relevant to a prudential decision whether or not to engage in marital union at a given time, and then making the decision in part in light of that information. For, plainly, the probability of conception is information relevant to a prudent decision whether or not to engage in marital relations. The way the information is relevant will depend on other information. If, for instance, the couple is suffering from severe financial distress, the learning that the probability of conception is high will make the decision to engage in marital relations less prudent than these relations would be if the probability were low. On the other hand, if the couple is in good personal, financial and relational health, learning that the probability of conception is high will make the decision to engage in marital relations more even more prudent than it would be if if the probability were low. ("Prudence", here, is Aristotelian phronêsis, of course.). It is clear, by the way, how NFP is useful not just to the couple for whom conception would be imprudent, but also to the couple trying to conceive.

Information relevant to the decision whether to engage in marital relations includes how tired the two persons are, what privacy is available to them, what their feelings about each other are, what potentially time-consuming duties they may have, whether there are any relevant medical considerations, and so on, all enter into the decision. That this kind of information needs to enter into the decision is clear and uncontroversial. But likewise, information about further consequences of an action is relevant to deciding whether to engage in the action or not, and hence fertility information is likewise relevant.

Seen in this way, it is clear that one cannot object in principle to every instance of NFP without being committed to at leat one of two implausible views:

1. It is wrong for a couple to engage in sexual relations when the likelihood of conception is low.
2. It is wrong for a couple to refrain from engaging in sexual relations because the likelihood of conception is high.

For unless one holds one of these two views, one cannot object to a couple deciding to engage in sexual relations when the likelihood of conception is low, and one also cannot object to a couple deciding not to engage in sexual relations because the likelihood of conception is high. Nor can one fault a couple for making the decision whether to engage in sexual relations or not in the light of all relevant information. But making such decisions on a day-to-day basis is all that NFP need consist in. Catholic tradition rejects both (1) and (2). Hence, the Catholic tradition does not contain a prohibition against NFP. Moreover, the prohibition against contraception is a prohibition against intentionally rendering the body or act less fertile than it would otherwise would be, and does not imply either (1) nor (2). Hence there is a relevant difference between NFP and contraception.

Objection 1: Although (1) is clearly innocent, what the couple is doing is not just deciding to engage in sexual relations when the likelihood of conception is low, but because the likelihood of conception is low.

Response: Consider the sense of this "because". It is not so much that the low probability of conception is their reason for having sex--after all, there are many uncontroversial activities other than sex that have much lower probability of conception, say sharing ice cream. Rather, the low probability of conception may imply the absence of a defeater to their independent reason to unite maritally, this defeater being the bad consequences of conception in their special situation (e.g., one of financial hardship). When deciding whether to engage in any action that isn't an all-things-considered duty, we need to consider potential defeaters. So if (1) and (2) are innocent, it must also be innocent to take into account the presence or absence of defeaters, since one must always do that in the case of a decision whether to engage in marital relations.

Objection 2: Over and beyond the daily decision between engaging and not engaging in marital union, there is the "plan of action as a whole", which in the case of a couple who uses NFP to avoid conception involves the timing of intercourse so as to avoid conception, and it is this plan of action as a whole that is analogous to contraception.

Response: There need not be any such overarching plan of action. When I described Patricia and Marcus, I did not attribute any such plan to them. Rather, it is possible that the couple is deciding, on a day to day basis, whether sexual union on that day is prudent in light of all the relevant information they have gathered. Granted, there may be an on-going condition (say, financial) which renders sexual union imprudent when it has a non-low probability of conception, and they need not think through the details of that condition each day, but can simply be on the lookout for when, if ever, the condition comes to an end. But it is quite possible to decide day after day on the same grounds--and yet for it to be a genuine decision, though it may become somewhat habitual. The fact that it is a genuine decision is evidenced by the data that at times NFP couples do decide to have sexual relations even when it is imprudent to do so, apparently without a significantly prudentially relevant change in circumstances (this is probably the main source of pregnancies among couples using NFP to avoid conception).

That said, one can imagine a couple who instead of deciding on a daily basis decides that over the next six months they will try to avoid conception. Still, it seems to me that they are likely to be making a daily decision whether they ought to keep to their earlier resolution. That said, I do not need to defend the actions of such a couple. To argue that NFP is morally permissible, I need to argue that there is some set of circumstances and motives under which NFP is permissible. It is false that NFP is permissible under all circumstances and with all possible sets of motives, and I actually suspect that a married couple's decision to refrain from conception ahead of time, without reference to changing circumstances, is morally problematic. Note that it is different to decide once for six months not to conceive, and another simply to expect that over the next six months one will each day have all-things-considered reason to avoid conception, but to still be making the decisions on a daily basis, since after all the reason to avoid conception might go away.

Summary: One way for NFP to be practiced, and it is this one way that I am defending here, is to think of it as the gathering of certain information relevant for the decision (I talk of "daily", but that is just a convenience--it could in principle be hourly) whether or not to engage in marital union at a given time. The information in question is fertility information. The prudent couple, of course, will also gather other information, and take that into account. Seen this way, NFP is not only clearly morally permissible, both in light of reason and of the Catholic tradition, but is positively virtuous, involving the virtue of prudence, as well as, when abstinence is called for, the virtue of self-control. What is the alternative? To fail to gather relevant information?

A bad argument against the Catholic teaching against contraception

Fairly frequently, one hears the following argument against the orthodox Catholic view that the use of marital[note 1] contraception is wrong: If Catholics were consistent, they would also prohibit Natural Family Planning (NFP), because there is no morally significant difference between NFP and contraception. One reason that this is a bad argument is that, as many authors have argued at length (here is my version), there really are significant differences between NFP and contraception, for instance grounded in the doing/permitting distinction.

But I think there is a simpler reason why this is a bad argument. For what is the conclusion of the argument? It is that if one rejects contraception, one should likewise reject NFP. Suppose that the argument succeeds in establishing this (it doesn't). Now the Catholic has to choose between two views:

1. Marital contraception and NFP are both wrong.
2. Marital contraception and NFP are both sometimes right.

But if that is the choice, it is completely clear what the Catholic should choose--namely, option (1). After all, the Catholic's biggest reason for being opposed to contraception is the Tradition of the Church, and until the early 20th century, it has been the unanimous teaching of Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) that contraception is wrong. Now there has been some fallible papal teaching, starting with the late 19th century, allowing NFP. But the doctrinal weight of this teaching is of a much lesser order than the combination of the even more definite papal teaching against contraception coupled with the unanimous agreement of the Christian Tradition. If the Catholic has to choose, the right choice by orthodox Catholic lights is clearly (1) rather than (2).

The argument is a bad one for the following reason. The proponent of contraception believes that (a) marital contraception is sometimes right, and, presumably, that also (b) marital NFP is sometimes right. The well-informed orthodox Catholic denies (a) but accepts (b). But the argument, if it succeeds, will shift the well-informed orthodox Catholic to denying both (a) and (b). Nor will this shift affect much else in the orthodox Catholic's web of beliefs. While the teaching that contraception is wrong is interwoven with significant amounts of other Catholic beliefs, the teaching that NFP is right lacks that sort of interweave, simply because the teaching on NFP is of such recent date. Hence, the argument, if it succeeds, will increase disagreement. And surely that is not what the proponent of contraception wants. Indeed, since the proponent of contraception typically believes that unlimited reproduction is bad for people and the world, by offering the NFP-contraception argument to a well-informed orthodox Catholic, and thus convincing the orthodox Catholic that NFP is wrong, she is apt to contribute to the very problem she is trying to counter.

There is a general structure to this criticism. Suppose A believes p and q, and B believes p and not-q. A wishes to convince B of q. So A offers B the argument that p and not-q are logically inconsistent. This is not going to be a good argument if B's main reasons for holding not-q are much stronger than her main reasons for holding p, and if denying p does not force the denial of much else that B is committed to. If the argument succeeds in showing the inconsistency, it is more likely (at least if we limit ourselves to rational persuasion) to move B to believing not-p and not-q, which A believes is further from the truth.